January 7, 2026 – 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee – Video & Transcript
January 7, 2026 - 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee
All right, so we have a quorum.
So why don't we call to order the meeting of the 212th Constituent Road Advisory Committee
on January 7, 2026.
It is 6.32 p.m.
This meeting is being recorded.
People can watch this evening on the Zoom link, or they can watch it at a later date
on WACAM.
We invite people to give public comment this evening.
Tonight's attendees include Gene Milburn, Brian Boccia, John Thomas, Stephanie Lynch,
and myself, Tom Faye, and others may join us as the meeting proceeds.
Our agenda this evening will include public comment.
We'll also hear from Heather Ryan, who's joined us.
Good evening, Heather, as well as Heather's available in residence.
We'll also hear from Jonathan Chines, one of his coworkers.
Jonathan is Chief Operating Officer of VINFEN, which is an organization associated with housing
for adults with disabilities.
And then we will consider minutes for our most recent meetings of December 8th and December 17th of 2025. And then we'll discuss most recent draft put together by Gene Milburn relative to a report to the select board, and then we'll adjourn. So anyone for public comment, I look at the participants. I see no hands raised. Therefore, we'll close the public comment period. So then we'll move on to item three of our agenda. Welcome, Heather Ryan. Heather, I'm seeing this, resident of Wayland and has thoughts on the work we're doing. And Heather, again, welcome. Glad to have you here. Why don't you tell us where you live and tell us about your life experience and any thoughts you'd like to share. Sure. Hello. Thank you for inviting me. I moved here in 1992, so a few decades.
When I moved here, we had a two-year-old and I was pregnant with our next child. And life was busy with two young kids and, you know, I knew my immediate neighbors. I can't say I knew the community itself as well. But of course, over the years, we've grown to know and love Wayland. And another thing to know about me is I have a master's degree in public health. I have worked both in care-providing organizations and I also wound up being pretty good with analytic work. So I wound up working for several software-based health care organizations. And so I know health care data rather well. Anyway, I am also disabled. I developed MS.
It's your 12th committee. Pardon? I think we heard a voice in the background, but go ahead, Heather. I developed MS when I was 27, and it really didn't affect me much for a good 15, 20 years. But over the last dozen years, it's really kind of added up. Um, I spent, um, part of, a good part of one year in a wheelchair in 2019. Um, but I had a wonderful PT, um, whom my doctor sent into my house twice a week. And, um, I might be a little bit stubborn, as my mom told me for many years. And I was not going to stay in the wheelchair if I had any say. Um, so I use a rollator now. Um, that's, some people call it a walker. A walker is actually two wheels and then two back tennis balls for most people. A rollator has four big wheels. I can walk pretty fast, but I need it for balance and also to sit sometimes. Anyway, so I've become much more aware of how friendly and sometimes unfriendly Waylon can be. Um, the nice thing is people in this community are incredibly helpful. Uh, I rarely have to open a door myself. Often there's someone running to open and hold it for me. Um, but, you know, there are times not. Um, anyway, um, so you know a bit about me. Um, now I'll try to save time. I have probably two main points or questions and I'll get to those. Um, the first point is, um, it, you know, I understood that you're looking to develop a home or homes for disabled people. And that's an incredibly broad population. Um, and one thing I learned after my years working in healthcare is we always want to help more people. Um, but when you try to address too broad a population, um, it, it doesn't work so well. So I would highly recommend focusing more because if you have someone who, you know, basically is a quadriplegic and you have someone, um, who has more minor disabilities, if it's a small facility, sometimes people can wind up helping each other out. But sometimes it, it really, it's too much and no one gets well cared for. Um, so, um, I, I would personally focus a bit. Um, the other thing is the more disabled people you might care for, usually the more services they're going to need. So you really have to think about what you have room to provide. Um, what kind of staffing you can put in the facility. Um, so it, you know, that's just my two cents from working in healthcare for decades.
