City Council - Community Preservation Act Committee Hearing on Docket #1601

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and many more.

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and I am the chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Community Preservation Act. 1039 AM. This hearing is being recorded it is also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city dash council dash tv and broadcast on Xfinity channel 8 RCN channel 82 and Files Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.cpa.boston.gov and will be made a part of the record and available to all the councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up and we'll have two minutes to testify. If you're interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance of the chamber

If you are looking to testify virtually, please email our Central Staff Liaison Ryan Pratt at ryan.pratt at boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket number 1601, order for a hearing to explore raising the percentage of Community Preservation Act funds dedicated to affordable housing This matter was sponsored by Councilors Brian Worrell and Mynyard Culpepper, and was referred to the Committee on August 26th, 2026. Today, I am joined by my colleagues in order of arrival. Councilor Murphy, Councillor Flynn, Councillor Durkan and Councillor Worrell. Any letter of absence? Nope. and today I'm also first we are joined by the Director of the Community Preservation Treasury Department, Thaddean Brown.

But first, before we get into the public to the panel I want to give them up the opportunity to the main sponsor for an opening statement.

Thank you, Chair. And thank you Executive Director Brown for being here. Also to the public and to my colleagues I want to acknowledge first and foremost a work that the Community Preservation Committee and CPA staff and the advocates who continue to put forth investments in our neighborhoods. We know CPA has done a lot of good across our city, but we also know that our ARPA funding is coming to an end We also know that there's uncertainty around state and federal housing resources. We know the construction and borrowing costs have gone up, and it has taken more public dollars to build the same amount of affordable housing. We also have roughly 40% of our CPA supported affordable housing projects that haven't started construction. I want to understand what's holding them up and whether additional funding can help. Cambridge dedicates 80%.

of a CPA in funding to affordable housing, Boston's goal is 50%. And I'm not suggesting that we move to 80% like Cambridge is doing. But we should be looking at possibly and it's what this conversation is about And what would those additional dollars mean for families trying to find an affordable home or become homeowners here in the city of Boston? One thing that stood out to me is that the Community Preservation Plan already allows us to revisit these allocations based on changing needs. So what actually causes us to use that flexibility? If we have more parks that need major improvement, does that justify increasing funding for parks? and if affordable housing is becoming more expensive to build, shouldn't that also be a reason to reconsider our housing allocation? Because of the circumstances we're facing today aren't enough to revisit the formula, then what would be?

That's why I'm hoping that we can better understand that today and I look forward to the conversation. Thank you.

Okay, I'm going to have the chair just wave everyone's opening statements and just go to Q&A. And I'm Yeah, I'm just waving everyone's opening statements from our colleagues. No, no, no. Now we're going to get a presentation from Aideen Brown. The floor is yours.

Thank you. So thank you, Chairman Pepén and members of the Boston City Council. I have the honor of serving as a director of the Community Preservation Office for the past 8 1⁄2 years. I've worked with the community preservation committee and I've overseen all nine funding rounds. It has been a privilege to serve the residents of Boston, and help advance projects and preserve our history, expand housing opportunities, and improve community spaces across the city. Each funding round requires thoughtful deliberation and difficult decisions by the Community Preservation Committee. We are grateful for the committee's unwavering commitment and highly competitive process, and their dedication to ensuring that CPA funds deliver meaning and lasting benefits to Boston neighborhoods. Today, I've been asked to join the hearing to discuss the Community Preservation Committee's allocation of funding for affordable housing.

I appreciate the opportunity to spend the next 10 minutes providing the Council with an overview of the Community Preservation Act program, the funding process and how CPA resources have been distributed across all three categories. Each year, state law requires that 10% of CPA funds must be reserved for the three core categories. Affordable housing, historic preservation and open space and recreation. In addition up to 5%, of annual CPA revenue may be used for administrative costs. CPA fundings are restricted to eligible capital improvements, projects that cannot be used routine maintenance, operations, staffing or programming expenses. Eligible applicants include public, agencies, nonprofit organizations, private entities and for-profit organizations. All proposed projects must meet the definitions and requirements outlined in Chapter 44B. which are listed here for reference.

Understanding the allowable uses of CPA funds is essential for applicants to successfully complete their submissions. To support them, we prioritize early and frequent engagement Educating applicants on these allowable uses so that they are well prepared before beginning the eligibility determination process. To date, 438 projects have been awarded with CPA funds. More than 259 million across Boston neighborhoods. You can also see that the funding distributions for each funding round from 2018 through 2026. Since its creation, CPA funded projects have been implemented in every neighborhood supporting 66 affordable housing projects, 207 historic preservation projects and 165 open space and recreation projects.

The following table shows the distribution of funding allocations across all three categories over the last nine funding rounds. Affordable housing represents 52% of the total CPA funding, This reflects the significant investment often required to preserve and create affordable housing opportunities. Historic preservation, and open space and recreation received 24% of the total CPA funding. Over the past nine funding rounds, Community Preservation Committee has consistently prioritized affordable housing. Committing 50% of available funding to affordable housing category while continuing to invest in historic preservation and Open Space and Recreation projects. This data demonstrates the committee's balanced approach to meeting the goals of the CPA plan while addressing Boston's ongoing affordable housing needs.

Every CPA investment leaves a lasting legacy, supporting housing, preserving history and enhancing and creating recreation spaces that benefit residents in generations to come. In the recent months We have several new recreation projects that have been completed. For example, the Charlestown Peace Park, a creation of a new community park serving residents of Charlestoun Bethany Park, Bethany Church Park a development of a new public park in Rosendale on the land owned by Bethany church now open to the community. Roxbury Community College Pocket Park, construction of a new park by RCC for the community use and enjoyment. and Norwell Park, groundbreaking happened a few weeks ago. This is a 1.9 million CPA investment. CPA funding supported the acquisition of three parcels that will support the construction

of a new neighborhood park in Dorchester. Historic preservation funding plays a critical role in maintaining the character, heritage and cultural identity of our neighborhoods. Ensuring that significant buildings, landmarks and cultural resources remain accessible and meaningful to residents and visitors alike. For example the 12th Baptist Church founded in 1840 received CPA funding to remove failing exterior materials, restore the building's original wood cladding and helping to preserve an important piece of Boston's religious and cultural history. The United South End Settlements received funding for critical drainage, roofing and masonry repairs. These improvements help protect the historic community institution that has provided educational Enrichment and Support Services to Boston families for decades.

The National Center for Afro American Artists has received three CPA grants to support masonry, roof restoration, structural stabilization and ADA accessibility improvements. These improvements are advancing a multi-phase restoration effort to preserve this iconic cultural landmark. Most recently, the Old State House received CPA funding for critical structural repairs as one of Boston's most significant historic landmarks and a major destination for residents, visitors These improvements will help ensure the building remains safe, accessible and preserved for years to come. Today, CPA has awarded $14 million to the Acquisition Opportunity Program helping mission-driven developers purchase tenant occupied buildings before cash buyers and private investors. reducing displacement and preserving affordability.

This program has recently been recognized for the 2026 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability in the Finance category. Over $21 million in CPA funding has been supported to the One Plus Boston First-Time Home Buyers program. helping more than 1,000 residents become first-time homeowners with over 480 homebuyers receiving down payment and closing cost assistance. CPA funds support both rental and home ownership opportunities for household earning up to 100% of the AMI. Preserving, it has also helped preserve and develop over 2,400 units of affordable housing including home ownership opportunities, supporting housing projects for veterans Seniors, and individuals experiencing homelessness.

The committee strives to fund new affordable housing units that prioritize local residents. The Committee also strives support deeply affordable units serving households earning between 30 and 60 percent AMI. The CPA five-year plan has overall goals and key goals for three funding categories. One of the goals is to continue to establish a CPA funding allocation formula annually, to help guide recommendations. As stated earlier in my presentation, the committee is committed to providing a balanced approach to meet the goals of the CPA plan while addressing Boston's ongoing affordable housing needs. Thank you for the opportunity to share this information.

Thank you, Director Brown. Also thank you just for the amazing work that you and your entire team does on a consistent basis. It's such an honor to be able to work with you. Okay now With that, I'm going to go to my colleagues for Q&A. I'm gonna give my colleague seven minutes in the first round and then if anyone has any follow-up questions, I'll allow some extra time. I wanna start off with with the main sponsor of this docket, Councilor Worrell. And then we'll go in order of arrival. I also want to make sure that I acknowledge that we've been joined by Councillors Breadon and Councillor Fitzgerald. So thank you for being here. Okay, Councilor Worrell the floor is yours.

Thank you Chair and thank you Executive Director Brown again very grateful for the work that the CPA has done throughout uh the entire city of Boston was at um The Wild Park Thank you for that and have been at many ribbon-cuttings on both sides, whether it's open space or affordable housing. One of my questions is around trying to find ways on how to maximize the most out of CPA funds. Have we ever explored, I think Massachusetts state law gives us the ability to bond against CPA funds. Have we ever explored bonding against CPA Funds and can you tell me about what that impact would look like?

So no, the committee currently... There was a discussion around bonding. And at the time, you know, the Treasury kind of advised that it wouldn't be something should think about doing. I don't have all the exact details. I know the committee, the presentation was given to the committee and at that time the committee did not choose to do bonding. They did want to work within the funds they currently had on hand to be able to fund the projects.

And sorry, how long ago was that presentation from the Treasury?

That presentation may have been done a few years ago. Okay.

To the chair, were you able to submit that presentation so we could get a better understanding of the impact? Sure.

I'll be able to provide some information around that.

Okay. Thank you. When it comes to The annual conversation around how the board will be allocating the funds. What does the board look Look into to determine whether we're keeping the same allocations or readjusting.

Sure, that's a great question so every year we receive over 100 eligibility forms and then a significant amount of projects that come in from the joint RFP with the Mayor's Office of Housing. So the committee understands that there's a housing crisis and a need within the city of Boston. But they also understand that there is a large advocate of community groups that also had support for the other two funding categories. Historic preservation is the largest category of projects that come in every year, and so the committee has to consider If we're already giving 50% to affordable housing, which is the biggest need within the city. It's only a balanced approach to continue to think about the other two categories, which are historic preservation and open space and recreation because those projects also have critical needs.

And so the committee, since inception has decided that 50% would be the funding allocation and when our hearing happens, our annual hearing happens September each year, they have tend to stick to the 50%, 20% to open space and recreation, and 20% historic preservation and deciding where to split the 10%. Historically, they have split the 10% between the other two categories based on the significant needs of the requests that come in that funding round. Our grant is one of the most competitive funding grants, especially for the historic preservation category because our funds are getting out the door fairly quickly and projects are being completed within a 24-month timeline.

Thank you. And do you see, over the course of like the last three years The ability to stretch the 50% that's allocated to affordable housing be a lot less You're able to reach less projects as construction and borrowing costs go up. Are you seeing the same amount of projects being funded or less projects being

I think there has been a shift in the last funding round, I would say just due to cutbacks and other funding sources to help with home ownership. So the last finding round was the first time that the committee saw a lot of rental projects only, and then we only had one home ownership which was the One Plus Boston Home Ownership Program. So we noticed that shift last year in our funding round Due to the fact that there was just not enough funding to support homeownership projects, but we were still able to fund rental projects. I would say we still funded about the same average amount of projects that we did. Again, we were not able to support home ownership We were able to support a lot of rental projects last year.

I know that when it comes to homeownership, particularly affordable homeownership sometimes there's not as enough funding from the state side to make those projects actually possible so sometimes When the state's funding is uncertain, it doesn't incentivize or create the atmosphere for developers. to provide affordable home ownership. Would that be a reason that the board would consider increasing the affordable housing, to try and see if we can jumpstart or incentivize I think the committee is always open to a conversation around increasing funding in any of the categories.

If there's, you know, full details on the needs and the request. So I don't... You know, I think the committee is open to conversations around giving additional funds to affordable housing. Again, they do want to try to keep a balanced approach just because there's a significant need in the other two categories and just the demand of the projects that come in every year.

Got it, got it. And then I know there's some projects that were awarded maybe they couldn't you know get a development team together maybe they weren't ready to build the park does the board take Exit forms to understand why projects are returning the money.

Sure, so any project... So I'll just step back a little bit. My team and I which is a team of eight individuals we are very small but mighty team every project that comes before us has a project manager. So every project is being managed monthly, there's a conversation with each project every month to find out how they're doing if they're running into any issues or challenges. Usually if a project is been withdrawn It's because they can't keep up with the legal requirements of the grant agreement and have to withdraw before even receiving the funds. Or there may be significant delays where they need more additional funding to build a project And it may be good for them to withdraw and come back at another time to do that work. For affordable housing, sometimes that is the case. They may not be able to build a certain amount of units that they have so want to reconsider coming back for CPA funds.

But, for every project that's not recommended for funding or withdrawn there is a personal meeting with me and my team myself to discuss why the project is withdrawing The reasons why their application may not have moved forward, but we are in constant communication with any applicants that are not recommended for awards or may have to withdraw their projects.

Got it and then last follow-up question What would you say is the main reason for affordable housing to withdraw? Is it the legal requirements, or is it the need for additional funding, or something else?

So I wouldn't be able to pinpoint exactly what the main reason might be. I think it'll be helpful if I did have, you know, I think other commentary from the Mayor's Office of Housing would help answer that question as well. But I would say it could be a number of factors, but maybe funding is one of those. It could be—it could be other instances of something that may have come up that wasn't seen before the project was recommended.

