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Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 9

As the downtown continues to change and attract private investment as it has been, it is possible that some
of those properties could flip and maybe rehab could take place. That could also mean though that as
housing prices go up, existing households could potentially be displaced either elsewhere in the City or
maybe even have to go outside the City to find housing that’s more affordable to their income.

The age of the household stock also correlated to the lower assessed building values. There’s about 73%
of all residential structures having assessed value below $200,000.00. Citywide, only about 57% of
residential structures have values below $200,000.00 but | kind of think it’s interesting that many of the
buildings in the downtown are multi-family, are multi-unit structures on the residential side and still have
fairly low assessed values, where you might expect them to be a bit higher as they have more units and
have the ability to generate more income than say a single family home that might be located elsewhere in
the City.

We also mapped sales activity in the downtown and over the last ten years, 93% of the sales in this area
were below the citywide median. In 2019 alone just looking at sales isolated 2019, about 80% of the sales
were below the citywide median. Again, the fact that many multi-unit properties are not selling for more
could speak to the age of the structure as well as the condition of the structure and the units that are within
that structure.

| wanted to spend more of my time tonight on the data and the story as | thought that was really important
background and context for you all to have, not only for this study but | think as you all are embarking on
the Master Plan Process and are engaging in that process. But | didn’t want to skip out on the
recommendations piece of it. In our report, the recommendations provided have far more detail than what |
thought we would have time for tonight. | was hoping to just provide kind of a higher-level overview of each
of the recommendations and then turn it over to questions.

So the first bucket of recommendations is what we are referring to as “Planning for Success” so this bucket
really speaks to leverage, the planning work that the city has already done. There’s been a lot of it across
the City and then even what they are about to do, what you are all about to through the Master Plan
Process to really look for those key opportunities to change zoning or rezone areas, find ways to continue
the integration of other concepts through that Master Plan Process. | think this is a really great opportunity
for the City.

The next is finding way to continue to integrate accessory dwelling units. The City is doing that but there
might be other mechanisms for speeding the process up or making it a little bit easier. One thing that we
suggested in our recommendations was a mechanism like pre-approved design for accessory dwelling
units that might make the approval and permitting process faster and easier for the City as well as for the
applicant. The next is continuing to look for ways to leverage public land or the disposition of public land for
housing production. This could be something like that’s happening with Bronstein and using existing public
land or buildings to further affordable housing or just housing in general. It could also mean looking at older
buildings or excess land that the City might have ownership and control over and maybe there’s a potential
for disposition through an RFP Process with a focus on some kind of housing.

Lastly, educating the public on why housing is such a critical issue to tackle and why it matters. The
households across the income spectrum is really important. This could help reduce the number of abutter
complaints or just general opposition to housing proposals in the City, over time.

The second bucket is around aligning policy and housing outcomes. There is interest from what we have
heard from City staff to create a vehicle for collecting and also deploying housing funds collected by the
City through various means. The most common vehicle for that process would be establishing a housing
trust fund. The City can collect funds through the trust and then create a process for deploying those funds
with goals, targets, metrics to ensure funds are meeting those goals. The funds could then potentially be
matched with other Federal, State, or Local Funds to actually sort of leverage that money and have a
greater impact on housing policy and programs.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 10

Sort of interlinked with the housing trust is this idea of updating inclusionary zoning regulations in the City.
We think that the City should revisit the existing inclusionary ordinance and update it and probably expand
its reach. Right now the Ordinance is generally tailored to downtown and the COD areas as we understand
it. But there is the opportunity to expand it citywide. You know the first step that we think in that process
would be to hire a consultant who can work closely with City staff to not only rewrite the Ordinance but also
to test the financial implications to ensure that whatever is done with the inclusionary ordinance doesn’t
have a negative impact on development feasibility and have the effect of potentially cooling the
development market. So it’s really a balance of writing the Ordinance in a way that achieves the City’s
goals and what you are trying to do but also being cognizant that it could potentially have an impact on
development feasibility, so really trying to balance those two.