Um, the other thing I wanted to mention is, um, the site itself is, you know, right smack in the middle of town. Well, not totally the middle, but, you know, on a main road. Um, but in some weird way, it's, it's kind of isolated. And I know personally, I have limits how far I can walk. And from that location, I couldn't walk to like a coffee shop and make it back. Um, and so it, it occurs to me that you might want to have a decent size rec room in the facility and bring things in. So like, you know, um, we have all sorts of activities that, um, happen at the senior center, but maybe bringing some of those things into a rec room would integrate the people in the facility with people in the community and also provide with them with the ability to do things. So like something like, uh, chair yoga or having a movie screen, um, you know, a big TV basically so that social things could happen at the place. Um, it would help the community to integrate and it would help the people at the facility to not be isolated. Um, I think, um, in general, um, I don't know, um, what's, what the layout. The layout of the place will be personally, I like to get outside, um, and if you could even have a paved path or something like that, that goes around the perimeter, um, it might be a nice thing both, um, for, you know, activity. It also might invite neighbors, um, to walk there. I live on Old Farm Circle, which is attached to Old Farm Road and Rolling Lane. We're, uh, a neighborhood of very wide, very flat streets. Um, a neighbor once told me that, um, they pulled a lot of, uh, soil and whatnot out of this neighborhood to create part of the fill for the big dig. I don't know if that's true. I've not been able to verify that, but, um, we do have wide, flat streets and especially during the pandemic, the first few years, we had so many people walking over to our area because they knew it was a good place to walk. So even having a walking path around the perimeter of this place might bring people, you know, there to walk. Um, and it would allow both the people there to get outside and, you know, if they're able to exercise, do that, um, and also be another thing that might integrate part of the community. And, um, um, I think those are probably the key points I would recommend you consider. I do appreciate the fact that you're talking to people who might one day need to use this facility. You know, I'm, um, we live in a four bedroom, two and a half bath house and, um, it's a branch by design. When we were looking at houses, I was doing fine, but we knew that that would be helpful. So that was, you know, what we chose to do. Um, I don't think I appreciated how having, you know, wider streets than many places in Wayland would make such a big difference, but it definitely has. So, um, those are what I feel, the points I feel I can add that maybe you wouldn't have, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to chat with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. Appreciate that. Um, any questions, uh, Stephanie, any questions for Heather? Um, I don't think so. Those are some nice ideas though.
Brian, how about yourself? Yeah, I think, I think a good quality of life, uh, points to be made. Uh, there's probably a lot of other, um, fine points we could add to this development down the road.
All right. Jean? No questions. And, um, John? No, no questions. Thank you, Heather, for sharing your story. And Phil? Yeah, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. And, you know, my takeaways are green space and accessibility and, um, uh, community, right? So those are all really important things and they're top of mind for this committee, I think too. Okay. And also, um, maybe slightly limiting the, how functional people are in the community. You know, it can, you can have anything from, you know, uh, an intellectual disability to being a quadriplegic, you are all disabled at some level, but for a smaller facility like this, um, I would look into both what services different groups would need and also, you know, uh, how, how it would work essentially. So.
So Heather, what struck, one comment that you made, which is interesting, was your recognition as a disabled person that, um, the need is so great and we need to be careful not to, um, address everybody's needs or to put it another way, um, recognize that we have limits to our own ability to help, uh, those in the disabled community, right? Right. I mean, if you had a facility with hundreds of people, you could try to do more. But I don't think you're going to have, you know, that many people on that site. Well, I appreciate you coming this evening, Heather, and passing on your, uh, your experiences and your thoughts and, uh, it's very helpful to us. Sure. Thank you for the, for doing this. Thanks, Heather. Thanks, Heather. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Why don't we jump to item four of our agenda, which is a consideration of the minutes in our packet. There was a packet, initial packet and a supplemental packet, minutes of the meeting of December 8th, 2025 and December 17th, 2025. Happy to entertain a motion to approve those two sets. I would move both, both sets of minutes. And do I have a second? Second? Thank you, Gene. Any discussion on the minutes? Any proposed changes?
I'm hearing none. Uh, those in favor of the motion. Stephanie?