All right, thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Thank You. Okay now we're going to go in order of arrival starting with Councillor Murphy and then Councillor Flynn

Thank you. Thank you, Saydeen for being here and thank you for all you do your presentation I think matches also how you carry yourself in your team you're always open and Easy to communicate with, so thank you for that. Not just myself and my office but I see you out in the neighborhood. You probably said it in your presentation about one of your responses to Councilor Worrell is something that I just wanna echo was true, that you follow up and you talk to the people who many times I've had this conversation with you. Maybe it's not the first time they apply but you give them advice come back don't give up but also you have these listening information sessions in the community and I know district councils like Councilor Flynn, I've been to a couple in his district take advantage of that opportunity because one thing we did find is that not every neighborhood has the same amount of CPA funds, but it's not because you're not choosing those neighborhoods.

Many times it's just they may not know that opportunity is there. It's not even though, like you said, you're a mighty team. You don't have an infinite amount of funds. You stop that from putting it out there to make sure everyone knows to apply, try, Thank you for that. Just a question about, there is obviously a need for housing. We know that. That's something we talk about a lot here on this council. But the goals, and I think you did a good job reminding me about the goals and what your board focuses on in the three different categories. I've been to some of the school playground openings or The historic preservation, when they put the last coat of paint on or they're opening the doors to an older building which is wonderful too.

and then the housing projects obviously so needed, and we always need more money for that especially in this day and age. But if you could It touch on and it was mentioned how if someone has to, if someone is awarded or you know organization gets awarded the money for their project. And for whatever reason they need to withdraw Is there time for your team to put that back into someone who may not have gotten chosen but you know they could be ready to be selected? And if so, do you try to stay in the same category so that percentage stays around the same?

So what happens when a project is withdrawn, it's reallocated back to the new funding round. And it goes across all three funding categories because over the last several years we have been meeting the 10% requirement When a fund is reallocated, it does not need to be reallocate to the one particular category. It can be allocated to fund to go back to the full pot to help all projects.

Okay, thank you for that. And you said how your team there's always someone assigned so they have a project manager but if we're talking say about housing does that money just go to say Sheila Dillon and she takes over kind of the Oversee of that or does it go to, you know, BPS if it's a school playground? How does that work how much of your team's Oversight stays throughout the entire project.

Sure, that's a really great question. So all city department projects can be monitored internally. We can monitor their funds through project summary reports and so with affordable housing projects, there is the MOA with the Mayor's Office of Housing but it is allocated to a particular developer. So the mayor's office of housing does get that funding source to be able to distribute it to that developer for that awarded amount. So the funds is going to the Mayor's Office of Housing, but it is also going to that particular developer when it goes over to that department. For our Boston Public Schools we do monitor those projects. I personally monitor all Open Space Recreation Projects for BPS. And I meet monthly with the BPS facilities team on these projects, and I can monitor those funds internally so we're having discussions on where they are in the funding. Are they in the pre-construction phase? Mid construction? and when they're ready for final closeout. So we can see those funds internally.

Thank you, and just thank you for everything your team does here to obviously always support how we can not just fund housing make sure though that it gets off the ground and it sees itself through but also think it's important to acknowledge all the other great funding sources you know that it goes to other important things our city needs so Thank you for all you do. Thank you.

Thank You, Councilor Murphy. Okay, Councillor Flynn, the floor is yours.

Thank-you Mr Chair and thank-you to Thay Dean I had the opportunity to work with you on every round Since you've been here and done an outstanding job, you're an excellent dedicated city employee. I want to acknowledge that. Very professional. My question would be So I'm interested in hearing what kind of planning has been done to increase the CPA fee. and what that increase would require from a process standpoint. I know several months ago it was reported that the city was considering increasing the CPA fee basically to counter the decline in federal funding for affordable housing. But is that something you're considering or you are actively trying to pursue?

No, I am not aware of any increase to the surcharge.

Okay. It was my understanding that The City may consider an effort to boost CPA levy. It charges property owners, but I guess that's not the case though?

No. Okay. were to be a consideration for an increase in the surcharge, it would need to be another ballot initiative that the residents of Boston will need to vote on.

Okay. Excellent. Has your office taken a position on this recommendation here where possibly raising the percent of CPA for affordable housing. But have you taken a position on that? Would you be in favor of them?

I would say the committee is open to being flexible with increasing Reallocating with their allocations. And so I would say that's the position of the committee is that they want to be able to continue to give 50% to affordable housing and have some consideration around the 10% reserves each year.

So, with the affordable housing you mentioned might not be for home ownership but it could be used Rentals, is that accurate?

Yes. Currently our CPA funds are used to create new rental and home ownership units as well as supporting two housing programs

So if we designate and support more of this money for housing, it also means we're not putting more of that money into open space and historic preservation. Is that fair to say? That is a fair statement. Okay, what impact would that have on on parks open space? And I say that they Dean is in Chinatown where I represent We actually have the smallest public park in the city. And we have very, very limited open space. But we also know that There are other opportunities for parks to be upgraded or historic preservation, but basically would that have a negative impact on planning or supporting parks open space

Yes, I would say that if there's not enough funding, if a larger pool of funds goes towards a different category it is going to impact The other two categories. And so, yes it could potentially affect the other two category we will not be able to fund the same amount of projects and again it is a very competitive funding round CPA, and so there's always a challenge with the committee to be able to allocate funding to all the projects that come before us.

Oftentimes if a city or state wants to support a development project with funds so it can get off the ground, they often use the term, it needs to be shovel-ready. So project needs to be shovel ready before the city will support it or the state will support. But how would we know for the competitive process that a project is shovel-ready before decision is made at CPA to fund a particular housing project. If it's not shovel ready, do we still support the project knowing eventually it will be shovel ready or maybe it won't be?

Yeah, I think for under affordable housing with the joint RFP we have with the Mayor's Office of Housing usually developers have to respond to what's in the RFP. They usually have to have Their team and land and everything kind of prepared and ready to go, and their numbers in order to be able to build an understanding the additional funds that they need to create the affordable housing that they're trying to build. And so we do understand for affordable housing, it does take a longer time for projects to be built. So under CPA, affordable housing projects are given five years to spend funding because they need additional funding sources in order to pull together all the funding they need to build a larger development. And so when someone is responding to the joint RFP, there is a lot of things they have to have done it in place

If this recommendation was implemented, and I do have incredible respect for the board that makes the decisions on where the funding would go. But if this was to be implemented, does it take away any of the decision-making from the board or the commissioners, however we phrase it. In their decision on where this money would be allocated knowing that a higher percentage has to go affordable housing, and also let's reduce the open space in historic preservation.

The committee would have to have a detailed conversation around what they They are the decision makers in how they want to allocate CPA funds. As long as 10% is meeting all categories, they do have the flexibility to consider how much they want to give to what they want to the three categories after the 10%. So they do have the flexibility to allocate more than 50%, however, they do like the balanced approach in which they have now because they're just able to fund a lot of projects throughout the city of Boston.

Well, Mr. Chair, I just want to say again, I've worked with Adeen for nine years. She's done an excellent job She's an incredible city employee and I have a tremendous amount of respect for her and our team. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank You Councillor Flynn. I completely agree with that. Councillor Durkan the floor is yours

Thank you so much. I feel like I have to come to this hearing in game time mode because my community is very supportive of both affordable housing and supportive of open space and supportive of preservation. I mean, I feel strongly that having been part of the 74% of voters in Boston that supported this That the reason why this was so popular is because of that trio of things that are important to our city and and I know that we have a nine-member board that is charged with sort of appropriating these funds, and they've done an incredible job Not every single project that I've put my full-throated support behind has gotten funded, but I know it's done a lot of good. Just doing the math... affordable housing.

If we've given over $134 million to affordable housing through 66 projects, if you sort of divided that the average would be a two million dollar and many more. For historic preservation, if it's $62 million in 207 projects the average is You know, $70,000 and as big as millions of dollars. I think what that tells me, and I think I could do the same for open space but But that's not sort of what's been being talked about today. I think what that tells me is that we're getting a lot of bang for our buck on the historic preservation projects I know in my district they mostly focus on things that are visible to the streetscape.

So, you know, the facade, the windows, the dormer, You know, oftentimes waterproofing things that if not done quickly could end up causing a lot of other damage. That was a... That was an example from the Ruggles Baptist Church and Audubon Circle in my district that had some much needed repairs. And it really served the community. Historic preservation, I see a lot of folks here Jeff Gagne, thank you for your leadership on and I know see Rebecca Kemper. I see obviously our director of of Historic Preservation, Kathy Kotoridis and Elizabeth Sherva. Thank you for all the work that you do. I really believe as someone who cares deeply about both affordable housing and making things get done in the city. And I'm a huge advocate for housing. and a huge advocate for historic preservation that these are just not two priorities that we should pit against each other.

I think the Community Preservation Act is popular because of that triad of things that people care deeply about and I do understand exactly where we're coming from here but in terms of the um when i think about uh I think that we need to go back to the state and I think this is something that I could work with a lead sponsor on. and sort of build a coalition behind really advocating at the State House for there to be more money available for CPA and like not necessarily Not necessarily saying can we change the percentage, but can we changed the amount of total funding available? And I think that's something that we can lobby for. I actually, a lot of people don't know this but I actually met the former Councilor Kenzie Bock. We became friends because of the CPA ballot initiative

and she was not yet a councilor, and she wanted to get a meeting with Councilor Michelle Wu on this issue. And I got her the meeting, and the rest is history. So anyways, so I think it's interesting My personal experience with this ballot initiative and being an activist in the community specifically for historic preservation and affordable housing and open space. I'll just say that I think Boston and Thaydeen, you being a part of this have handled this great responsibility with a lot of nuance. And we've gotten a lot things done and other communities around the state are using this to buy up open space so that affordable housing is not built. We haven't been doing that. We haven t nimbified our CPA funding, and I think that's to our benefit.

But I do think these conversations need to happen out in the open so I want to thank the lead sponsor for and many more. Thank you for putting this forward because the amount of e-mails I have gotten about, they are all people who haven't reached out to me before who just heard that this might be a proposal that I believe that these three priorities should continue to be priorities in this, in these tranches of money. And I just want to say I think You know, 207 projects and $62 million. I think that we've been great stewards of this resource The one question that I have that is incredibly important to our district is How do you register the connection between a project or building and the connection that that building or project has with the community? Because oftentimes I see certain projects funded, it's a beautiful building. It needs special care.

But then I see other buildings that they've already received CPA funding, and when they come back in, they're less likely to receive funding even though that one building or community space is incredibly important to the community. So I'd just like to advocate for There to be some weight given to the significance of the community. And then also, I just want to know how that is handled in 9-person board that currently exists that's making these decisions.

Sure, so a lot of the projects that come in for under historic preservation If they've been funded before, there is a public benefit section within the application that they do have to answer and respond to. We also know that there are projects that are coming back for a multi-phase approach We as a staff, we think about this and we present it to the committee. When we can fund a project and get multiple scopes of work done and get it out of our pipeline that's a project that is completed and does not need to come back and then we can focus on helping other historic preservation projects within the community. It also determines the need, the kind of injury harm or destruction that may be happening to the building And so we may have funded a project and it covered one scope of work that's covering one significant injury, that's causing injury and harm to the building. But there may be other factors and things that are still continuing to harm that building.

And we are helping that building restore and preserve itself Good Stewards so they can start to protect their building and not have to rely on funding, but they can rely on their ongoing maintenance plan that they may have. It is a difficult decision between the selection process of projects that come within in the historic preservation category because it is the largest request of projects But there is a strategy in us trying to help really long-term buildings that have long term disrepair. also trying to, you know, help the needs of those newer projects that are coming in.

Chair, could I just bring up quickly one example? And not a question here, but— Very quickly. Yeah, so we have Hill House in our district that basically is our community center. We don't have a community center, we don't So that is an old firehouse that was actually purchased from the city of Boston, and it was an old historic and a city building. I'll just bring up that example as like that community space has way more Thank you for joining us. I'm grateful to the nine-member body that makes these difficult and hard decisions, and thank you for your work. Thank you.

And if I could just respond to the, so Hill House we have funded twice. And I do want to say a lot of the church buildings were not just funding them because they're churches. They also have to provide a public benefit. So they can either be doing food drives holding AA meetings having community spaces, having a significant amount of public resources that they give to the community. So that is a public benefit and impact that the committee requires to understand what is happening in these historical spaces It does have to provide a larger public benefit. Thank you.

Thank You Okay up next we have Councilor Fitzgerald

Thank you, Chair. Nadine, thank you for being here today. How are you?

Good. How were you?

You've done a great job answering the questions so some things I have learned but just a couple other questions. We could use 100% of CPA towards affordable housing given that we need so much, right? But I do appreciate you keeping the breakdown as is because I think a lot of the preservation and open space projects that have gone forward and still need to go forward in the future are important. So I appreciate leaving that wiggle room of that extra 10% to decide where we want to add more given whatever time we're at, you know, whatever the issue may be. The 100% AMI. So it's for the projects, the affordable housing piece goes for projects up to 100% AMI?

Yes, under the statute, up to a hundred percent AMI and below.

AMI can differ, right? Depending on the area that you're in. It is the area median income. Can we get more projects done in areas that have a lower AMI if we're up to... On average, if that area has a lower project, could we get more done in communities of need? Are you able to do more projects or fund more units Based on that, or if there is one where the 100% of the AMI might be higher than another part of the city, you know, the money doesn't go as far. Have we run into that issue at all?

So I'm not an expert on AMI, so I'm just going to note that. I would say that it depends on the developers that are coming in and responding to the joint RFP and what their model is in their funding model that they're presenting to MOH and the CPA. So I think it all depends on what the developer's bringing, how many units they're thinking that they can build and how much money that they're going to get. And I think that drives what the AMI level can potentially be in that housing development. I think that's the most I can answer for that question. Yeah, that's fine.

Because I would need more. That's perfect. When you look at which projects to fund in the housing piece, does it fall? Is there any categories that you use to prioritize which projects might get it, as in like the more units we give more weight if it's a larger building that might produce more housing and therefore We'll look at that, maybe be a little bit closer than something that might just you know here's 10 to 15 units or something like that.