If the Ordinance ends up including a payment in lieu option so a fee option, that money can then be used to
potentially feed the housing trust fund over time. Lastly, we had the recommendation that the City look at
phasing in rental registry program and inspection process for rental units. The Registry component we
think is critical to — | think first and foremost is track and register the rental properties in the City and have a
list of contacts just in case issues arise with the new contact, you know, if any issues come up. We
recommend that the registry fee would be collected annually and that the amount is enough to cover the
administration of the program. We think that the nexus between those two things is really important.

Secondly and it is probably a much longer-term process, the City could phase in an inspection process
recognizing that this might require additional staff capacity. Inspections could take place, for example,
maybe every 3 years. If tenants turn over during that time period but if the owner or landlord is able to keep
the same tenant for say more than 3 years, maybe consider just doing inspections every ten years if the
tenant remains the same. So it’s a little bit less of a list on City staff as well as on the landlord if it’s not
being done every six months, every year, every two years, but there’s some leeway in there. The City
should also consider coupling the landlord rehab program or even a loan program with the inspection
process just in case issues come up. We want to provide landlords, especially those who might be lower
income landlords and might not have cash on hand. We want to be able to give them an option where they
could make, where they could address the issue that comes up do the rehab and get that tenant back up
and running as quickly as possible but not have to spend all the money that they have in their bank account
to address that issue.

The third bucket is around new or expanded programs. The first recommendation is around expanding the
rental and owner rehab program. The City has both programs in place today, but the need for rehabilitation
funds appears to be higher than what is typically available in a given year. | think in the downtown this
issue is very present and would likely benefit from improvements to units as well as access to capital. So
one change that we were thinking about for these programs is considering moving from a 0% interest loan
that’s repayable at either the sale or maybe a refinance and changing that to a maybe a very low interest
rate loan, maybe it either stays 0% or 1% or 2% but that there is a requirement for that loan because the
interest rate is so low to be paid back over time so it is continuously paid back. This would help to create
more of a revolving loan pool instead of just depleting the pool each year and then having to wait to recycle
that money say with a new infusion of CDBG money or City funding in its place. And you could potentially
tier the interest rate based on the AMI of the owner, whether its landlord or an owner household to those
who are lower income maybe it’s 0%, those who are 120% of AMI maybe it’s a 2% loan.

The second recommendation is around restarting the First Time Home Buyer Program to assist with down
payment and/or closing cost. That program could be established as a grant and maybe if you were going
to target something like a $4,000.00 or $5,000.00 amount, maybe it’s just a grant. Or if it is going to be a
higher amount, maybe considering a loan that could be forgivable after a certain period of time, typically
after the person or persons have lived in the household for a set period of time. Or it can even be
something that’s paid back at little or no interest, similar to what we talked about with the rehab fund. That
option would then help to recapitalize that fund over time and make it more available throughout the year.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 11

And then just quickly on the last side, around leveraging and expanding partnerships, you know, in the
housing world, the ability to expand the City’s capacity for funding, programming, and education | think is
critical. The City likely can’t do all of this alone and finding those partner organizations like banks, or
employers, philanthropy, community development corporations and others | think would really help expand
capacity in many respects. We also recommend continuing that strong partnership with the housing
authority and also working with them to look for more opportunities to expand the offering of affordable
housing where possible.

Two other longer-term considerations — the first is what we refer to as a “Right of first refusal policy” where
the City could potentially require sales or deed restricted use or buildings that are coming up for sale or
maybe even unsubsidized rental units to provide advance notification of the sale to the City and maybe any
of their housing partners. The City or maybe another non-profit entity could then make an offer to purchase
that property, you’d probably have to match the highest offer to secure that sale. But there are varying
levels of intervention that the City could take. But! think beginning with notification for at least all
subsidized properties ones that are subsidized by other entities, as well as those that receive subsidy from
the City would be a really good start. The ones that are already subsidized, those are the ones you don’t
want to lose to market rate conversion.