Aye. I'm sorry. I was muted. Thank you. Bill? Approved. John? Yes. Approved. Gene? Yes.
We have some time until the next individuals appear before us, so I think it's appropriate to address the most recent draft that Gene Milburn put together, which is her proposed draft to the select board. First of all, Gene, I really appreciate all the time you put into this. It's very thorough and organized and helpful information, not only for the select board, but anyone who has an interest in this topic.
I think the best place to start might be to kind of address the question that was posed when we last met, and that was for members to think about what their vision would be based on what they've heard, based on what they've learned for this property. And maybe we could start there and go around, and then at that point, we can go, and Bill Whitney sent me an email, which I'll read to, so his voice can be heard. He could make a nice meeting. And then maybe we can, from there, we can discuss those thoughts, and then maybe get into the substantive portion of the report. But, Bill Adams, why don't we start with you? So, based on what you've learned and heard in all these meetings we've had, do you have a vision of what would work well and be effective for that space, the four acres?
Yeah. So, I guess I would say I'm still aligned with what you originally presented to the town at the town meeting, that there would be two buildings that resemble, you know, the neighborhood buildings in size and would have kind of the six to eight residents that you were talking about with support. And given the distance from downtown, would have transportation, but, you know, not be expected to be able to get themselves back and forth, that they would be individuals who would benefit from quite a lot of support. And, you know, that it would celebrate the green space that we heard about is so important, so walkability and, you know, safety to get to the aqueduct areas for walking and around the areas which are all located there. And the other thing we haven't talked about too much is there is that little funny triangular bit that is in the back of the property, which gets quite narrow. And, you know, for the neighbors, I think it would be ideal if that was kind of a green space or I know some neighbors have offered to buy it from the town or something, but that that, you know, maybe wouldn't be developed somehow and that some reasonable setbacks would be included too. But, and I think that model would work. We've seen examples of that from multiple folks. And obviously accessibility top of mind. I'd love it to be an innovative technologically innovative community that really advances the care and is kind of a model type of community for folks with these types of needs. And that we, you know, get some recognition for the town and for the effort, you know, to do the right thing and to be innovative that could be spread to other places and replicated. And I think Bill's original document kind of highlights that pretty well, I think. And I'm still aligned with that idea. Bill, I have a question for you. I want to clarify your point about the triangle, the triangular section. And so this isn't a gray aerial, but I think, I think this home here is the Reuben home. Is that fair right here where my cursor is? I can use them in a little bit. Sure. Sure. Sure. I think. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.
I think the LaPierre home is here, I believe. And these trees are full of leaves. So just so I'm clear, is the triangle area you're talking about back here among the trees?
It's a little more north, but I can get a plot plan actually. Okay. While other folks are talking and I can bring that up because it's, that's our place right there with the big garden in the front. And so it's, it's a little farther back than that, but it's a tight triangle, but it looks better with, from a plot plan. So let me see if I can dig that up and I'll bring that back later. Right. Thank you. Stephanie, what vision do you have for this space? I'm right along with Bill on just every point. Um, my vision would be, um, kind of many, several, about that number of, um, little mini units in two buildings with a, where each individual might have a bedroom and a sitting room with a common, maybe common kitchen, living room, dining room area. And, um, the, the units could be set up for either a resident or caregiver. So if some of the people needed, uh, uh, live in caregiver, you know, that they, they would be able to, um, have a place to stay, I would, um, would expect that the residents would have a day program or work in some way. Um, the caregivers could be paid through their AFC as needed. And, and, um, the housing may be for them under the section eight. Um, so they wouldn't have to rely on DDS for housing, although they probably would be in DDS for day program and DDS for provide transportation and sort of, you know, like I deal with a couple of buildings and, um, and outdoor space, uh, I guess for, for community and, and recreation and that all the units would be, uh, access, fully accessible and, um, pretty much all the, the same kind of vision as Bill was talking about.