Sure the committee wants to support deeper affordability So they do want to help some of the projects, to help bring down the AMI levels to 60%, 70%, 30% AMI. homeless set-aside units. They like those kind of projects and want to support those kinds of projects, and they'd like to support home ownership units and home ownership programs. So the committee does wanna support deeper affordability.

I notice in one of the bullet points here under the CPA affordable housing projects we talk about supporting veterans, seniors artists individuals experiencing homelessness like you just mentioned and the next bullet says it prioritizes local residents Are those two exclusive or is that the same? Like when we're looking at who we're supporting, and how do we define local resident when you guys look at the sheet and who we are trying to support.

Yeah, and I think I made that statement because the committee is trying to support deeper affordable units so folks don't have to leave their neighborhoods. And so that's the statement by saying local residents is really having folks be able to still stay in the neighborhood in which they grew up, to stay with their friends and family. And so the goal of saying that they want to have more deeper affordability is the goal that if units are more affordable, it's more likely that the residents within that neighborhood are able to stay because they're able to afford staying there.

So I guess what I'm asking is when it says, when I try to say like what is defining a local resident? Of course the idea is someone Thank you for watching.

Yes, yes. It's for all the projects that CPA funds are for all residents in all neighborhoods. We want folks to go to different parks From Charlestown to Dorchester, we want Dorchester residents to visit a Charleston park. We want Charleston residents to a Roxbury Park. So all of these spaces are kind of open for everyone to visit and that's the goal.

Great. And the last thing I'll mention, there's a church in my district, Seventh-day Adventist Church, Hispanic speaking. One round just closed, right? We just closed at the end of August. So if they're looking at potential CPA funds, what's the best thing I go back to tell them on next steps of what they can do, how to apply, etc. ?

Sure, they can reach out to our office. They can reach up to me and we're happy to talk to them a little bit more about the needs that they may have for the building and deciding what if their what they're asking for is the eligible scope and is there Project, Desert Building Historical and working with the Boston Landmark Commission. So they can reach out to me and we can answer a lot of questions.

Awesome I'll have them do that. Thank you so much as always for your time up here and your great answers. Chair thank you very much for the time as well.

Thank you, Councillor. Okay, I also just want to acknowledge that we've been joined by Councillor Ruth C. Louisen. Thank you for being here. Next, we're going to go with Councillor Bradent. Bradent, you have seven minutes.

Thank You and thank you Director Brown So good to see you and thank you for, you've been doing this for a while and your incredible leadership has paid off. I think you have a great team working with you. And I really do appreciate the conscientious attention to the details and trying to be I do share the sentiment that all of these categories are incredibly important. Historic preservation can actually involve preservation of housing as well, open space and recreational space. The one question I had is the 10% that's sort Discretionary portion of the funds, is it always just 10% and do we always distribute it or does it move?

It gives you some flexibility but how does that work?

Yes, so the 10% reserve usually because there's such a high demand to fund projects each funding round. The committee has historically have used it across Historic Preservation, and Open Space & Recreation to help fund those additional projects. There's I think one funding round where we may have had maybe $2,000 remaining out of, and I'm not too sure why we did But that 10% is usually being used.

Yeah, yeah And I'm sorry that there's no one here from the Mayor's Office of Housing a lot of my questions related to housing so I won't I won't impose on you to ask too many questions about that, but the Boston Acquisition Fund is it a standard block of money that's given every year or does it float as well?

No, so the acquisition fund was funded in two years and then there was a series of years several years where it did not come in for funding. So this is the first time and this FY27 funding round that the acquisition fund is coming back to CPA. We've only funded them twice, and I want to say it was in 2000 19, and 20-20. And they have not come back to us until now.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the moment where The ability to acquire for a non-profit or to support the acquisition of property and take it out of the speculative market There's a lot of those opportunities coming up now, so I'm pleased to see that they're coming back for that money this year. And then in terms of the one plus Boston, you know it seems CPA. I'm fully in support of it. I think it's an incredible program, like 1,000 first-time homeowners got an average of $22,693 for help with with down payment or buying down points in their mortgage. How successful do you think that's been, in terms of opening up home ownership opportunities for folks?

Oh, that's being transformational. That program has helped a lot of first-time homeowners that did not have the opportunity to be homeowners before helping to build generational wealth. that program is extremely successful.

I know we are approaching, we've just had the 250th Anniversary of the Revolution. We're heading towards the 400th birthday of the City of Boston in 2030. Are we having more strategic conversations or is this even a space to have those conversations about Targeting money for historic preservation as we approach this really momentous anniversary for the city.

I would say when we have not started to have any of those conversations, not with the committee, I think We're always looking at the projects that come before us with a critical need. But projects are welcome to come in for CPA funding and the committee is always open to support projects that are coming before them in the historic preservation category. But I can't say that we've had a detailed conversations around that strategic plan, around the 400th anniversary.

I know as the District Councillor for Alston Brighton, I'm always very sharp eye on our ability to get funds. I think part of it is I think that's reflective in the fact If it's a historic preservation project, perhaps I think that's the one that we maybe have the most difficulty making the case for. If it is a housing project or a green space and recreation one Parks Department and Mayor's Office of Housing are very involved in those conversations. Is there a way for small community organisations to get I know you do a great job with outreach, but is there more that we can do to help enable them to make better pitches for especially in the area of historic preservation for maybe smaller projects?

Yeah. As a team, I'm always thinking about that. How can we talk to more people? Whether it's even on a one-on-one basis, I know we do host these meet and greets and information sessions but really if folks have a project They think CPA funds may be eligible. Really coming and talking to us or asking us to come out We really want to have those conversations, because what we are learning and what we have learned is that a lot of folks who have historical buildings have no knowledge of how to maintain them. They don't know what a conditions assessment is. They may not know what they have needed They've been hiring a contractor to do particular work that's probably not suitable work, to support their building. So we're trying to educate them more about how CPA funds work and how our funds could be used to help them.

And so really wanting them to really reach out and come to us, so we can kind of have these conversations and so we could work with our other city partners to see if we can help them that's great.

I think that knowledge base about conditions assessments and things are so critical to understanding exactly what the needs are, and how much How much resources do we need to address the issue? In some positions like the Hill Memorial Church, which is going to be senior housing. It's also historic building. How do you navigate the space where A project will actually fit under two categories. Does that come up often?

Sure, yes. And if a project has funding in two categories we do ask them to split that out and so they would have to apply for the affordable housing category, and they will have to applied for the historic preservation category just because we have to really think about the funding in each of those categories and we have to really define the scope of work. And there have been projects that have received affordable housing in open space and recreation, we have a few projects that has done that and have received funding in the same funding round.

Okay, wonderful thank you so much and thank you for your work I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to Councilor Arrau for this filing and to everyone for being here. Thank you, Dean, for just your work, I'm just grateful for your leadership in the city. I have a few questions, and I guess I had a comment earlier. Anyone can confirm with me later, but there was a previous question from a colleague about AMI funding and about AMIs, the area median income. And could you vary across the city subject? The AMI is regional. I'm looking at some of my developer friends, same AMI throughout the city of Boston. So it's not as though you could do something for the back bay or you can do something different

Dorchester. It's one standardized AMI, which is a cause of oftentimes concern when people are like affordable for who? My understanding that, that's a set by federal law and an issue. But one of the things that you can do even though if it's 100% AMI in the Back Bay means the same as 100% in Dorchester is you could adjust, you could deepen affordability. And I would like to see that because some of the projects that I have been sitting in our meetings, especially with folks in the room people have been looking for deeper affordability because 100% AMI, if I remember the number is like somewhere between 92 and 115. And for a lot of black and brown residents they're not hitting that. So I do want us to explore and want to encourage deeper affordability because it's how we make sure that one of the ways that we can prevent displacement, one of ways that people aren't saying none of these buildings are happening for us. Whatever, both whatever we can do for that is important. And my understanding is that the city of Boston compared to

I mean, probably with the exception of a few in the report. It was that Cambridge spends a larger percentage on affordable housing compared to Most other municipalities and localities, our percentage that we spend on housing, on affordable housing is higher than most. Is that correct? I would say yes. By significant amounts by a little like where do we stand in juxtaposition to how other And how many other municipalities have adopted CPA?

I want to say there's over 100 cities and towns that have adopted CPA. I don't know the exact number of what other communities are doing. For Cambridge, I do know they use a significant amount and I want to say for Boston, we're using a significant amount of funding I do want to say a lot of the other cities and towns are using it for historic preservation and acquisition of land.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a city councilor in Boston not those other towns but I think that's also Part of the problem, like we see resistance whether it's MBTA communities or to whatever There's a way to steer them to building more affordable housing. I'd love it for us to think about how we get more revenue to do the work of deepening affordability, because I also know that there are a number of projects whether it be historic preservation oftentimes A lot of projects that would otherwise, you know I heard Councilor Durkan talk about oh well they could Churches or whatever they may be able to fundraise for this money, but there are a lot that actually can't. They don't have the capacity. They're already doing so much and we know that this has been Very helpful for them. I have two other questions, and I have three minutes and 30 seconds left One is a few weeks ago, the chair, Chair Pepén before this body there was a reallocation I believe it was to next year for CPA money that had gone unspent.

Can you talk about The situation, the scenarios in which there's money remaining at the end of a CPA fiscal year.

Sure yes so there were seven million that was brought back before the committee and that number was significantly larger as well because We had a pool of funds from the Boston Open Space Acquisition Fund. They were returning some funds in order to reapply for these funds and FY27 to make it one single grant. And so that 2 million number in that 7 million was a chunk of that from that open space fund, but a lot of the other reverted funds are for projects that are completed under budget A lot of projects that we fund are completed under budget and those funds, they're under the law. Those funds need to come back to CPA. And within that number there are some affordable housing projects that did need to withdraw and those finds are also reallocated back to So it's a combination of projects that could not move forward, and they are returning their entire funds. And funding for projects that were completed

but they didn't need all the funds that they were awarded and now it's reallocated back into the pot of funds.

Thank you, is there a particular type or project that you tend to see underfunded? Like not underfunded sorry, that comes under budget?

It's a variety of reasons. It could be open space, it could be a housing project. Yes, I would say it's less for housing. We've had some housing projects that have come in under budget but it's very rare that it happens. It's mostly happening in open space and recreation projects and historic preservation projects where the funds are just completed under budget. And then the larger million dollar number may be for a project within affordable housing that could not move forward.

On average, how much have you seen returned?

On average, so this is the highest year because we didn't get to revert the previous year. I think it varies. It varies. And when was CPA enacted again? Was it 2017? So the ballot initiatives was in 2016 and then 2017. That's when the city started to collect.

Okay, and so we have nine years of data basically.

Nine years. We have successfully completed nine funding rounds going into our 10th

Thank you, and when you look at the neighborhoods that haven't received CPA funding for affordable housing Do you have reasons why? Do you ever encourage projects in certain neighborhoods as a way, right? So we talked about how there are other towns and cities that are prioritizing historic preservation. Over the other, over open space or let's say at least over affordable housing and we're saying you know I'm saying they need to be more building more affordable housing but when we look in our city and we look The affordable housing is built sometimes more in certain neighborhoods than others like let's say Roxbury or Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain. Are we doing anything to encourage the creation through CPA, the creation or the support of affordable housing projects in neighborhoods that have lower rates of affordable

Yeah, I think we're always working with the mayor's office of housing to see more projects in other neighborhoods. I know we've funded some projects in West Roxbury and the Fenway Kenmore area there was a project that we fund it so yes We're always trying to look and support those projects that we do see come in. that respond to the RFP. And so it's really depending on who responds to the RP and what neighborhood they're building in, but again, in our kind of community engagement going out to the community Yes, we're always looking to create more affordable housing through all neighborhoods within the city of Boston because it is needed. Thank you. Those are my questions, Chair.

Thank You, Councillor. I'll just give myself some time. I want to just echo everyone's sentiments of appreciation for the work that you do. I remember that earlier this year, As both the chair of the Community Preservation Committee and the Chair of the Housing Committee, I was able to be at an event where we were looking at the housing projects that were getting some of them. I believe all of them were getting CPA funding. And what was beautiful to see was the diverse type of projects that were getting funded and across the city, not just in one or specific region of the city. And I was really encouraging to see that that's the work in regards to your housing portion of the affordable housing portion or your funds. But I also know that one It was a Benebrith project, I think in my district.

They were one of the ones that had to pull out wage because they didn't get another grant so now they have to reapply next year So I understand also the difficulties that a lot of these developers deal with to try to build affordable housing in our city. It's not easy. They don't just rely on CPA grants, they depend on state grants and other grants across across the platform. But I also just want to give kudos to someone that's in the room, Frank O'Brien who worked on The Reading Room Project in my district of Readville And I bring that one up because it's a good example of a historic preservation project in my district. which is why I am a big fan of also historic preservation and open space. Previous colleagues said that, I do like the way you balance it out because all three are very important. I've been able to see new playgrounds be built

In my district, because of your CPA grants, obviously a reading room was able to be restored. And now who knows what else is going to be able to come into my district that I know are going to apply for next year's grant? I wanted to ask you a question regarding the potential connection of historic preservation and housing in general. Has there ever been projects where someone applies for historic preservation of existing housing that could be affordable? Just trying to see an overlap of both categories.

