Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 12
hearing scheduled with the Planning Board for the 23" and will be at PEDC hopefully on the 20" | believe. So that
timeline would line up very nicely with this. The next steps for that can certainly dovetail with everything that Director
Cummings and Chief of Staff Lindner had discussed.
Alderwoman Kelly
| have a question before you move.
President Wilshire
Alderwoman Kelly.
Alderwoman Kelly
| actually wanted to ask about the owner occupied programs if we wanted to support that could the money be used for
that and how are they doing?
Sarah Marchant, Community Development Director
The how are we doing?
Alderwoman Kelly
Yeah like do we have lots of people interested this year?
Sarah Marchant, Community Development Director
We have an incredible amount of people interested and we have an incredible need. But what | will say is as
suggested here before you tonight, funds from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund could absolutely be used towards
those kinds of projects which is rehab of owner occupied housing or rehab of rental housing which then comes with
exchange for a deed restriction or some very low interest loans to do that work. So the money that was appropriated
this year is already almost spent. It was only about $70,000 and we have a long list of applicants that we will go
through that dollars very, very quickly. It’s a wonderful program and the Affordable Housing dollars could certainly be
programmed that way.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you.
Alderman Tencza
So |, too, like the idea of affordable housing trust fund. | do worry just with a timeline | think it’s a very complicated
program so it would have to be spelled out before — | think it would have to be spelled out before probably we approve
the funds and put down exactly what we want to do. | would have concerns about that.
| would also hope that part of that we can look at maybe some energy efficiency programs for existing homeowners
whether its low income or not or workforce housing or not. | think a lot of other communities and States have much
better programs that we do here in New Hampshire but maybe we could make a big impact in our city in helping with
our electric system primarily by upgrading our — or having programs so that we can allow people to access some
programs to upgrade whatever they need in their home. We know a lot of our homes in Nashua here are older and
we could certainly help out homeowners that way as well.
I'd also be curious to know we talked about how we can use this money to affect businesses particularly small
businesses. I'd be curious as to what - Mr. Cummings you may be already hearing from these small businesses but
I'd be curious to see what their need is and how we can support them because | think they support our community a
lot and going forward are important so.
Tim Cummings Economic Development Director
Absolutely. Those are some great comments if | could President Wilshire. So green energy, sustainable energy
efficiency are all eligible uses. We can absolutely look at building a program along those lines. That is definitely