Brian, Boja, thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think we're all in agreement on what the, um, the buildings themselves should look like in the type of, uh, facilities they provide. I think from the housing authority perspective, we'd like to see more numbers giving, given the, um, the size, the rare opportunity that this is for the town and the size of, you know, four and a half acre size of the lot. Um, so, um, yeah, I, I, I'm still, uh, it's so, so complicated to see what types of populations will we be serving. And I just, every time, seems like every time we talk about it might just, it, it becomes more and more complicated to me. And I'm really hoping that we find a good developer that partners with an agency that will tell us what is possible, um, because I don't feel like I'm in a position to, to, uh, say exactly what population will be serving. Um, um, but I mean, even, um, tonight we heard from somebody who, um, has had a different, you know, more of a physical disabilities, but, um, it's just, it's very complex and she's right. We have to focus on one, one set of population. Uh, Jean. Um, yeah, um, I, I've been studying a lot about, uh, economic size of projects and for sustainability over time and for the purpose of my own, just sort of exploratory exercise, um, I sort of picked 30 years as a time horizon for a successful organization on the site. Um, and when I was working on models, looking at, um, you know, cost structures and, and how these places function, I repeatedly came up with models that had 36 to 40 people on this site, um, um, as ones that were extremely financially secure, um, and not depending on DDS funds, um, which I'm reluctant to do. The, the more I've learned, I think their system is one in deep distress. Um, the cost per head for providing a home for, for folks by DDS is very high. Um, and, um, um, my guess is that eventually there's going to be some rebellion against that. Uh, I think there's evidence for that and that we can see DDS placing people in facilities that seem to be contrary to where they say they will place someone, that they're placing more people within embedded units inside of larger projects. So their community of five or six people becomes a wing or floor, um, within a much larger structure, basically because the fixed costs get spread over so many more housing units and it allows that DDS level of service to be come more sustainable over time. Um, so I don't know exactly what the buildings would look like on the site other than, you know, I'd want to see us specify, um, a new England style architecture, clabbered buildings, probably, uh, two story within a mansard roof or a gambrel roof, hiding a third story if we needed it. Um, so they'd look like, um, you know, shingle style mansions or something like that, but very simple buildings. Um, I'd like to, I know I've, I've thrown a lot at the group in this report and maybe I'll wait till later to start talking about the pieces of the report. Okay. Thank you. Are you there? I'm here. Okay. Oh, there is a, there is a section for you, for you in here. For Appendix O, um, optional measures to address abutters concerns. If, when you're reading, Bill, if you could turn to that fairly soon and, and let us know what you think of the things I found from other projects where they tried to do things to improve, uh, you know, quality of life for the abutters. John, John Thomas, your thoughts? Um, yeah, so I, I actually, uh, continue to have a slightly different take on, um, you know, defining a vision. Uh, I continue to struggle with, with, uh, coming up with sort of an idea of, of what this development is going to look like before we have a better sense of who, who we're going to serve, and I think it's difficult to really, uh, know who, who this development is going to house and who it is going to serve because we don't have a crystal ball that could really, excuse me, foresee which, uh, entities might approach the town to, uh, develop the parcel. I, I, I don't think the committee necessarily has empirical data that could help guide us right now as to, to what population is most in need, uh, in our community. I mean, we've heard from different groups, which is great, um, but again, you know, as to whether or not this is going to be a program, uh, that's going to serve exclusively people with disabilities, physical disabilities only, uh, people with Asperger syndrome, um, other folks on the autism spectrum, people with a head injury, uh, et cetera. So, I mean, it's difficult for me to envision what the final structure, uh, is, is going to look like, given the fact that we don't know who, who, uh, is actually going to be living, um, in this development. And I think, you know, trying to envision what the brick and mortar is going to look like before knowing who's, who's going to be living inside that brick and mortar, uh, you know, is staffing going to be part of the picture? Um, that's all going to dictate what the, the final product is going to look like. So I think trying to come up with an idea for what that's going to look like again, is kind of like building the roof before laying the foundation. Um, so that, those are my thoughts. I'll just comment, John, that, um, I, um, I think this process is so challenging for us for the reasons why you just set forth. I'll just say that I think that's where the RFP process comes in, right? We, the select board will, my, my sense is they'll put out a fairly specific, but not too specific invitation and we'll see who comes forward. And then the select board, at least we'll have a set of tools, if you will, that our committee has given them to say, all right, based on our, our due diligence, these are the things that see that should be prioritized or should be highly considered. But, um, I want to put it another way, John, I think it's very tough to really nail down, you know, okay, we want, you know, higher functioning