Sure, that's a really good question so under the statute and we state this in our kind of community engagement process It states that CPA funds is not allowed to be used for, to rehab housing unless it was originally built with CPA funds. So a lot of the projects that are in the pipeline right now that we are building, 10-15 years from now they can reapply for CPA funds because we helped build some of those units within those affordable housing. But we are not allowed to really use CPA funds to rehab and other existing housing. And it's also hard to support Housing, Rehab Housing in particular historic preservation buildings because we don't know the AMI levels. And under CPA, we should be supporting housing up to 100% AMI

and some of these historical buildings that may have housing, their AMI levels could be extremely higher. And so then we are now supporting housing that is above 100% AMI. And under the legal guidance that we were given We are not really taking those projects into consideration just because of how nuanced it is, and we might not be following the statute properly. So if there is a historical preservation building and it's an empty building and wants to be rehabbed, yes. CPA funds could help with the exterior parts of that building. But we also, and then housing could potentially go in there. So we just need to understand all the criteria around the project that's coming before us to ensure that we're not breaking any of the legal We are guided by Chapter 44B, and we are given legal guidance on how to use these funds

So we have to ensure that we're kind of following these guidelines correctly.

I appreciate that. And I appreciate the breakdown, which is why I always go to you for the guidance and the questions that I get from people that want to apply. I do wanna ask you, is the application now open for next year's grant?

So we are currently waiting for applications to come in for FY27, but the FY28 eligibility determination form will be released the second week in November.

Perfect and I look forward to helping you spread the word.

Thank you.

Okay, that is it for me for questions. Do any of my colleagues have follow-up questions? I see Councilor Worrell has a few. I'm gonna give you guys five minutes and then for the guests that are here, I'm actually going to do public testimony in between. So not at the end. I'm going to give you a chance to give your public testimony right after this panel. Councilor Worrell, the floor is yours.

Thank you chair again thank you executive director Brown in 2020 this is based off the Boston Municipal Resource Bureau report the housing percentage went up to 67%. Can you talk to me, why did we decide to go to 67% at that time? In 2020? In 2020. Housing percent in the CPA expenditures was 67.9%. And this is according to the Boston Municipal Research Bureau report.

I would have to look at that report before I answer that question. Would I be able to get back to you on that? We gave 67% in 2020, so I would just need to look at those numbers.

Okay and then you said you gave money to the AOP Acquisition Fund in 2019-2020? If you could just submit to us through the chair what dollar amount that is, knowing that I believe in the past a lot of that came from ARPA. But ARPA now being dried up they will have to, I'm assuming look for additional revenue in order to fully fund that program which will then I'm assuming take away from the money that could then be awarded to developers for the creation of affordable housing. So, I just want to kind of get an idea of what pool of money we will now be playing with now that AOP will be All right, and then

So four million each year, okay. So it's about a third or fourth of currently what we allocate to housing? Correct. Okay, thanks. And then I guess one of the thoughts I had is that yes, all of the three categories are extremely important. I guess what this conversation centered around is when we see Funding for one of those categories being attacked, whether it's from the federal government with rental assistance and the attack on public housing. and then how do we support those individuals if they were to be kicked out of public housing or their rental assistance was removed How do we go and support those individuals? We have to find revenue in order to do so. When Commonwealth Builders is not fully funded at the levels

Where do we find the funding in order to help the creation of that affordable housing, especially when it's deeper affordability that just requires more subsidies? And then we see that public parks, those have the opportunity to get funded from the capital budget. And then question six, hopefully it passes. That's another conservation fund that should be stood up hopefully in the next year or two. So when we see the negative impacts I'm happening on affordable housing and especially affordable home ownership and deeply affordable housing. It's trying to see if there is a moment in time where we can Be flexible to respond to what's going on at the moment. Not saying one is more important than the other, We find ourselves in this situation right now.

How do we respond with the resources that we do have? So I just want to make sure kind of take a look at it from that framework as well knowing that we do have additional sources of funds to help the creation of parks and open space, and seeing if we can be a little bit flexible in our reallocations. And again this is done yearly right? The board has the ability to say this year, next year. We go back and maybe it's a two or three-year look back To kind of revisit what we can stand up in the meantime, whether a situation is approved. But if one category is suffering at the time, I think

We should have or explore the flexibility on how do we address those concerns and those attacks that category is going through. So just a statement, no real question but again Thank you for all your work, thank you for your advocacy. Thank you to your whole team and thank you to everyone that's here today. Thanks.

Thank You. And I want to say I agree with that framework and understand the need for that flexibility

Flynn.

Thank you, thank you Thaydean once again. The percentages that are outlined for housing for open space green space and for historic preservation. How was that, how originally was that determined?

It was determined with the first CPA committee. And at the time when we started our first funding round in 2018, The need of housing was big. And so they wanted to be able to support housing and understood that housing was a big need within the city and that allocation, and that discussion around the allocation was giving 50% to affordable housing and the 20% to the other categories, and then having that 10% reserve. So it was since the inception of the program when it started that discussion around allocating 50% to housing, understanding that it was the biggest need.

Thank you. And who has the ability to make a change to that percentage?

The nine-member committee can discuss adjusting the allocation at the beginning of each funding round.

Okay, but up until this point for the last nine years there really hasn't been any issues at all in terms of any problems with The current percentages, is that fair to say?

I would say that's a fair statement.

The reason I brought that up, I do think the CPA program is working well and I've followed it closely. I do want to acknowledge a couple of my former counselors, Councilor Flaherty and Councilor Andrea Campbell that were strong supporters of the CPA program But I do want to say, though, if something is working well, I don't necessarily want to make a change to it. And the reason I don' t want to We're going into a challenging economy and there's a lot of outside issues that does impact housing. And I won't list them, but I don't know if somehow This will negatively impact the CPA as we go forward.

We're not able to fund parks and green space, open space and historic preservation because we might be supporting housing that may or may not be built. I just don't want to put the residents in a position where money could be tied up, city money could because housing might not be ready. Is that a concern you might also share?

I think that is a concern that the committee may have, that advocates in other two category may have concerns around what that means for those projects, just because the coalition of advocates from all three categories was a big part and I understand the

The advocacy that housing activists would want to see this change because it would certainly increase the percentage. I respect that, but have we heard from The communities involved in parks and green space and open space and historic preservation, are they expressing the opposite point of view where they would like to see the current percentage remain the same?

Yes, I think everyone in all categories and advocate for all categories would like to see more and would like things to stay the same. So I think folks would like Do like the balance approach that we have right now for CPA. And I think at any given time, depending on if a project is not awarded or funding, folks do want to see Thank you so much for joining us. We see a quick turnaround with a lot of these projects being done.

And I have also noticed over the last nine years But there has been significant funding designated for CPA, specifically for housing where we actually went over the recommended increase Thank you very much. change the formula at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank You Councillor Flynn.

Okay with that Director Brown would you like to provide any closing remarks for your part of the panel?

Sure, I would just like to say thank you for the opportunity for me to share more information on what we do in the CPA office and the tough decisions that the committee has to make each year. We do understand the need for affordable housing and we do want to be able to help in all three categories. So I just thank you for giving me the opportunity to kind of share our process and what the committee is thinking

Thank you so much, Dr. Brown for all the work that you do and I look forward to working with you in the near future for this year's round. So thank you. Transition to do some public testimony. Again, when your name is called please come down to one of the two podiums and state your name, Please speak into the microphone and please keep your comments to two minutes. The first names that I see here are Jay Mecum, Catherine, Jeffrey, Rebecca, Mercy, Liz Luke, Addison and Orion. So Jay the mic is yours.

Good morning, folks. My name is Jay Mecham. I am the Senior Community Engagement Manager at Boston Harbor Now. Thank you so much Chair Pepén and to the members of the Council's Committee on the Community Preservation Act We're grateful for the opportunity to testify in this hearing exploring potential changes to the CPI. Boston Harbor now focuses on the whole harbor, connecting communities, the waterfront and islands around a shared vision. Safer from rising waters, more welcome to everyone and a driver of our region's health economy and quality of life. For the last 10 plus years, we have worked with the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, the National Park Service, and the MA Department of Conservation & Recreate to improve resilience across our parks and open spaces to provide better access for our neighbors who've been cut off from these spaces. Through our work, we have seen firsthand that CPA funding is a critical tool for supporting open spaces and parks and advancing climate resilience in key locations.

From marsh upgrades to food forests and accessible playgrounds, CPA funding is one of the few ways that Boston Parks & Recreation Department and other organizations can make key investments in public parks. Decreasing the funding would be a large setback as the city works to provide world-class public parks and recreation spaces. While the City and State clearly need more public housing, our park systems are already deeply underfunded Decreasing funding for open space could jeopardize the health benefits that result from providing excellent outdoor spaces for our residents and guests. Diverting funding from parks could also stymie critical advancements on resilient projects that can afford no delays. We've spent the last six years is doing in-depth community engagement around Mowgli Park with the city and dozens of community partners. Speaking with thousands of folks has only confirmed what the research already shows, that parks and open spaces are critical for the mental and physical health of communities Boston Harbor now does not support decreasing CPA funding away from the open space and recreation towards affordable housing.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Catherine Davis Wheeler.

Good afternoon. Hello, Councillors. My name is Catherine Davis Wheeler and I represent the Boston Preservation Alliance. which is the city's primary nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and promoting Boston's historic buildings, places, and landscapes. Today I'm here to express our concern that the City Council Committee on the Community Preservation Act is considering changing the allocation of CPA funds to Boston organizations. Any discussion about changing funding allocation without raising the total amount of CPA funds introduces the reduction of funding for historic preservation and or open space in recreation projects. CPI funds are the only source of public funding directly available to Bostonians that support brick and mortar historic preservation. They empower communities to maintain affordable housing, such as when CPA funds were used at Beacon House and Beacon Hill. Preserve places of worship like the 12th Baptist Church in Roxbury

support the restoration of schools including Brea, SDA Academy and Mattapan. This is only a small selection of successful preservation projects especially in the neighborhoods represented by many in this committee. Despite the successes, the program remains highly competitive and applicants are often forced to delay or abandon much needed work in their communities. That short for all harms the places where Bostonians have gathered, learned, worshipped, and received care for generations. Dollar for dollar, CPA grants have a larger impact on historic preservation efforts in Boston than on affordable housing production. In 2024, fellows at the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics estimated that the cost per single unit of large public housing projects averaged $677,000. In comparison, the average proposed grant amount awarded to historic preservation projects in the financial year 26 CPA round was $354,000.

Simply put, these funds are more limited, harder to come by and more consequential to Bostonians' historic preservation efforts. I have just a few more things. Nationally, the National Historic Preservation Act and Section 106 are at risk. This has threatened the loss of significant resources in cultural landscapes across the United States. It is more important now than ever that we use our local power to protect our irreplaceable cultural resources and assets. In Boston, preservation supports citywide sustainability and housing goals as well as making communities more stable, inclusive thoughtful places. It's what makes Boston better for all of us. The Alliance respectfully requests that the committee table any conversation discussing reduction in CPA funding for historic preservation projects. Thank you so much.

Next, Jeffrey.

Hi there. Jeffrey Gagno from Dorchester. Apologies in advance, my statement is going to run a little bit long. I've been cutting out sentences here and there since I learned the two-minute I'm a fast reader. My name is Jeffrey Gonio, I've lived in Dorchester for 29 years primarily in the Ashmont Peabody Square area and have been active in community organizations and initiatives for nearly three decades. I was a founding board member of the Greater Ashmont Main Street serving for 20 years, and I currently serve as a board member and the vice president of the Dorchester Historical Society. 23 years ago, I mobilized community support for the restoration of the historic Peabody Square street clock a Boston landmark. I have hand wound that clock every day or every week ever since and since 2018, I've served as a commissioner on the Boston Landmarks Commission. Professionally, I have been historic preservation consultant since 2013 focusing on preservation planning community engagement fundraising and product management for nonprofit organizations Religious congregations and municipalities.

In 2015, I joined Preservation Massachusetts the statewide preservation advocacy organization as its Eastern Massachusetts field services representative Today, I speak in a personal capacity drawing on my firsthand experience with the benefits of Boston's Community Preservation Act historic preservation grants Since the first grants were awarded in 2018. Since then, I have worked with 10 community-based organizations to secure and administer 22 CPA historic preservation grants benefiting six Boston neighborhoods, the Back Bay, Brighton, Central Business District, Dorchester, Fenway and Roxbury. Based on that experience I would like to make five very brief points about the significant value these grants provide to Boston, its residents and the community organizations that depend on safe well maintained spaces to deliver essential services. Point number one CPA historic preservation grants have been a game changer for historic preservation.

Before Boston adopted the CPA in 2017, only a handful of city regional and statewide funders provided meaningful support for quality historic preservation work. Organizations responsible for large, complex legacy buildings often had no choice but to defer costly maintenance resulting in decades, sometimes generations of underinvestment. The need for historic preservation funding has long been substantial and undermet, and CPA has finally provided a source of funding to help address that need even if the work takes several grant rounds to complete. Reducing the current pool of CPA historic preservation funding would represent a major setback to addressing this need. My second point, historic preservation grants are driven directly by communities. After attending dozens of CPA hearings over the past nine years, I have observed a clear distinction among projects funded in the program's three funding categories of affordable housing, open space and historic preservation. The pipeline of affordable housing and open space projects frequently involves or is driven by city departments, agencies, and staff directly.

The slate of historic preservation projects that are represented for consideration in any given round, by contrast, are distinctly more independently driven or grassroots, reflecting the real-time priorities of the community organizations that apply. As city councilors, I hope you would see that this high level of direct constituent participation is a strength of the program especially in Dorchester and Roxbury historically underserved neighborhoods that have benefited substantially from CPA historic preservation grants for community-based projects. My third point. For many historic preservation projects, CPA funding makes the difference between a project happening and not happening. Anyone who has examined a typical affordable housing projects pro forma knows how many funding sources of various types from federal, state, city and private entities may be needed to make it work. 10, 12, 15, 20 or even more sources. In my experience a typical CPA historic preservation project has one primary funding source its CPA grant An organization may contribute internal building funds if it has them, or secure smaller grants from other public or private sources.

