Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 10
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
Yes thank you. | want to just reiterate that the number one issue that I've heard about over the last couple years is
affordable housing. | can say without having a survey or having any quantified type data behind me to support it that
anecdotally, it's the number one issue that | hear about when I'm talking to various employers, when they're talking
about expanding. The first thing they say is can my employees afford to live here? You know talking to an employee
or just, you know, someone on the street that the thing that they say is, I'm worried that my kids won't be able to buy a
house here and raise their family in the community that they grew up in. | can tell you time and time again, it is by far
the number one issue that the city needs to be aware of and | think with this type of opportunity, you could make the
best type of impact. We could develop some metrics and some goals if we chose to go in this direction so we could
judge our success based on using these funds. New units supply into the marketplace. Maybe assistance for rental
for individuals who, you know, have received catastrophic loss of income. Future deed restrictions so you can buy
homeownership and be able to buy units. There are various strategies that we could undertake to achieve what is
“affordable housing” which is a very broad definition. But it's one that | think is worth a substantial conversation.
Alderman Dowd
Yeah just two things. One -—1| do agree that at least some of the money ought to go for affordable housing. It is a
critical element here in the City.
The other thing | just want to clarify for the viewing public is that if you could explain Director Cummings that the
School Department has separate funds...
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
Correct.
Alderman Dowd
...that can be used for things regarding education. So that’s why you’re not seeing education in the spending of this
money because they have a pretty significant amount and they have their own set of rules as to how they can spend
it.
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
Yes that is an excellent point and one we should absolutely emphasize which is everything we’re speaking to this
evening does not talk about the educational funding. That is completely separate and aside from this.
Alderwoman Kelly
Yeah thank you. | just wanted to add to the conversation around affordable housing and how it’s changed with
COVID-19 as well. Its funny when we talk about affordable housing you don't even really think about what affordable
is like it still comes in pretty high. One of the things that we’ve seen and we've talked about it at different committee
levels is that a lot of people are coming here from Boston because it’s affordable for them and that’s squeezing our
market that already has very little to almost no housing open at all. That factor happened with COVID — people
wanting to move out of the cities and then you have on top of that, people who are out of work and were under these
moratoriums. We have nothing. We really have almost no vacancies for ability for people to get into the housing that
they need.
Alderman Klee
Thank you. Director Cummings when we talk about affordable housing and so on —| Know you said it’s a very broad
term. We know that there is very little land to build on here in the city but we also know that there are buildings that
could be converted and so on. When you're talking about affordable housing using it towards this would the mindset
be that we would give incentives to builders and so on? Can the money be used in that respect because the city
obviously cannot build this housing? While this is not anything that’s even possible but say something like the
Pheasant Lane Mall decided yes we will consider getting rid of that and maybe using some of that land for something.
Would we be able to give incentives to or even incentives to those people who already have low income housing but
need to fix it up So it’s in better shape?