individuals, you know, with this, with this disability, because for all we know, there won't be any, um, organizations that respond to the RFP along those lines. It may be totally different. So let me take a moment to read Bill's, Whitney's, uh, note to me and, uh, it's a bit lengthy, but bear with me. Uh, as we discussed, um, unable to attend the January 7th meeting of the 212 Constituate Road Advisory Committee due to a scheduling conflict. Nevertheless, I offer the following thoughts with respect to my sense of what a preferred development scenario might look like on the town-owned property we have been discussing. In thinking about how to approach this question, I began by trying to describe for myself the characteristics of a successful development rather than a specific build-out scenario. That is, rather than initially describe what I thought should be built, I've tried to consider how a successful project should be developed. The following thoughts are informed by the advice from many actual and aspiring developers of housing for people with disabilities, as well as service providers, public housing, and other government officials, people having family members who will need support in their eventual absence, and others. In listening to these valuable resource people, I think that the project that ideally would be built on the 212 property should be characterized by the following. And here's a series of bullets here. Each structure should accommodate no more than five to six residents, as well as the number of staff people needed to address the residents' particular needs for support. Next, there should be, there should eventually be a sufficient number of structures and residents, obviously, to permit the creation of a semblance of a small community, particularly insofar as the site is somewhat remote from the constituent and town center areas. Next, each structure should be developed as to flexibly accommodate a broad range of residents' disabilities over time and to enable some or all of its residents to age in place. Next, the structures developed should provide for common areas and other gathering spaces for residents, while also enabling each resident for his own private space. Next, the development should be exceptionally well designed, having a modestly scaled residential versus institutional character. Next, the development's admission policy should, to the greatest degree possible, accommodate the needs of Wayland families seeking an appropriate long-term residential placement. Next, open spaces within the development should be attractively landscaped with the placement of structures either screened or preferably generally oriented away from adjacent residential for Butters. He could, he continues, with regard to what I envision as the optimal development on the site, my thinking has evolved over time. Initially, I was interested in the tried and true approach of a traditional DDS sponsored group home. This model is tested, it enjoys the financial support of the Commonwealth, and it provides badly needed housing for a population requiring significant support. It provides, however, neither the ability of the project sponsor to establish a preference for family members of Wayland residents for more than one structure, housing five or six residents to be developed. We have heard that DDS may be willing to be flexible on the latter point, but there is no assurance that a larger number of residents could be accommodated on this four-acre site. Further, any such discussion on the question of the permitted number of residents likely would involve only DDS and the project sponsor and not the town. I'm personally more inclined to opt for a model wherein the residents would have financial support from the Commonwealth, Social Security, SSDI, or other assistance that is oriented to the person with the disability rather than to the development. The exception to that approach ideally would be to have sufficient project-based Section 8 housing vouchers for use by income eligible residents, like many or all of the residents. Likely many or all of the residents. In this way, residents would pay what they could afford in rent, and other public financial assistance could largely pay for needed support services. Depending on the characteristics of the resident's population, a well thought out reliable transportation program should be implemented to serve those residents having jobs, volunteer positions, or day program placements remote from the project site. And the alternative program spaces should be developed for use by those residents who likely will spend the majority of their time on the development due to their disability for learning, enrichment and entertainment. The latter types of activities could be conducted by the development staff and or volunteers from the Wayland community. Finally, given the difficulty in financing such a development in view of limited income, escalating construction costs and the like, it is hoped that the town could be flexible on the question of the amount and timing of consideration for the land as the financial feasibility of the project dictates. I look forward to hearing other thoughts and ideas as we near our reporting deadlines. So let me add my thoughts on the issue. When we have the commissioners. When we have the commissioners before us, I was really struck with her comment that this project should be innovative. And what I read from that comment was, as Bill Whitney commented in his note, you know, not your typical facility serving adults with disabilities that we might see throughout the Commonwealth today. Rather, the structures where there is a home-like field for the residents, I think is consistent with the comments of Heather Ryan this evening and others that we're building a home for people here. We're not, you know, I think we're generally in agreement. We don't want to build an institutional, institutional. When