But those other grants are typically only worth tens of thousands of dollars as compared to a CPA grant of $500,000 or more. With CPA funding, without CPA funding and with so few other alternatives many of these preservation projects simply cannot proceed. They will die. reducing the pool of historic preservation funding by 60% down from the current 25%, to the minimum program requirement of 10% will likely kill 60% of all eligible CPA historic preservation projects. decreasing the portfolio from about 25 projects per year down to 10.

My fourth point, historic preservation grants- Jeff can you please go to the end?

Yes I will go to them. So quickly, Historic Preservation Grants protect essential community service, not just beautiful buildings. I think there's a misconception that this is about beautiful slate roofs and fancy copper work and aesthetics when in fact many of the organizations that own and are housed in these historic structures provide innumerable community services, often for free or reduced pricing if at any cost at all. So what would the city need to do to replace all the services that are happening in these historic buildings? I think CPA represents a great investment in helping these organizations provide those services. And then finally, CPA grants help strengthen the organizations that receive them. Thadine and her staff do amazing work about capacity building among organizations, For many of the organizations that I work with, they're volunteer-driven, faced with buildings that have five or 10 or $20 million worth of deferred maintenance on them. The beauty of CPA is that

Through the reporting and application process, CPA staff gives hands-on training essentially that builds the capacity of these organizations. Not only helps them deal with their buildings but also helps them do what they do to serve their communities even better. Finally, my main point is that rather than slicing and dicing the pie of CPA funds, why don't we make the pie bigger? Statutorily, we can adopt a surcharge of up to 3%, which would treble the amount of money made possible for all of the three activities. So as city councilors I hope that you might Think about that question. Rather than switching funds from one category to another, think about making the pie bigger to benefit all Bostonians. So thank you very much.

Thank you. OK. Next we have Rebecca, then we have Mercy. Thank you and please do try to keep it at two minutes just there's a lot of public testimony.

Absolutely, thank you. My name is Rebecca Kemper. I'm representing Historic Boston Incorporated located here in the downtown crossing and there are When it comes to historic preservation, it protects affordable housing naturally. So what we call Naturally Affordable Housing or NOAAs in research. It does this by two ways one through direct and it also does this by protecting the historic fabric around buildings in which people are residing that is affordable There's two pathways to this. It's incredibly meaningful. When we think about Boston's historic fabric, well over 50% is considered historic. These are buildings that need ongoing maintenance They need ongoing care. Sometimes those that are responsible for being stewards of these buildings do not have the means to do so, but they want to do what's right. CPA funds allows for that flexibility

I think the other aspect of this to keep in mind is we are a piece in affordability for Boston. And when it comes to preservation, we're under threat From a federal perspective, the number two paired federal funding with low-income tax credits or LIHTC was historic tax credits. The number one was new markets. This has changed. Historic tax credits now have to be taken advantage of after five years and not one. This makes it impossible for developers to do projects that are Citing, affordability and communities that need it the most in our historic buildings. So we too are facing very similar challenges and CPA funds allows for local funding to protect those spaces I think almost at time so thank you so much

Thank you. Mercy?

Good afternoon. My name is Mercy Robinson, I'm the executive director of Sal Basta en Acción. I want to begin by saying that I strongly support affordable housing However, I oppose changing the current Community Preservation Act funding allocation to increase a percentage dedicated to housing at the expense of other essential community investments. In South Boston, we work closely with residents of Maryland McCormick, Oak Colony and West Broadway. These families need stable affordable housing especially our younger generations preparing to leave home college students wondering whether they'll be able to afford a place of their own after graduation and young families who are under house and need more space. Many of these families live doubled up with parents or relatives, not necessarily by choice but because affordable housing is scarce. With low wage jobs and rising cost of living even full-time workers living paycheck to paycheck find moving into a home of their own nearly impossible. But housing is only part of the equation.

Our residents also need safe parks, recreational spaces, community gardens and places where families can gather. Whether it's attending a community event, taking a walk or even just stepping outside for fresh air. Affordable housing does not exist in isolation. The quality of life surrounding that housing matters just as much. Through our work at South Boston Acción, we have seen firsthand how investments in parks, open spaces and recreation support youth development, mental health, community wellness, and neighborhood stability. Sorry. Our community should not have to choose between affordable homes and healthy, safe, resilient neighborhoods. They deserve both. I respectfully ask the committee to maintain the current CPI location while exploring broader housing solutions that allow residents especially our younger generation, working families to remain in the communities they call home. Thank you.

Thank You. Liz Luke?

Hi, my name is Liz Kluse. I'm the Director of Engagement and Construction at the Boston Food Forest Coalition. I am here today on behalf of hundreds of neighbors across the city We're a small nonprofit with the Coalition of 15 Parks. And we work with community groups and associations in Mattapan, Dorchester, JP, Roslindale, Roxbury, Alston, East Boston, and many more. In my work, I see CPA open space dollars firsthand on the ground. I and my team we sit with neighbors around vacant lots and design parks together neighbors decide what to plant, where they will gather how kids will play there and what food they will harvest. And together our team we build These food forest parks for neighbors and we build them together.

And so, we're here to support open space for food forests and for parks and recreation as well. That's how Norrell Radcliffe came to life in District 4. Savin Hill and Hope Garden also in District 7, Edgewater and Ferry Hollow in District 5. Each one started as a vacant and neglected lot Each one manages stormwater, cools the block, grows food for neighbors to harvest. And they are run at low public cost and neighbors themselves care for these parks and we support them. Many are possible because we paired CPA dollars with land from Mayor's Office of Housing, a partner whose housing mission we fully support. Thank you Councilor Worrell, Councilor Culpepper for taking on the hard question how Boston replaces expiring ARPA dollars.

We support funding affordable housing and we believe Boston can do it without cutting open space. On a CPA pool of 47 million, dropping open space from 20 to 10 moves roughly 4.7 million a year that's a fraction of the 240 million ARPA gap What we're proposing is to move the 10% flexible share to housing and raising it from 50 to 60, and keep open space at 20%, I think we heard earlier. If it's working, let's continue on in the same way. Neighbors want homes they can afford and they want green spaces that are worth living next to and that they care for With this approach, Boston can have both. And I thank you for your time.

Thank you. No, okay. Orion?

Hello, my name is Orion Kriegman. I'm the Executive Director of the Boston Food Forest Coalition and thank you Councilor Pepén and Councilor Worrell for the opportunity to testify today Quick story is when we started the Food Forest Coalition, it was grassroots neighbors literally bringing plants from their own yard as dumpster diving cardboard to repair the soil. I started in Eggleston Square. I met hundreds of other neighbors and other parts of Boston doing this work, and we realized very quickly that we needed to incorporate a nonprofit community land trust in order to own the land and protect the good work we were doing. and it wasn't until nine years ago, CPA showed up with some real resources that allowed us to move into really building state of the art parks that we really deserve. With solar panels that allow for Rainwater capture and pumping irrigation through the parks, all the hardscape and everything that makes these spaces come alive.

And so that funding has really empowered us as community members, as neighbors to take care of these spaces and to shape the destiny of development in our communities. This work started with local leaders really trying to balance the needs of their neighborhoods, and understanding that there is an affordability crisis in Boston We absolutely need affordable housing and we also want the full quality of life in our communities. This is not just a concrete jungle and parking lot. And so we need it all. And I don't think these things need to be put in opposition to each other, absolutely. We want to continue to build parks and open space in Boston The next five to ten years are critical for that. Land is getting gobbled up, it is scarce if we don't put it now into open space it won't be here in 5-10 years to do for future generations so this This is a critical moment that will affect the character of the city for generations to come.

And we've really appreciated the partnership with the City of Boston, it's been a very strong partnership that's been allowing this work to happen and we hope you can Find ways to fund affordable housing without cutting funding to open space. Thank you.

Thank You. Is there anyone here that would like to testify and need to sign up? Frank, you're lucky I know your name. Sorry? I was just joking. I said, you are lucky to know your own name. You have two minutes, Frank.

Very quickly, Frank O'Brien. I live in Rosendale. These comments are on my own behalf. A few quick comments and Rowe is quite right in raising this issue. And if you look at the Municipal Research Bureau's report, the CPA recommendation is one of multiple recommendations so looking at it comprehensively would make sense. The CPA is really the people's budget. Sadine does an amazing, her team, Ms. Brown and her team do an amazing job of outreaching to the community in hearing from neighbors what they would like to see in their own community. We don't want to lose that. There are other sources of funding that we should tap into. Councilor Louijeune, for example at one point raised the idea of are we maximizing the city's borrowing capacity? I don't know if that's something you still want to carry forward, but we should look at the totality of our resources.

And certainly lastly forging effective relationships on Beacon Hill is an absolute must and so working together we can really solve it make some real progress at a challenging time for the city in the country thank you.

Thank You Frank okay That is all. I'm now going to move forward with the next panel. The next panel would be Adler, Bernadine then we have Daniela Zanjira, Donald Alexis, Hilary Heiser, she's virtual and Steve Povtac. If you could please take your seat here in the front. And if there's anyone for virtual public testimony, I do apologize, but we will take your testimony right after this panel concludes their presentation.

Perfect. Do we have Hillary virtually? All right, gentlemen it's good to see you. Thank you for being here. What we're going to do is kind of have you introduce yourselves, provide your name, what organization you're representing or any capacity that you may be here in. And then if you have a presentation that you'd like to give or any opening remarks You can then proceed to do that, and then we'll do a Q&A with my colleagues. Does that sound good? Sounds good. Perfect. Donald, start with you, man.

Hello, good afternoon. My name is Donald Alexis and I want to thank Mr. Chair Pepén and Councilor Worrell and the members committee for having me here today to speak before you. So my name is Donald Alexis, and I'm president of Caribbean Integration Community Development, so it's social justice has an organization based in Marapan, and I'm honored to be in front of you today.

Sorry, Ryan. I'm overriding you. I feel like I need to manifest Councilor Mejia being in her seat here. My name is Steve Poftak. I am the president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau I'm also a resident of District 5, which I have in common with the chair. I'm appreciative of the committee's invitation. Thank you.

Hi, good morning. My name is Adler Bernadin. Co-owner of North Fork Design and Construction. We are a land development firm and construction management firm, we do a lot of work in Boston area, predominantly in Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury building affordable housing. We've been working very closely with the city in terms of building affordable houses. It's at the core of our mission We have a long pipeline of affordable housing projects that are either in construction or pre-development, ready for production. and we're very fortunate to have received funding from the CPA program, both for our affordable housing deals as well as open space. and we have a great project that's currently underway that's utilizing CPA funding for both.

That's great, thank you. Do you have a presentation or anything that you want to provide before we go into Q&A?

Yeah, I can provide one. Again we do a lot of affordable housing with the City of Boston. Currently we've delivered 27 affordable housing homes. 7 units of affordable housing that's currently under construction, 75 units that's in pre-construction. So roughly 160 units that we're going to be developing and We need funding. So having this discussion on the CPA program is very timely and means a lot to us with what we're currently doing. in the city of Boston. One of the projects that I alluded to earlier, that we're working very closely with the CPA program is 3036 Mildred Ave

which consists of building six units of affordable housing as well as building a community garden right there in Mattapan. Not only that's going to be serving some of the residents that are in the area, but also The Mildred Ave K-8 school that is right across the street from it. And so far, that project has been going great and we're very appreciative of the CPA funding that we received for that project without those funding That project would not have been able to move forward. So in regards to building affordable housing and the current climate that we're in, Just so you know, just from last year alone there has been roughly 4% escalation in the construction market. which is high.

Typically you see 2% to 3%. So there is starting to be an even greater gap in terms of the affordability to build, period. And we're seeing pricing for homes roughly $290 to $400 a square foot for just construction costs. And as far as the US costs, overall we're seeing four and a half percent year over year. We're seeing a lot of escalation on lumber, on aluminum, on steel, critical items that We need to build affordable housing. So a subsidy award size two years ago no longer closed the gap today, approved projects are arriving at a closing shortfall based on the amount of escalation that we're experiencing in the market.

And on a human level and for families that actually need affordable housing, we're seeing just based on a study Dunbar, The Boston Foundation. Only one in seven Greater Boston renters can afford a starter home in this climate right now. The income need rose from about $98,000 to 160,000 in 2025. That's a huge, huge jump in terms of what a family would need to actually buy a starter home. Boston permits have... We're seeing roughly 430 units approved in Q1 of 2026. It's on pace to the slowest year since 2010, so The escalation we're experiencing in the market is really playing a huge factor to that.

What's my ask? I'm very full support of increasing the dollars that go towards housing and affordable housing from the CPA fund. Raising the CPA housing goal from 50 to towards 80%, starting with the next round. Dedicate a meaningful share to affordable homeownership, to sustain projects similar to the Welcome Home Boston which has been very successful. Providing families opportunities to afford, afford to build generational wealth. Size per unit awards the current construction costs again there's a lot of escalation in the market So we definitely, some of the subsidies per unit that we typically use in the past it doesn't really

coincide with what the market is currently experiencing. So thank you for your time, I look forward to the conversation.

I also want to acknowledge that we've been joined by Hilary Pizer. She's virtual, so thank you so much for joining us, Hilary.

Okay, Donald? Let me just add a few things. I think we about have the same presentation, let me just ask you thing based on what Adler just said. Also, I'm very in favor of increasing the share of affordable housing for the CPA. But also let's acknowledge Boston It's a city with a lot of resources. And I hate that we have to paint Open Space, Historical against affordable housing because we need an ecosystem where everybody can thrive and that I include have nice open space and have spaces, either as church or or space that serve the community also.

We need all of that, so my ask would be as we're looking As we're having that conversation, it's a great conversation to have today so that give us say a listen. It's been going strong, but also there is some stuff we can change. And I would say emerging developer should be part of the solution because when You see the immediate result. So, carbon integration has benefited from two open space grants in Mattapan, Cody Village and Morton Station. You have a ribbon card and people come in, and people know exactly there's a sign that says CPA. People know exactly those were built by CPA. But for affordable housing you can take from from three years to five before those units have been built.