Lastly, recognizing you have hospitals in the City who employ a lot of people. | think talking to them about a
potential partnership to understand the housing need, to see how sort of city resources can be coupled with
employer resources and then leverage those together to provide housing or housing options to employees
could be beneficial to both parties, but that’s likely a longer term strategy, | think there’s other things that
you would want to focus on in the shorter term.

So that is my overview, hopefully it didn’t go too, too long, in time for questions?

President Wilshire

Are you looking to take questions, Mr. Halverson?

Mr. Halverson

I'd be happy to, yeah whatever you all would like to do.

President Wilshire

Ok, does anyone have any questions? Alderman Klee?

Alderman Klee

Madam President, | have just a quick question. Thank you so much. Mr. Halverson, in all of this
information and so on, and | don’t know if you can even answer this. But how do we align with like
communities in New Hampshire/New England. Is there any kind of a comparison? Are we kind of on track
with it? | mean you talked about our low market in other words we didn’t have a whole lot of inventory and
that middle of the road group, it seemed like the high income/low income were kind of purchasing those
types of housing.

Mr. Halvorsen

Great question. | will just talk sort of in generalities, | think the things that | found really interesting and
potentially unique about Nashua. Nashua is a growing City and it’s growing quite a bit and has been

growing quite a bit. | think that makes it unique. | think its position on the Massachusetts border is very
unique versus a city that might be further up in New England.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 12

| think that is and has been attracting folks to come in, particularly | think from my opinion and I'd love to
hear what you all think but | think that’s part of what is driving the older cohort, say the 55+ residents who
might be coming over the border and looking to live in Nashua. | also think Nashua’s existing housing
stock is very diverse. | drove the whole City, | went into almost every residential neighborhood and
development as | working at the very beginning and there are just tons of really fascinating housing options
that | don’t often see in a lot of other places.

You can find a gorgeous, older, single-family home, a new single-family home, a two family, a three family,
there are all those really unique rental complexes, both at the high end and at the low end. You can kind of
find everything in Nashua and | think that makes it really unique. And then on the employment side, the
employment base continues to grow and hopefully that will continue in the future for all of you. So that is
also sort of putting pressure on that housing market.

The gaps that we saw at the 30% of AMI and the 120% of AMI are not necessarily unique in housing
markets that are growing as well as ones that are experiencing fairly vapid price escalation. So | don’t think
that necessarily makes you unique, but | would say that is a challenge that many, many communities
across the country are grappling with, is how do we find — how do we find, create, partner to create —
whatever it might be, encourage, incentivize housing that sort of matches the income spectrum for the
residents who live here.

Alderman Klee

Thank you.

Alderman Lopez

| have a question as well.
President Wilshire

Alderman Lopez?

Alderman Lopez

In your study and in your evaluation did you happen to maybe touch upon information about the
employment capacity relative to workforce availability or resources offered in terms of supported services. |
noticed that you were talking about one of the populations moving in being elderly, or not moving in, but the
growing population being elderly which is great because it means people are living longer. But it also
means people likely need more supportive services in terms of in-home care or that kind of stuff. How do
you see our economy and our infrastructure as positioned to meet those needs?

Mr. Halvorsen

Great question, so | will tackle the employment side first. | didn’t have it on my slide so | was trying to trim
as best | could — but it is in the report | think if | am remembering, over the next 10 years, one of the fastest
growing employment sectors in Nashua | believe is in the healthcare and social services industry. So much
of what we see around New England and around the country where this is growth in that segment, given
that you do have the hospitals some of that is going to go that way. But we are seeing such big growth
given the aging population for these wrap around services and in-home care workers that you mentioned.
So | do think that is going to be and continue to be that growing segment of Nashua’s employment base or
one of them.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 13

On the wrap around services, | think that is also a great question. So in addition to the in-home care, if
there are ways to think about and this might be maybe more appropriate for the Master Plan because that
will really think about all the kind of elements of what | will call “Community Development” so transportation,
open spaces, healthcare, public health, Government services, land use, it sort of brings all of those
together. | mean this would be a really opportune time to think about the location of housing that might be
more sought after by those older residents and then how proximate are those development areas or
redevelopment areas to the services that they might need from a support perspective.