I say we build who the developer is. We don't necessarily support an institutional feel to this property. We want to build, we want to support a structures and a real home for, you know, for the residents with a healthy staff to resident ratios, but that integrates into the community. We want to put another way. We want to put another way that it's possible where the residents can work in the community, participate in the community. And if possible, residents can engage with the residents at 212 in whatever way is appropriate, which brings me to the vision of the structures. You know, I support two to three structures. You know, I support two to three structures on this property. But what I'd like to see is some of the space be a large common space that might be made available to, say, the arts community in Wayland, where they would engage with the residents, but also maybe do their own activities there with the support and backing of the of the developer. It's a bit out of the developer. It's a bit out of the box and wouldn't be a town run or town owned space. But the RFP could include an ask that that the one of the structures or a third structure be committed to this. I noticed in Jean's proposal, she mentioned like a barn. So that's an idea, right? Build a third structure, which is a barn and maybe have it have it four seasons, built out for four seasons and have space for art-like activities and other activities where there could be an engagement. I'm looking at my notes. So I'll leave it at that. So in a nutshell, then, I kind of own the same page, I think, with Bill Adams and Stephanie and others who kind of support the two or three structure approach with a structure based on what the developer seeks. I'm not a fan of a large structure or a structure that houses 20 to 30 people. I think it's contrary to what we've heard. To me, if I was a parent of an adult disability, that structure wouldn't satisfy me that my adult child is in a home-like feel. And I don't think it would fit well in that space. So other thoughts or comments on what people have said? I open it up. Is there anybody? Yes, John? So I just wanted to comment. I agree with a lot of the stuff that Bill mentioned in the comments that you read. But again, I'm here and I have to sort of call this out. He mentioned that the development should serve people with a broad range of disabilities. I wrote that down. I'm just going to have to disagree. I don't think the RFP is the place to specify that. I think that goes against what you mentioned after my comment, Tom. We've heard from many folks, including the last speaker, who have said it's very difficult to be all things to all people. Many folks with specific disabilities require specific supports that don't necessarily carry over to other subgroups. Again, somebody with Asperger's may have different needs and in fact, different preferences than someone with cerebral palsy. So I just wanted to comment on that. So I think that's a great point, John. And Stephanie, or Jean, I like your thoughts on that. I think it's almost a matter of how it was phrased, rather than it requiring a diversity of people to be included to say that, you know, there's a diversity of proposals that would be accepted.
Yeah. Yeah. So in the draft document, I took Bill Whitney's RFP document and then worked on it and reorganized it. I basically tried to keep the content, reorganize it, and then stress a couple things. What I like about it at this point is that it's written as a two-phase process where entities who are interested in talking to the town have a very small paperwork burden to submit to the select board in advance of being invited to come and have a more open conversation and ask a lot of questions. That would allow a thinning out of the group, and only the people who were, their vision was close to something the town was willing to accommodate would go to the more complicated phase. But in general, I think what the RFP should ask for is, you know, that they should propose what their organization does well, what they want to do. Ultimately, we will not be able to get a vendor to come and do something that they don't think fits their business model. And I do think probably a lot of them are in transition now, because I do think we're trending away from these small building models. We'll see. Maybe I'm wrong. But it's not that none will be built. I just don't think so many will be built because of the economic issues with it. But an additional thought away from the RFP is that, you know, there's a question about what is a home and, you know, something like a quarter of the people in the United States live in apartments and their apartments are their homes. And I think a building being an apartment building does not make it not a home. The other thing we're hearing is that, and this came up with Tony Wolf, the commissioner, is that a lot of disabled people want more independence. They want more private space, places. I mean, part of being a home is that it's theirs, that they're not forced to have a roommate they don't want. They're not forced to have a tiny bedroom. So the only place they hang out is a commons that maybe is full of people they don't want to hang out with. Maybe they don't want to be forced to eat all their meals with a bunch of other people. Maybe they'd rather eat their own dinner in their own apartment. So I think in our effort to make sure that people feel cared for and connected, that we may have erred in our model a little bit in kind of balancing the need for privacy and autonomy that make them feel like a whole adult person between, you know, having them become isolated and not connected to a community. I think we can put more people on this site in an apartment-style building and still have each person feel like they have a home. But they have more autonomy and more feeling like they have control over their life. Thanks for listening.