So you don't see the direct impact of CPA dollars in the housing side, so I think that's why If we can work more with emerging developers so that doing Smaller housing development, those get built faster. You get to see it like you know that create a better incentive to have that conversation so that would be my take on it but I do want favor to move it from 50% to 60%, but also have more emerging developers at the table to get those unions to build faster. Thank you.

Just very briefly, I note that the frame for this discussion is sort of this awkward pick-the-child you love best. And that's a tough space to be in. However, this body makes those types of prioritization decisions directly or indirectly at almost every meeting. A I reject the notion that that we can't make a change here because it's too hard. I would urge this body to think about what are the priorities? What are the most important I think there's a couple ways to think about this. We heard a lot about the volume of applications for the three different categories, I would also say the other way to think about it is from your time in the community, what is the greatest need?

And draw your own conclusions there. I had just wanted to add a little bit more data. Several of you have been kind enough to cite previous research, which I'm obviously grateful for. One, I want to be responsive to Councillor Worrell's question. Part of the reason there was such a high percentage of spending on affordable housing in FY20 was that there was a relatively low level of overall spending from the CPA. I'm still, not off the top of my head I don't know that it's reflective of a Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

of its Community Preservation Act funds on affordable housing. That's through 2025. 51.4% is obviously below the potential maximum of 80%, which is what Cambridge spends, and had Boston chosen to spend at that 80% level That would have resulted in additional $65.8 million going towards affordable housing, which is roughly a 56% increase over what was actually spent So I do encourage you to think this issue through carefully and understand that there are significant potential impacts of changing that funding allocation. Thank you, Chair. Thank you.

Hillary, can you hear me? Perfect. Would you like to have the opportunity to introduce yourself and provide any opening remarks?

Thank you so much and I appreciate your flexibility. We had some family issues come up at the last moment, so I appreciate the video link. Many of you know I am the Director of Organizing and Policy at MAHA, the Mass Affordable Homeownership Alliance in Dorchester. and we serve about 3,000 first-time homebuyers and homeowners every single year. 80% of them are below 80% AMI And that AMI, as we know is much broader than Boston. But even within Boston I would say that it's important to remember that the Black and Latino Median income is about half, a little bit less than half actually of median income for white households.

So when we look at how are we going to shrink the huge home ownership and wealth gaps in the city and across the state, Homeownership and access to homeownership is one of the most important vehicles for doing that. We are really appreciative of the CPC and the City Council's support of the One Plus Boston Mortgage Program. As Thadine Brown said, It has been a transformational program. I'm also, by the way, a fan of Thadine Brown and member of her fan club. We'd like to also make sure that we're level setting here on is that the One Plus Boston program has already been cut back due to scarcity of funds, particularly There are two areas.

It used to provide a two percentage point interest rate discount for home buyers whose household income was less than 80% of median. That is now 1% discount, On a $400,000 house which is kind of like a middle figure between some of the affordables and the market rate. It translates into about $245 a month in additional cost for those buyers under 80%. When One Plus Boston was originally contemplated, and it was a really great opportunity You know, interdisciplinary group that was trying to figure out what is the best most efficient way to get people into homes. We were thinking of how do we get it so that people can use this product to access the private homeownership market.

Now, the majority of people who use One Plus Boston in Boston are actually buying affordable units. So what it does is to Councilor Worrell's and Councilor Louijeune's point It opens up some of our affordable housing to people who are lower than the actual income limit. And again, that's crucial if you're trying to shrink the racial homeownership gap and you realize that those median incomes are different. So we would love to see that full One Plus Boston program restored, understanding that there is a crunch there. The other two categories that have been shrunk in One Plus Boston used to be if you were recently displaced from Boston. So, if you couldn't afford to rent there anymore and you went Down to the South Coast to rent, you could use One Plus Boston to come back to the city.

That's no longer the case. If you were say living in Brockton or Attleboro and working in the city, you used to be able to use the program. Now you can't. So, you know, we know that there's a massive shortage of funds for affordable homeownership both the One Plus Boston program and production. What I'm not an expert in is the needs related to green space and historic preservation. I can only tell you that we need more money for housing, in particular for homeownership. But I think there's a number of things that we can work on together. One is legislation is going to be filed in the new legislature to increase the state CPA match Gentlemen from Dorchester and Peabody Square Clock, FAME mentioned that. I think we should all be working when it used to be 100% match and the more communities have come in, the less the match has been as a percentage.

I don't want us to give up on the real estate transfer fee. That would go a huge way and we don't have unanimity on the Boston delegation around that and even on the council. So again, I think that is really, really progressive form of revenue. It applies only to multimillion dollar properties being transferred and I think we can be creative so that we are not undercutting new housing development as we're trying to make it more affordable. We're also seeing property tax relief for seniors, you know that was attached to that home rule petition. We need to get that through because we don't want to be losing homeowners at the back end while we're creating new ones and we need a more balanced state policy. We have a huge amount of capital funding for housing

and we have a $1.2 billion operating budget for housing. Capital side, we're spending 4% to 5% for homeownership On the operating side, we're spending 0.04% for homeownership, not even a tenth of a percent. So I think there's room to grow that and we need to be advocating with Secretary Matias, the governor and lieutenant governor. The last thing I will say is that when we're funding investments to better the quality of life for Boston residents, that could be in the form of new parks and playgrounds, improved transit or other amenities. We need to match that with a robust affordable housing strategy because without that, the new neighborhood amenities are going to attract higher income people and possibly increased property values, which increase property taxes.

So we will have these new amenities but they won't be for the people that were imagining them using those amenities now Though our neighborhoods will be more beautiful and accessible, but most of the people that Maha works with won't be here to enjoy the improvements. So we need to anchor people in families and homeownership is uniquely effective in promoting long-term stability, enabling families to build a nest head in Boston. So we need to think about it as a holistic piece Otherwise, again we get the displacement and we get a different city. So thank you again I really appreciate being able to share these observations from our little point of view. And we really look forward to restoring the full One Plus Boston program

and really making sure that as ARPA ends, and that's where most of the affordable units have come from that are home ownership. that we have a robust city policy and that we are all working together on state policy. Thank you so much.

Thank You Hillary Okay, now I'm gonna dive into the Q&A portion. And I'm going to start with Councilor Worrell and then Councilor Flynn, Councilor Louijeune and myself. Wuerl, you have seven minutes.

Thank You chair and thank you to the panelists that's here had a pleasure of working with everyone on the panel and have conversations around variety of things first I just want to

State, what is online around the current policy is around CPA. So there's 50% to housing

20% open space, and then another 20% to historic preservation. But there is a 10% flexible allocation that is there to be allocated based off of where the board sees the need. So, there is a 10% flexible allocation and again my advocacy is like When do we or how do we think about how we use that 10%? Or even, when do we as a board or city decide when we're flexible on the current allocation. But we could take a look at just this 10% flexible allocation, or think about how we distribute the already permanent allocations to 50 and 20. So just some thought there. The other thing that I thought about, I think it was last week or the week before we was over at Morton Street celebrating the Serenity Garden.

So open space and affordable housing is are two things that can happen at the same time. A lot of our developers and many more. And I think that's a great example of how businesses can create open spaces when they're creating affordable housing. Another example of that is the work around West on Norwell Street to create a new park on Washington Street for the neighborhood. So you do have this... You do have affordable housing, helping create Serenity Gardens open space and parks in our neighborhoods as well. And also when we look at the city's telling us and many more. We have a financial crunch. One of the things that we depend on when it comes to generating revenue is property tax, so

that would then give us the ability to find more of Parks, right? To give more grants to other categories that we're looking to fund. So I guess one of my questions, I'll ask a question now is when it comes The cost of housing and the creation of housing or as housing, I guess Hilary for you, when increased. How has funds towards subsidizing or towards programs like down payment assistance, are those Are they increasing the same amount as the cost or the costs of purchasing a home?

So the subsidies that you're receiving, have they increased the same amount over the years as the cost that it takes to construct a new home or to purchase a home in Hillary's case?

I would say No, not necessarily. Just from my experience working with the Mayor's Office of Housing it seems like it has been somewhat static in terms of subsidies per unit As cost escalation has continued increase, so us developers and contractors we have to think very creatively. in terms of fitting into that box of cost per unit. What I mean by that, when we're doing our... Doing a pro forma, I'm looking at how many units could I fit into that overall development to make sure the subsidies that the city is providing will be enough to actually fund that project. In some cases where the lot size is, there's constraints where there's only so many units you can build. Obviously, that development will not pencil out.

I think it becomes even more difficult now where the city and the state used to work very closely in terms of Again, subsidies that they're allocating from CPA and the state is using Commonwealth Builder Funds. Now that Commonwealth Builders funds have dried up Obviously, it's going to get even more difficult to look at how do you make sure some of these affordable housing deals pencil out.

Yeah. I think Adler is definitely correct. So right now, so one of our projects we just went to the city and the state, so they all capped out how much can you add into our subsidies? Even if you compare like three years ago, the number of subsidies you had available when you're working on your pro forma and today it's going down. And obviously construction costs, land cost, and the big thing is zoning you know when you get a land that's not approved yet, when you go into it what the neighborhood would like to see on the neighborhood you know and what can you Bill, that's feasible. That's a different conversation. So I think the developer has a lot of challenges and I would even go further say Small developers facing the brunt of it because they don't have limited credit.

They don't have capacity to raise equity, so a lot of time they depend on public subsidies to make good for them. So those are drying out. That's one of the reasons I'm wholeheartedly in favor of increasing CPA because I think a portion of it should be looking at deals that emerging developers are working on to help and those because if that doesn't happen today, you have a group of small developers that won't be able to close it until they'll be able do a transaction for the next few years. And those folks will get out of business so I think we have A little bit intentional about help support the whole Boston development ecosystem.

Hillary, do you want to respond?

I would just say that you asked also about the down payment side and that has also contracted with the elimination of ARPA funds or You know the end of ARPA funds and I totally agree that the city worked really hard to help new developers get into the business and build some of the homes in our neighborhoods. And so we don't want to lose that infrastructure in the process here.

And then one last question. Steve, you mentioned in your report around inclusionary zoning and linkage but then also stated talked about

The city should consider alternative funding sources and the importance of private housing production during times of slow start. Can you just share for the record

and for the public, why you believe that's important. And then also your thoughts around inclusionary zoning and linkage in how slow housing starts impacts Those two programs to create the affordable housing.

Sure, happy to I think and this actually ties back it's sort of a macro answer to the question to the previous question in that We have a series of subsidies for housing inclusionaries, for affordable housing. Inclusionary zoning and linkage are key parts of that Those programs are fundamentally pro-cyclical. When the residential market is producing housing, it is producing affordable units, it's producing funding from more affordable units. We're now in a We are now in the down part of that cycle. We are not producing a lot of residential units, and two of the big programs we have are not productive. And I think that is a broader policy question for us to grapple with, right? Do we want affordable housing funding to be so dependent on these pro-cyclical policies or do we wanna think in the longer term

about what are some things that might be countercyclical, that when we have a down market, we can still produce units. So I guess That was what we looked at. That was one of the conclusions of the report is that we have a real bias for these pro-cyclical programs, which work great when the market's going, don't work so great in the current moment we're in.

Thank you. Flynn.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank to the panelists for being here. My question is similar to Councilor Worrell's questioning. The City of Boston received significant money from ARPA for down payment for buying a home Whether it was a grant or was alone. But if we didn't have grants, and we had loans at a very, very low interest rate. Could that help the market? Could that helped the economy where

We're not giving something necessarily away free to people, but we are giving them a helping hand maybe with the very, very low interest rate and that money then would go back into the city's Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would say based on city policy, so let's just start at home. If you get... If you have city land and city money to build it. So the amount of money you pay for a two-bedroom, I don't remember the exact number but close enough, a two bedroom is $285,000 and then there's so much equity that person can accrue over the years. So because they want to make sure that you don't get like an affordable unit Home Ownership, and then you go ahead and we sell it at market. So I think that's a policy conversation. It could be possible but in this current The way the policy is written today, we have to run numbers and see if it's viable. But I would assume MOH has a lot of... Great staff there.

If you're something that's viable, they'll probably look at it. They will propose it already but I would say the green is what makes sense because you want to make sure like It costs you almost $600 to build. You're selling it for $285, so therefore there's a gap, so you have to make up for it.

So 600 to build one unit, basically?

I think... I think just to kind of piggyback on what he said, I think MOH probably would need to look at their policy in terms of how long the deed restriction is for some of these homes. There's only so much equity you could actually build into these homes based on the current MOH policies. If you are introducing a very low-interest loan where a property already has a deed restriction, where as a new homeowner you're not building any equity into that home I think it's worth MOH looking at these two things jointly to figure out, okay hey is there an opportunity here and many more.

much earlier timeframe with that restriction.

Okay, Steve? You know, I would just say generally you've asked to me a very interesting question. I don't have a pat yes or no answer to give to you. I would want to think carefully about a couple things. The deed restriction, obviously is key. You wouldn't want people utilizing a subsidized source of funding in a way that The intent here is to house people, not to allow them to speculate on real estate and that balance would be important. Are we lending to people who are going to be able to pay the loan back and who makes that decision and manages it? I think there's some important questions, but it's an interesting idea and one that I will give some thought to.

Let me ask one final question, whoever wants to answer it. With residential property taxes up significantly over the last several years Does that have an impact on building affordable housing, building housing in Boston at all?

I don't have a ready answer. You guys build, so defer to you. So I built the predominantly number of projects we've been building are

Homeownership projects, I would say no. It doesn't have an impact? It doesn' t have a huge impact on us but then again if you're doing a light tech deal or rental deal that I'm not quite sure what that impact might be.