Alderman Lopez

| appreciate that answer. | wish you had a little bit more of a plan for us but | guess we have to do the
actual planning part, because that’s been something of a struggle that I’ve seen downtown as Alderman for
this particular area is non-profits basically have to compete for for-profits in order to get space. And they
provide due to New Hampshire’s bizarre, | mean unique tax structure, they provide the majority of
supportive services, wrap around services. So we have seen a lot of change, growth and decline of
services over the years. So | just, | am curious as to whether we have enough volume or infrastructure to
meet current need, versus expansion need. When you had pointed out that Nashua maybe needing to add
like an additional 4,000 plus units over the next couple of years, | am imagining that would be accompanied
by a tremendous amount of those wrap around services.

Director Marchant

Can | jump in here too? | think that some of these new units, and just as Eric was just describing, it’s really
important to remember that we also have a lot of growth in our 18 to 34. And the location of housing the
same analysis Eric was just talking about for maybe some of our seniors, also aligns very significantly with
what is attractive to our 18 to 34. So what we have seen already is they are competing for the same
product, the same stock but that our older generations right, they have cash on hand, they’ve sold a house
and they are out competing. So | don’t want to get too lost in setting up housing only for our aging
population that doesn’t also accommodate our workforce, because that’s incredibly important.

And also, if we look at our aging population and we go past 2030 to 2040, there’s a very steep decline.

And if we age restrict too much we are going to be in big trouble the following decade. So | think it’s really
important to kind of keep in mind that we are looking at the same product.

Alderman Lopez

So keeping that in mind, have you found that there’s any kind of an increase or lack of capacity in wrap
around services for individuals that are in the 18 to 23 range?

Director Marchant
This isn’t an employment study; it’s a housing study. So | do think you are bringing up a really good point, |
think it’s a very important thing for us to be addressing as part of the Master Plan. And as we get into

Phase II we are really going to dive into employment and the economy and | think these are great points for
that, but they aren’t something that was covered in any detail with this housing study.

Alderman Lopez
OK were there specific amenities that we can ask questions on?
Director Marchant

Anything to do with housing.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 14

Alderman Lopez

We may have different expectations of what people will need to manage housing.

Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development

If | may Alderman Lopez, could you kind of define wnat you mean by amenities? Just so | have a better
sense?

Alderman Lopez

| was thinking of core amenities for people in order to maintain their housing, for example, maintaining a
clean and safe environment. Having proximity to places that they can feed themselves or seek medical
care, those kinds of things. But again, it doesn’t look like it’s the focus here so | was wondering what
constitutes a need to put it downtown?

Mr. Halverson

| guess when we were looking at the downtown, you know, | think on the human perspective of lower
income households | think many of the things, Alderman Lopez, that you mentioned, are probably things
that those folks are looking for in addition to transportation potentially to jobs especially if they are located
in the City. And if they don’t have a personal vehicle that they have access to, for the 18 to 34 year old
population, | do agree with what Sarah said about the alignment of preferences for sort of more active
living, downtown environment, but is that 100% true. | think what those folks are looking for is probably a
bit different, they are probably looking for a nightlife, they are probably looking for in-building amenities
such as pet washing spa or doggy daycare or covered parking, in-home Wi-Fi and really good internet
service, cable packages, in-unit laundry, elevator buildings, those kinds of things. And when | was doing a
review of different apartment complexes in the City it seemed like the newer developments, River’s Edge
for example, that has so many of the new amenities that | think the younger folks are looking for. But | also
think that the older residents are also looking for very similar amenities as well. | don’t know if that helps
answer the question or not.

