Williamstown Housing Trust Moves Toward Land Acquisition
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The board of the town's Affordable Housing Trust is moving ahead with plans to acquire more residential lots in town.
At a meeting last week, the board authorized Trustee Andy Hogeland to ask the town counsel to review a request for proposals that the board might issue to see what properties are available for purchase with the intent of constructing subsidized housing.
It is a repeat of a process the board undertook in 2015, when it ultimately purchased plots on Summer Street and at the corner of Cole Avenue and Maple Street.
The latter parcel, actually two building lots, currently has one occupied single-family home built by Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, and the foundation for a second home is laid with work set to continue this spring.
Twice this winter, the board has discussed possible new acquisitions; since those talks potentially included mentions of specific parcels, the conversations were held in executive session.
Last Wednesday, the trustees discussed whether they should buy more land or hold onto money to meet other needs.
As of Feb. 28, the trust had about $197,000, of which $40,000 is earmarked to go to Habitat for Humanity to fund a project manager at the Maple Avenue construction site.
The remainder could be used to fund the trust's DeMayo Mortgage Assistance Program for first-time home buyers or the emergency rental and mortgage assistance programs the trustees created during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ruth Harrison asked her colleagues what impact a land purchase might have on those existing programs.
Chair Tom Sheldon noted that the town has in the past given assurances that it could help replenish the emergency programs — designed to help residents impacted by the pandemic to stay in their home — with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.
But Sheldon also said the trust is in a different position than it was the last time it went out looking for land to purchase.
"When the 2015 [RFP] was sent out to the world, we had a treasury of more like $400,000," Sheldon said. "The trust was created with a $200,000 appropriation, and that was replicated the next year. This worked out wonderfully well, but we had more room to maneuver financially at that point."
Sheldon said that two properties purchased in 2015 cost between $90,000 and $95,000 apiece.
Issuing an RFP would be the first step on the road to making another such purchase and would not commit the board to accepting any proposals it receives. The last time, it received five proposals.
Trustee Patrick Quinn offered another possibility for acquisition this time around.
"If anyone out there watching [Wednesday's meeting] is sitting on a nice piece of property that they would want to donate, please come forward," Quinn said.
Sheldon kicked off that meeting by announcing Quinn will be leaving the board when his term expires on June 30. With the previously announced departures of Liz Costley and Stan Parese, that will leave three openings on the seven-person panel.
"We will be seeking to recruit three new members for the trust," Sheldon said. "There are elements that go into this, including one of the three is an attorney. Stan has been on the trust from the beginning. It's proven immensely valuable to have an attorney in our midst.
"If anyone is interested in joining the board, let us know, let town hall know, and we'll be glad to talk about what membership entails. Meanwhile, we're talking in various combinations about ideas."
Parese pointed out that he is one of two lawyers on the board currently, but, unlike Parese, Hogeland's area of practice is not real estate law.
Hogeland fills the seat on the trust board designated for a member of the Select Board. In his capacity as chair of the Select Board, he earlier this year developed a form for town committees to report their activities to to address equity issues; regular reports on the topic were called for by an article passed by town meeting in 2020.
On Wednesday, the trustees voted, 7-0, to approve a completed report and forward it to the town's Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee.
"Once this goes in, we'll be the third entity to do so," Hogeland said. "The library trustees were first. The Select Board was second."
In other business on Wednesday, the AHT board discussed whether it needs to increase the maximum grant allowable under the DeMayo Mortgage Assistance Program in order to generate more grant requests. It has awarded 20 $15,000 grants since the program began in 2015, but the last grant was given 16 months ago, near the start of the pandemic and before local real estate prices spiked.
"I think that goes back to the conversation about the housing market, which is more than the Williamstown housing market," Sheldon said. "It's a national phenomenon. There just haven't been many houses on the market that would be affordable.
"Do we think it's a good idea to go to the lenders and ask: If we increase the maximum grant, would it have a transforming effect or is it still beyond our reach at this point because of the housing stock situation?"
The DeMayo program is limited to home buyers who go through a lender with an office in Williamstown; Adams Community Bank, Greylock Federal Credit Union and MountainOne are the three lenders who have brought grant requests to the board. The banks are responsible for identifying potential beneficiaries and ensuring that they are income-eligible at the time of the application.
"It's worth asking," Parese said. "They may come back and say you have to go to $50,000, and then we'd have a decision to make: Is it better just to keep our powder dry at this moment or is it better to do one big one and burn through a lot of the money rather than doing none?
"If it was $16,000, it would be a no-brainer. At some point it becomes something we wouldn't do."
Gura cautioned that since the grants go to the lender to help finance the home purchase, the board should be skeptical about their input on whether to raise the grant maximum.
Sheldon said he would press the lenders for anecdotal information to back up any recommendation for a new threshold to see if there were recent cases where an increase in the grant would have enabled a new homeowner to come to town.
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