Well then, so if someone was to receive a home for whatever way through the city maybe they bought it for $300,000. and their property taxes have gone up significantly over the last several years. Is that a concern? Well, you might be putting that family in a particular challenging spot to pay the property taxes. Maybe their salary is $70,000-$80,000 because they were able to get a loan or assistance because of that. Is that something that's a challenge?

Potentially, yeah, I would say if you guys want to chime in. Yeah, potentially, yeah. One, that family would probably have to run the numbers. And us, city and you guys probably would have to write the numbers in terms of a $300,000 home. How much is that individual paying in property taxes? also factor in the cost of living that has significantly gone up as well and seeing, okay is a family making X amount of dollars? Does that actually map out to

The goal is to keep that family in that house for as long as possible.

I cannot really answer because I built multifamily. So as part of affordable housing, we negotiate a tax I'll negotiate taxes with the city for 15 years, for 30 years. So like you know, I don't think I have a good handle on that answer.

I mean, I would say generally obviously when taxation levels goes up that challenges folks who have limited income. And as a residential taxpayer myself, I feel it when the cost goes up I would say the city has programs in place, residential exemption would be the first one that comes to mind to provide some level of relief I think that's a That's probably the best answer I can give. I fully agree and experience it personally that it is challenging when costs go up like that.

Thank you for taking my questions, Mr. Chair. Thank Thank you. Councilor Louijeune?

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to this esteemed panel for being here and for your comments. I guess I'll start with a question for you, Steve. That is a question that I asked Director Brown on the last panel, but it was about Cambridge. And I believe how Cambridge allocates 80% of their CPA funding towards affordable housing? Yes. and have they been doing that since the inception of their CPA?

I don't know that off the top my head, but I'm happy to track that down for you.

That's why I asked about the date because I think It was a leading question, but I think the answer is yes. And I think that's an important thing to note because Like we're saying it in many iterations, right? Once the community is like they know this is what it is and being adjusted from the beginning. And this is been from the begining and tweaking that to reduce what other groups, what other causes especially when I believe people see themselves in deep coalition with each other and not sort of competing with one another from the outset, The trade-offs and sort of making changes as to like from the very beginning those who have had, and I don't know if there are other cities. And if you do know please let me know other cities that have higher allocations than 50%. and whether they have that. So I think there's both a policy and a politics thing to consider as well. I also want to uplift what Hillary stated in terms of,

This is an important conversation. And I think someone said it prior, we are searching high and low for more funding. Frustrations of not being able to get that more funding then leads us to like how differently can we tranche this pie when we want a bigger pie? And there have been mechanisms for us to get Steele, and then we have a transfer fee with the transfer fee led here by former Councilor Janey, former Councilors Edwards, former and not just for the city of Boston, for other cities across. And even if we're talking about these shifts here comparatively to what the transfer fee could do for this city We're talking about shifts that would be like relatively maybe a few million dollars more, but when we could get from the transfer fee a minimum of $50 million from what the research has shown up to 100 million. A year in affordable housing, which would be transformative.

Which would do the work of I think I heard you, Donald Alexis. And I know I've been at meetings with you where people have seen the AMIs and like who would do does that serve? We need deeper AMIs. And you do that with more funding and more money so I mean, I'd love us to see us think about like in these moments and especially in the night. And especially this one was a federal challenge What are the ideas around generating more revenue to do this work? I mean, transfer fee was part of the conversation before COVID during COVID and continues afterwards. And many municipalities have been advancing either They're all legislation or a statewide bill that would allow for a local option. So I just don't want us to lose sight of the forest with a tree, whatever that saying is. I'm not good at them but we need bigger pies and Frank O'Brien mentioned, and we're still doing some work but the administration has taken some of that about sort of are we maximizing our borrowing capacity? And there's more work that we need to do there. But even when you look at how they're

You know, what we're doing in terms of debt service and how we're paying things back. I think it's an acknowledgement that we need to be... We need to think about how we are spending the money that we have while not giving up on how we create new paths of revenue. Sorry, I just wanted to put that out there because I think it's really important like we are at the end of the day having conversations about Like, how are we increasing the revenue that we're getting in? And there are options that are on the table. And I think just we need to be thoughtful about how we advocate for what's possible. I guess I have a question for Adler and Donald One of the things that was interesting from the former panel, I don't necessarily know if it... From some of the advocacy was like for parks and for open space and for historic preservation there are only these certain pots of money that they can get money from, which I believe is true because it's probably not the same level of sponsorship applications to support their work.

Whereas there are, even though some of the money has dried up, there are more sources of funding for affordable housing and just wanted Get your take on that argument. You could have LIHTC, you could have CPA. There are other forms of tax incentives for affordable housing. I mean, maybe it looks different now. I know that there are programs that have ended but there are just more sources of funding compared to people who are trying to do work in open space or in historic preservation.

Thank you for the question, Councilor Lujan. So what I would say yes might be more sources for affordable housing but also it's being in a city of Binay Massachussetts, the city of Boston. It is a very expensive place to build in terms outside factor that we don't control. Like construction cost is very expensive, land costs, you know, borrowing costs and All those make it extremely difficult for a developer. I do agree, like if I'm doing a park that's only one sources then I have more ways to use what I have. But here in the city of Boston, the city has their own As their own regulation with sustainability, and then when you go to the state they have their own regulations. So we're facing more

Yeah, that sort of wasn't even a good question because I know the answer is yes you all have multiple sources but it's a lot more expensive and it's harder and the money is drying up. So I just wanted to point out what I think was a relevant point that folks were making that they had fewer sources you have more sources but it's cyclical and funding is never certain and your projects are a lot more expensive absolutely yeah I think kind of hit the nail right on the head in terms of

How you started framing your question in terms of deep affordability. How do you achieve people affordability when cost to build is up here? You have to be able to fill the gap with subsidies, that's the only way Thank you for joining us.

Plus operating costs too, so like operating costs we don't even talk about it. It's costing almost $13,000 a year to run your unit, you know what I mean? Say 11 to 13, because I don't want to put a number out there and get people questioning. But it is very expensive to run every unit. Can I make two very small? One is...

I think Adler or someone up, I think it was Hillary as well. Welcome Home Boston, fantastic. Fantastic at building also a pipeline of developers of color who get these contracts and have been able to build up contracts and building bigger units. So I think it's awesome, and I do want to make sure that we have money going into that again, transfer fee and other mechanisms I think are important. And then for Donald and for Adler, where does CPA rank in terms of your dependency on funding for a project? Is it the first place? I mean, no. It can't be the first-place that you go. But is it ever a but for have you ever not been able to do a project because of CPA funding? Like, I'm just trying to understand sort of like the priority and I know that you're gonna say oh it's dire we need it but like I'm just trying to understand sort of where it stands for you and your the alphabet soup of financing that puts together your affordable housing project like where is CPA

I would say for me it's high up so again we build home ownership projects which is at the core of our mission and giving people opportunities to

The Dean mentioned it in her presentation where MOH reallocates certain funds to MOH and so on. So it's a big deal for us, especially now again I mentioned that mass housing funds, commonwealth builder funds have dried up. Now it's even harder right? If MOH doesn't have the subsidies to provide for deep affordability of 80% to 100% AMI, right now we have a project that we're building with MOH which we're doing 135% AMIs. without them providing any subsidies. But now for a family that cannot fit in those, that 135%, 150% AMI, that really is in the 60% AMIs

Now these people are being left out of that opportunity to own their own food. So it's a big deal.

Thank you.

Of course, thank you. I'll give myself some time. Wanted to ask Ashley about something that Councillor Louie-Jean brought up, which was this The city's CPAs possibility about the borrowing power that we may have. Stevie, I think you alluded it at the beginning of your speaking but What options do we have? How does that work? I'm actually not too familiar with that. Do other municipalities do that?

I'm not familiar with any other municipality that does. I think there's an implication that comes up, obviously if you could borrow against that stream of income and I'm speaking very hypothetically There becomes a timing issue, right? That sort of the decisions if one borrows against the stream of income over some period of years sort of this council at this moment in time or the CPC at that moment in times is making the investment decisions and they're potentially very large decisions. Is that, from a policy perspective, is that the outcome you want? Is that more equitable? then having sort of decisions that are made every year as the CPC and the council The city body politic evolves over time. Is it better to sort of let everyone make a series of smaller decisions or have the decisions made all at once? I think, you know, I don't have a one is better than the other answer.

I think in some cases... You know, in some certain policy areas, I would think more deeply. I know the Boston School Building Authority is going to come up Later in the calendar. I think that's one where you, I think a little bit differently about making a large series of Decisions and Investments, whereas I think with the CPA at first blush. I'm not sure that's the way to go but again, that's a policy discussion.

I appreciate that. I think it's just worth looking into as we are trying to see how do we increase funding for everything in the city, honestly. Question for Donald and I'm so sorry. Adler. Sorry, it's been a long morning. When it comes to grants and applying for grants, obviously the CPA is one of them that you heavily rely on. But I'm curious how many other opportunities are out there especially if with State grants, how complicated is it? I just want to get the perspective. I don't think of you know what to ask you two about this before. How complicated is that to get those grants? You want to start? I'll go in there.

Well, it is for us like our first application for funding we go to MOH. This is where you get Neighborhood Housing Trust Fund, you got CPA and you have inclusion zoning funds. All those that you put one application in. It is quite a bit of work to put the application in. And if you get funded for all LIHTC deals, then you go to Executive Office Housing Livable Communities, HLC. You go there also this one application, one big application for all the state resources and to get the federal 9% or 4% credit. It's where you go to two places, but the amount of work and investment... Just to take an example for you to go there, you spend probably roughly over $100

20,000 just to get into the funding round because you have to do Significant amount of work to show that your project is at a level that the city can say, hey you have a project. When you go to the state, you have to be almost ready to go because they want to fund you and then You spend a few years, even though when you get funded it still takes time to close. But you have to show that your project is ready to go.

OK. Yeah so I would echo what he says as far as like Homeownership projects, obviously the application process is pretty straightforward working with the city if you've done it before. As a new developer, it could be a little bit cumbersome and time-consuming to put it together. But to his point, applying for Light Tech is a completely different animal. and this is an area that my company is growing into to do light tech deals. And obviously there's specialty consultants, but that's not something we would take on our own to do that application and make sure we're positioning ourselves I'm always curious about permitting in general and

and the grant process, and everything that you guys go through. That in itself could take a while. And even just to be able to get the permits for your building, even if you get the grants, could delay your project from moving forward. So I always try to keep an eye on that. for giving me that perspective from your side.

And if I may ask, a lot of time part of the application is to show that your project or BPD approval or ZBA rejection It's like, you know that you're ready to go. So that process on its own also you have to be able to take on that process You know early on to get it done as you going because that's one of the question we have to answer If you're proposing 40 units, is it really 40 units? Because if we haven't get approval, you don't know what it is. So you might not be able to get funded at all.

Okay, that explains a lot of planning department projects that I've seen go through. Thank you for that. I appreciate the three of you for being here. That's it from me for questions. Do you want to ask Councilor Worrell if he has follow-up? Yes. I'm just going to give you time. All right, thank you.

I'll start with Hillary. How much would it cost to fully restore I think you said the one plus mortgage or all of your programs. You could give me a breakdown for each.

I can get you a more detailed answer but I think it's around the 10 million mark total for the Uh, just the straight up down payment of program. The one plus Boston but I would definitely get back to you with an exact breakdown of how much each thing would cost. It also depends, we've had a significant drop in the number of One Plus Boston borrowers this year so obviously The total spend is how much per borrower and then within that, how many borrowers are you funding? I'm told we had kind of a dip in the number of affordable homeownership units coming online in the past calendar year. and that some more of those ARPA units are going to be coming online. So I'll factor all that in when I get back to you.

Thank you. And I do get scared when I hear my affordable home ownership developer saying that he's moving to LIHTC, so it sounds like he is moving into rental housing And I wonder if that's because of the subsidies or the lack of funding. Are we incentivizing or disincentivizing The lack of funding makes it very, very difficult to build a

and many more. If there is no funding to fill in that gap between the cost of build, it's very difficult Say, hey, you're spending rough numbers. You're spending a million dollars to build and you're to sell the house at $400,000. You really cannot. and this is the very importance of subsidies. And giving these families an opportunity to, families that are being priced out out of some of these neighborhoods like Roxbury, Mattapan Dorchester, having these different subsidies in place it's critical. It's very critical because costs, construction cost is going up and we know inflation Everybody talks about putting food on the table, how inflation is impacting it.

It impacts us even more on the construction side because a lot of the commodities that we depend on prices are going up You talk about diesel fuel, it impacts commodities that we use to build. All across the board you hear tariffs We're dealing with it because there's certain materials and equipment that's being sourced out of this country that we need to actually build. You hear scarcity of land in the Boston area. That means cost to buy land is increasing, and it makes it even harder That layer of cake between land, hard costs and your miscellaneous soft cost to build a project. And not having those subsidies It makes a huge difference.

And as we're looking, I'll be quite honest with you, as we built our firm in the affordable homeownership space, me and my business partner Our background is commercial construction, but when we decided to start our business, we intentionally said let's start in the Home Ownership space. Because one, we wanted to make a difference. Two, we want to strategically scale our company and The city has been a great partner in helping us to scale our business, and we're very grateful of that. And we've made a huge impact on some of the families. numerous ribbon-cuttings with the mayor, with families that are moving in. So it's personal. I could tell you... I can speak so...