Alderman Lopez

| think | was just looking for more of an understanding of what areas are we going to see friction between
the two populations because their needs start to diverge.

Mr. Halvorsen

| see. | mean | think downtown is probably the answer from my perspective. | think that the growth potential
in the downtown, especially with potential to accommodate greater density in the core, has the potential to
— you know those units are likely to come with higher price points, whether it is a rent unit or a condo unit.
And what you might see is that the new investment can then start to trickle out into some of the
neighborhoods that have your older units that are your sort of naturally occurring affordable units, but not
necessarily deed restricted. And if those prices start to creep up, people start to invest in those units. On
the one hand that’s a good thing because they are investing in units; on the other hand, if they put that
money in, they are likely going to want to get that money out of it either through rent or sale. So | just think
that’s something just to consider as new investment takes place in downtown, sort of balancing new
investment, which on one hand is terrific, with trying to maintain some level of affordability in the downtown
as well as taking the affordable housing approach and also putting it out into other districts around the city
which | am sure will also be identified throughout the Master Plan, where some of that future growth is and
the ability to apply inclusionary housing or inclusionary zoning, some other places to spread out affordable
housing round the City.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 15

Alderman Lopez

Thank you for your comments. | did notice you also made reference to the racial and economic disparity as
well which | think is going to be important for us to consider.

Mr. Halvorsen
Yes.
President Wilshire

All set, Alderman Lopez?

Alderman Lopez
Yep.

President Wilshire
Alderman O’Brien?
Alderman O’Brien

Thank you, Madam President. This is a question to Mr. Halvorsen, thank you, excellent presentation. But
in your studies in going around to different other type of communities, | saw that you had listed some of our
older structures that were built around 1930, | think several pre-date that as well. And some of them have
maybe perhaps not been gently lived in or lovingly taken care of. So to that vein and looking at the Master
Plan in mind, does your company have a rule of thumb number in looking at some of these properties when
the point of investing into that and then looking to replace, some are coming up or some alternative
program to come up with more community type of stye on the same footprint and to get into affordable
housing.

Mr. Halvorsen

Yeah great question. So in the full report, | didn’t have time to talk about it tonight, but the City staff had
asked us to take a look at all of the residential units around the City. | think we focused mostly on one, two,
and three unit structures and looked at the age of each of the housing structures and try to figure out just
kind of rule of thumb what the potential rehabilitation needs might be citywide for older structures. And our
cut off for that was anything built prior to 1979. The reason we use that is that’s about a 40-year life span
and typically you are building structures for like 40 or 50 years here in the United States unlike many other
countries around the world. We build these structures and maintain them for 150 years in some cases
which in some respects is great to preserve the architecture and history. And in other respects its kind of a
rehabilitation nightmare when you buy it, you’ve got to put a bunch of money into it.

But anyway we use 1979 as a cut off for that both for the sort of lifespan of the structure, but maybe more
importantly that aligns with when lead paint regulations came out, sort of after 1979. So from a rehab
standpoint and | am sure Carrie can speak to this as well, the City has a really robust lead paint
remediation program. Many cities around the country that have CDBG Funds do so we use that as our cut
off for the rehab analysis.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 16
Director Marchant

So | think one of the critical pieces of this if you get into the report is the recommendations being able to
use some, maybe the affordable housing trust fund, or some other mechanism with our rental rehab
program to as we invest in rehab units, that we add that long term affordability clause to them to try and
help balance the rehabilitation with properties without necessarily losing affordability. So | think that there’s
some good tools that Eric suggested about how to balance some of those reinvestments in our community
while also not losing the affordable housing that exists.