I was speaking with someone over the weekend about a model that is somewhere in the Commonwealth. It kind of goes to your point, John, where there are actually different levels of disabled individuals in this large home with multiple units. And, for example, the highly functional autistic residents are paid staff members to help others who are less functioning. And that was intriguing to me. Where was that? Oh, the person who told me about it wasn't specific as to where, but it was definitely interesting. I'll try to find out more. Bill Adams.
So a couple of thoughts. One is, I think it is innovative and less isolated to put two buildings together, right? It would take some agreements from folks to let us do that, but that begins to create a little community where people have autonomy and privacy, but also live with another group of people. And then my other point was, I think we'd have to ask Bill what he meant by that, accommodating all types. But I interpreted that as, you know, we would have flexibility to accommodate different types of people with substantial disability, but that it wouldn't necessarily be that the development would accommodate all types. Like if you're really good at one group of disabled people and you have a really good plan, and that plan is sustainable and stands out, then that community would probably support people with that disability. But we, to John's point, we can't know for sure what that disability is going to be right out of the gate. So that's kind of how I interpreted it, but we should ask him, of course.
That's my sense, Bill, as well, that in a way this process is driven by the organizations that respond at the RFP. Like this is what we do. This is what we're good at. This is our vision. And maybe when they present, maybe they've got five out of nine boxes checked, but maybe another group serves a different type of disabled adult. But they've got maybe eight out of nine boxes checked. So I think that's how this will go. But my sense, and tell me whether people disagree, but my sense is that we won't be putting in any report or RFP, that we're looking for, you know, highly functioning individuals versus less functioning. I think it's, are we in agreement that the process will dictate itself along those lines?
Or do people have a preference for more higher functioning residents? That's my hope, Tom. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think that a developer who's in this business already, this is what they do, like you said, Tom. This is what we do well, and we can pull this off. They're going to tell us what will work.
By the way, Brian, in the comment that somebody made, it might have been John. It reminded me of a comment you made to me many months ago relative to the project at St. Anne's. And I think you had commented to me about the idea of having some of the units over there, which are primarily dedicated to individuals who are 60 or over, who are low income, but have, you know, maybe one or two units for individuals with disabilities. Do you remember that? Right, yeah, and we talked about that with the Archdiocese. But, yeah, I mean, if we had a segment of the development, a wing, like a wing that would be developed, set aside for disabled folks, might actually be helpful for all involved. Yeah, and, Jean, is that what you were getting at before about the model of individual disabilities being placed in larger apartment buildings by the state? Is that what you were referring to? I've sort of lost the thread here of what it is you're asking. Well, I guess the question – go ahead, Stephanie. I was just wondering, are you talking about people with physical disabilities? Because that might actually be nice, you know, they'd have the proximity to the other people living there, and maybe that wing – but they wouldn't have the need for caregivers. I don't know. So, Jean, the topic was – I was just reminded of a conversation Brian and I had many months ago about the project that's going to be built next to St. Anne's Church. Yeah. And that project – and that's going to be housing, affordable housing for individuals who are age 60 and over. Yes. With low income. Yes. And Brian was chatting with me about the idea of having people with disabilities housed there as well. So, Brian did, in fact, reach out to the archdiocese about that idea, and I'm not sure whether it's being considered or not, but – here's John. Well, I think in senior facilities, they assume there's going to be disabilities because it's an age factor that you're going to need an elevator and you're going to need wider halls and wider doors and still showers and things like that. Because maybe everybody's 60, 65 when they move in, but 20 years from then, you're going to need all kinds of, you know, life assistance. You know, it's a little different when you have a broad age range and overlap with disability.