The biggest impact was the smallest thing that we didn't even really pay attention to. We had a ribbon cutting with family and the mayor asked, The daughter of the person that moved into the home. What's the thing that you love most about your home? And she said, the stairs. And we all looked puzzled. We looked at her like puzzles, she said to the stairs She's like, finally I live in a place where I could go up and down the stairs. I can go upstairs to my room and come down to my living area to eat. And we all stood there were like wow. It's the little things that you don't really think about that makes a huge impact in people's life, and we're grateful for that. We definitely don't want to transition to rental but we are also looking at how do Thank you for that.

Sorry, this is where I just need to say that the legislature has approved

Just in the two biggest housing capital programs, over $650 million that's for homeownership and rental. And the state since 2008 has spent all of that money on rental. So there are resources that could be available to maintain more of this balance. The Mayor has said she's committed to 20% of new affordable housing being homeownership housing but she needs that state partner and there's money already appropriated that could go into that. It hurts me too to hear about the LIHTC The LIHTC conversation, just not that we don't need affordable rentals. We're saying 80% affordable rentables but right now we're at 5% affordable homeownership and I think that there's a huge opportunity.

There's also more authorization there than there is in the capital plan, so the state could either up the amount of capital housing Funding overall and allocate additional to homeownership. If they really feel like they can't afford it, they should just give communities the ability to choose the amount of each rental and home ownership that they want instead of making the decision for the local communities.

Yeah, no and as everyone knows I am a big advocate for housing but also bigger advocate for home ownership just because of The stability I believe that it brings to a family on knowing you have a consistent and predictable housing payment every month. Hearing that the CPA board is also, that's their priority when they're investing into housing projects. However seeing and hearing that it's hard for How a developer is to even create it, it's not even being presented to the board right now. So I guess what my question is at what cost Would it be more feasible for you to create home ownership units? I know we're at $150,000 right now in subsidies per unit.

I'm not sure if you have this math already figured out, but would love to know what can get you back into the affordable home ownership conversation.

Yeah, no absolutely. Get back to you with the math. But it's also very important too, there's a lot of projects that are sitting in the pipeline That needs subsidies. So it's not only just the cost is competing for those scarcity dollars to build those units. I mean, just like I mentioned we have a long list of projects that is in pre-development right now, that's gonna need funding. And I'm pretty sure there's other developers just like me that's looking for funding as well, subsidy dollars.

And then when you're holding it and looking for subsidies The carrying cost increases, which I would assume increases the amount of subsidies you possibly would need to get it shovel-ready.

Oh absolutely so right now I could tell your real life story of that we have We have a 15-unit development that's slated for on Blue Hill Ave, 391 and 353 Blue Hill Av. It's sladed to be all home ownership project and we've been For lack of subsidy and cost escalation, we've been trying to figure out creatively how do we get this project to the closing table to actually build it. The market has shifted tremendously, and we were anticipating some subsidy dollars to come out of Commonwealth Builder Funds which essentially has dried up. and the city has a strict limit in terms of dollars per unit, subsidies that they're willing to allocate. So usually we would rely on Commonwealth Builder Funds to bridge that gap

and unfortunately, it's not available. So now we're trying to figure out creatively how do we actually get that project to close so we could actually build it with rising costs?

Yeah, and just two more questions and I see Councilor Culpepper's here.

Or maybe just one, then a comment. Steve... Can you talk to me about federal funding and how you view it affecting Boston's affordable housing creation? And also within that conversation, the Affordable Homeownership Conversation.

I think what we're seeing obviously is the end at this calendar year, the end of the ARPA funding which I think was wisely a great deal of it was allocated towards various affordable housing programs. There's not a policy mistake here. The money has simply run out, it's run out for everybody. So I think that obviously has an impact. I think you have the federal administration right now that I think is not as focused on and many more affordable housing priorities as I think we collectively would like. So, We are somewhat on our own with our state partners, to be fair. But we are on our The federal government isn't going to be the solution here for a number of years.

Yeah, and I always think about we have advocacy at On the federal side, we have advocacy to get more money at the State House. But I always want You know, think about what we can do as a city. We have levers that we can pull. One of those levers is possibly the CPA instead of hoping and praying that another body will act in our favor, especially when we see affordable housing developers saying that they're pulling away from affordable home ownership because the money is drying up. And I think that is one of the best ways to fight displacement, is through affordable homeownership So just hearing that money drying up, I do believe is alarming. But now I do hear the conversations around the other categories when it comes to CPA and

You know, we do have other alternative funding and sources that we can support those different categories whether it's question six the conservation fund which I am a supporter of. The capital budget But also, if we were to grow Housing Production, like we are actually growing this pot of money to hopefully get more funding to those other categories. So I think we're in a time where housing production has stalled out Particularly the affordable side and I think it's a conversation that you know, I'm happy that we're having and hopefully will continue to see what flexibility We can have in order to jumpstart back affordable home ownership, to hopefully grow this pot of money to make sure that all the categories are receiving more. That's all I have for now, Chair.

Thank you. Culpepper.

Last thing and hopefully I know you also asked this question, would love When Executive Brown brings back the analysis on bonding against EPA to kind of sit down with you, Steve and anyone else is interested to understand like the impacts that would have. Thank you.

Councilor Culpepper, I'm going to give you an opportunity to say a statement or ask a question. You have seven minutes.

Ask a question? You ask questions. Seven minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair for holding this hearing. Thank You Councilor Worrell for bringing this significant and important hearing order forward for adding me as an original co-sponsor Thank you for the administration testimony. I see that Dean has gone, but I thank y'all for still being here because for me housing is That's probably the most significant issue I've worked on in my professional life. I see the significance of it, I see importance of it. I see we're losing $240 million in federal ARPA funding for affordable housing. That's coming to an end.

And we all know that next year's budget cycle is going to be a very difficult year. It was difficult this year, but next year it's gonna be even more difficult because when you look at the ARPA funding that we're going to be losing, it's coming to an end not just for the CPA but in many other areas. The budget conversation Next year is going to be trying to steal from Peter to pay Paul. I mean, we're going to in a tough budget cycle next year and when it comes to housing the way housing has stalled Especially with losing this funding, and I see the question is how do you take money from other areas of the CPA to allocate to housing? The allocation is 50% now. Where do you get that other 20 to 30 percent from?

Because CPA does a great job in supporting historic preservation developments. And without CPA, I can tell you that many of the churches wouldn't be able to do the work that they do today. Many of the have used that CPA money as really capital funding to make upgrades on the churches. May not be there, and the way it is now. When you look at open spaces, when you look recreation, when we look at the significance of CPA and you think about

and now you're at a point where you're trying to figure out how do you leverage the money through CPA that It really won't be as much next year as you have this year. And so I know for developers, I know it's a challenge but not only for the developers I think for the city, we're going to have budget challenges next year unless we find money from someplace. And so my question to you is And I'm sure you've thought a lot about where do you pull from within the CPA budget to transition money from other areas of housing.

Where would you recommend that money come from to support not even the level of funding for housing that you have this year? But even if you could find 10%, I'm not talking about 20 or 30, where would you find 10% to add to the housing allocation funding?

First of all, I would obviously defer to the judgment of this body and the CPC of how to do that. There's a couple pathways there. One, that Senior Director Brown I think alluded to. She didn't advocate for that, to be clear. I want to sort of make that clear where she talked about the current breakdown is 50% to housing 20% historic preservation, 20% to open space. And then there's a discretionary 10%. One could take that discretionary and allocate it all to housing And then after that, it becomes a zero-sum game. You have to take from one to the other and I think as I said in my testimony, that is part of the priority setting Political bodies engage in all the time, right? And it's uncomfortable in this case because it is zero sum.

What would you set as priorities

I think housing is the priority. That said, I don't have a number at my fingertips of what it should be but I think this is a potentially powerful tool So you would, right off the top, and I didn't hear Thaddeus Brown's testimony, but

There's a suggestion or maybe inference from what she said that, maybe you take the 10% right off the bat. Let's say you do that. Take the 10%. Where would you go next? So just to be clear, I want to be fair to Senior Director Brown. We're not putting anything on her.

She just laid out this is how the framework works. You have a discretionary 10%. And I said inference. Start there.

Inference, right?

Not her inference, though. No, no, your inference. Your inference. Yeah, I'm talking about your inference I don't want to get anyone in trouble.

Do no harm is my goal here. Yeah I said your inference Where would you go next?

You know, I don't have a formula by which that I would... It's also difficult to know absent There's the conceptual idea of we're playing with percentages. There is also a bottom-up analysis of what are the projects in the queue, and I have no visibility on the projects Come into my thinking, if there's wonderful historic preservation projects and there's a paucity of open space projects I would think differently about it.

You want to take a stab at it? Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry. He ran real good.

No, come on.

Let's hear it.

And I understand housing and what's in the queue. We don't know right now but let's say You take that 10% and we're not connecting that with anything that Dardenne Brown said. Let's just say, we assume we take that ten percent. Where do you go next?

I'm a data guy, so I would need the data to see. No, I'm being quite honest with you. I wouldn't need to see that data of One, to his point the projects that are in the queue. But two historically how much money have been spent in those different buckets for the past five years? to make a real sound judgment. Obviously, affordable housing, this is my realm. This is what I build. I'm very strong advocate of affordable housing so I think there's a huge need for it But at the same time, just to be fair I would want to see that data and really dive in and see okay what What are some of the priorities? What are the needs? How much have we spent in the past five years? Does it really make sense for Open Space to have 20% if they've only 10%.

Or does it really make sense to cut their funding if they have a backlog of 30%, right? So you really want to look at the data just to be fair and quite honest.

That's fair. I like that perspective. It's a fair perspective to look at the data, but I'm not sure we want to look What we've spent in the past on historic preservation, that's been a great program in the city of Boston with regard to older I know I was late. I know Councilor Pepén and Councilor Worrell covered most of What I would probably ask, so I'll look at the hearing. Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank You. Would you gentlemen like to provide closing remarks or any final statements?

Again, I'm a very strong advocate of affordable housing and finding any opportunity to raise the percentage. But again just to be fair, just like I answered Councilor Culpepper You really want to look at the data just to be fair in terms of where you make cuts or how do you reallocate some of that piece of the pie. But I'm a very strong advocate of affordable housing, and I think there's a huge need for What we do in the home ownership realm, and we really depend on it.

Just you know just in closing thanks appreciate the opportunity to testify You know I think we talked about this This is potentially a powerful tool for increasing funding for affordable housing. It is on some level, as Councilor Culpepper indicated in his question It is zero-sum. We're taking away money from other programs that have virtuous intent and outcomes, but I think it is a discussion that is well worth having particularly in this moment where we are struggling to produce enough housing and enough affordable housing for our communities. Thank you. Hillary?

Just thank you for including me in the conversation

I really do appreciate the work that you all do in your respective fields. As Steve mentioned, definitely a conversation worth having so thank you for being today on the panel Before I conclude, I believe there is a video testimony that we're gonna show.

Good morning, my name is Lori Rabin. I live in Rossendale. This is for Docket 1601. Thank you very much for taking the testimony today. I come from a family that believes in public funding for public good. My dad helped start the Musicians Union in Los Angeles, and my mother served for decades on the board of the LA Valley Progressive Democrats. I support new revenue for affordable housing. I also believe that public funding needs clear guardrails. Public funding should come with enforceable commitments to affordable housing, to safe demolitions to timely answers to neighbors and meaningful relocation support. First, housing priced just below market rate is not affordable or accessible for nearly everyone who's rent burdened. We need clear affordability standards to reflect their incomes. Second, a CPA-funded project in Roslindale provides an example of the need for guardrails

During demolition, for example, residents raised serious concerns about particulate matter in the air, about debris, about air quality. Particularly in this neighborhood with four child care centers and a environmental justice burden by MEPA. City leaders said, well you know the protocols were generally being followed but identified conditions needed to be tightened up. We also continue to seek documentation showing what relocation assistance was provided the businesses in the demolished building. These are businesses owned by immigrants that had served this square for decades. Was their support help them remain in our community? Third, I respectfully ask the council president and VP to assure that oversight of housing and development funds include a broad range of city council committee chairs.

This would help bring more neighborhood voices into the process and encourage meaningful input from those most affected. With clear standards and shared oversight, We can create affordable homes while protecting the people and businesses that are already there. This would truly be public money for public good, and thank you very much.

Councilor Worrell, would you like to provide any closing remarks?

Thank you chair. Uh thank you central staff. Thank you to my team uh thank you to the panelists uh thank um for the report um and thank you to my colleagues for great questions. And just looking to continue this conversation, again, for me as a housing advocate hearing, affordable housing and affordable home ownership funds starting to dry up. That is alarming, knowing that there's an opportunity to possibly fund some of the other categories on CPA on the capital budget, to a conservation fund. and other alternatives source of funding. This is a good conversation to have as a council, to see what direction and how do we want to allocate our resources and what our priorities are? Again just looking forward

continuing this conversation to making a decision on you know what our stance as a body will be but again thank you for lending your expertise, your experience and Thank you to everyone who came and lent their voices in this conversation.

I'd also just like to take a moment to thank Executive Director Thadine Brown for her work and her testimony this morning, to all the public testimonies that we heard from members of the community, and to the work that you all do as well. Let me just make a final quick remark because

The significance of these conversations are going to be so important next year, and I think it's important. And I think for us to be having these discussions this early Before a budget next year, I think we need more and more of these discussions because the more we discuss it now before we get to that point will begin to make decisions as we may. choices during the budget. So I really thank you for your suggestions, recommendations. I'm going to look at the data because I think the data really tells you where you go, where you don't go. Look, I just think it's important that we start talking about these budget issues now and not wait until the last minute, and try to figure out where we go at the last minutes. I just want to thank you. Thank you Mr.

Chair for this hearing, and thank you Councilor Worrell and your staff because We need more of these hearings on the different areas that we know we're going to have trouble with when budget time comes. The more we discuss it now, the better prepared will be with information about which way we go next. Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you. This hearing on docket number 1601 is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.