President Wilshire

Any other Alderman have any questions? Seeing none, thank you Mr. Halvorsen, Director Marchant,
Director Cummings, for your presentation this evening. We do have our next meeting in about 3 minutes.
So thank you very much for being here and we appreciate your input on this great study.

Mr. Halvorsen

Thank you all so much.

Alderwoman Lu

Excuse me, Madam President?

President Wilshire

Yes?

Alderwoman Lu

Are we taking questions from the public tonight?

President Wilshire

No, this was a presentation to the Board tonight.

Alderwoman Lu

| see.

President Wilshire

The pubic is welcome to you know send along any questions they may have and I’m sure we will be happy
to get them answered.

Alderwoman Lu
| see, thank you.
President Wilshire

Thank you. Alderman O’Brien?

Board of Aldermen
February 23, 2016 Page 17

tall pole everything else we could accept or reject but it’s somewhat irrelevant financially for the most part. |
would strongly urge that this Board vote for a contract even though like many of us we are not entirely happy
with the numbers.

Alderman O’Brien

My last statement on this matter in support is something nobody here has brought up and you have different
unions within the police department and one of them is the Patrolmen’s Association and eventually in time they
come in and they bring in their contract and we approve or disapprove and they come up but it’s the fact that
it's called compression and it very much exists. When you bring in the patrolmen’s contract it comes in and it
compresses against the supervisor’s contract and it eventually gets to the point that you say here and some
people threw the blanket statement out that maybe there’s no big reason but when you have a compression on
the salaries coming up from the bottom from the patrolmen’s it can go against the “why would you really want
to become a supervisor if you are making almost the same basic pay grade” and that’s something that | don’t
have an answer for without looking at a comparison but it’s something that | think we need to be aware of. The
reason that the supervisor's come in with the dollar amount that they are looking for is to guard against that
compression factor.

| would also like to thank Attorney Bennett for his service but also for one of his last rulings and | do agree with
you, thank you.

Alderman Dowd

| did talk to Chief Lavoie and as was stated earlier he fully supports this contract and fully understands the cost
of the contract as part of his budget and has already allocated that into it. He feels strongly that the support of
his leadership team is vitally important to his department. | think we ought to pass this contract.

Alderman Schoneman

| voted for this contract in the Budget Review Committee because of its inevitability and | don’t see any point in
not supporting it now. | asked Chief Lavoie if this was going to be contained within their 1.3% spending cap
number and then we find out that it’s 2.5%. So, yes it is included in a budget number that is double what the
spending cap allows. At some stage if you are given enough anything can be covered. It’s a painful support
because it paints us into a corner and it’s going to cause us trouble later.

Alderman Siegel

In addressing Alderman O’Brien’s roll up your sleeves remark, there is one way we can save significant
amounts of money for our police department and that’s that you can negotiate with the criminals and you can
see if they might be willing to do less crimes because then we would have less expense. So there’s a way that
you can direct your energy.

A Viva Voce Roll Call vote was taken which resulted as follows:

Yea: Alderman Clemons, Alderman Dowd, Alderman Caron, 9
Alderman Siegel, Alderman Schoneman, Alderman LeBrun,
Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Lopez, Alderman McCarthy

Nay: Alderman Deane, Alderman Cookson, Alderman McGuinness, 6
Alderman Moriarty

MOTION CARRIED

Resolution R-16-009 declared duly adopted.

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 17
ADJOURNMENT

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN THAT THE OCTOBER 27, 2020, SPECIAL MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF ALDERMEN BE ADJOURNED BY ROLL CALL

A viva voce roll call was taken to adjourn the Board of Aldermen meeting which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Klee, Alderman Dowd,

Alderman Caron, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Lopez, Alderman Tencza,

Alderwoman Lu, Alderman Jette, Alderman Schmidt, Alderman Laws,

Alderman Cleaver, Alderman Harriott-Gathright, Alderman Wilshire

14

Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED

The meeting was declared adjourned at 7:31 p.m.

Attest: Susan K. Lovering, City Clerk