John Thomas? Yeah, so, again, I think we can move forward without having to pigeonhole ourselves into, you know, being wedded to a particular model. I mean, I keep hearing conversations, you know, reverting back to a particular model, whether it be apartments or group homes or whatever. But I think the guidance that we should decide on could be applicable to a wide array of programs, a wide array of types of housing models, right? I mean, you know, if I had to come up with a laundry list to give the select board, you know, what's the criteria that you're going to use when considering bids? Well, I would think that they would consider, you know, a bidder that demonstrates a strong track record of serving whatever client population they serve, that has a strong track record of managing programs. You know, Gene, you know, Gene, to your point that, I don't know how you'd say it, but invokes a strong, comfortable, home-like setting, for example, right? I mean, and then you could apply that to an apartment setting. You could, or it should be applicable to a group home setting. You know, we can dicker and debate about what models we have a personal preference for, but that's a hope and dream, I think, that would be applicable to any kind of model, right? I mean, and so other things would be, you know, a bidder that demonstrates, we've talked about this, demonstrates fiscal stability, a commitment to maybe conducting outreach to Wayland and neighboring communities, possibly with the hope of attracting interest amongst local families who could then advocate for inclusion in the residence. I mean, those are things that could be considered regardless of what the final configuration of the building looks like, right? I'm going to stop you there, John. Let's come back to that. I'm going to invite Mr. Gomes and Mr. Chines to join us at this time. Hi, Jonathan. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. Thanks so much for having us today. I appreciate you joining us, and I see Mr. Gomes is with us. Thanks, as well. Hi, Joe. Tom Fay here. Nice to see you.
Thanks for joining us this evening. No problem. So, gentlemen, I think you both have a sense as to what our committee is about. We're an advisory committee to the Wayland Select Board to make recommendations concerning a four-acre lot here in Wayland that Town Meeting has authorized the Select Board to develop, not with town money, not with town money, but with generally private money, or by a developer to house individual adults with disabilities. So, we've had, over a few months now, many different individuals come in who are in the industry to talk to us about their experiences and what they've learned and what they do. And we appreciate you joining us tonight. So, I turn it over to you, and feel free to tell us about yourselves and your organization. Absolutely. So, maybe we'll just start by way of introductions of ourselves, and then we do have a couple of slides that we put together just to help guide the discussion, but certainly we'll be as interactive as you would like us to be. So, just introducing myself, I'm Jonathan Chines, the Chief Operating Officer for VinFenn, which is one of the largest behavioral health and developmental services providers in Massachusetts. I'm new to the organization, have been in healthcare for a long time, but only with VinFenn since May. And outside of my time at VinFenn, I actually do serve in town government in Wakefield, where I live. And so, actually, we have a similar opportunity in Wakefield with a parcel of town-owned land that we're looking at opportunities for. And so, I, first of all, just appreciate the time that you all are spending as volunteers working on this and maybe taking notes on the process that you've taken as we think about our process in my town. And, Joe, do you want to introduce yourself? Yes, I'm Joe Gomes. I'm the Senior Vice President for Developmental and Brain Injury Services at VinFenn. And unlike Jonathan, I've been with the organizations going on 44 years.
Pretty much started off as a child. But, when I first started, the organization was $5 million, and we had very limited scope in the services that we provided. We're now over $320 million. And just in DDS alone, we operate over 120 programs, both for – with a full range of services. But the larger portion of that services is what we will be talking about, is residential services. And I'll leave it at that for now, and we can go into that PowerPoint and get further into some other details. Great. Let me just see if – oh, excellent. Let me pull up the PowerPoint.
All right. Are you able to see my screen? Yes. Yes.
Well, we started talking a little bit about the organization, VinFenn, but, you know, one of the things that I like to do is start with this slide of just laying out our mission, vision, and values. And I won't obviously read through all of this. There's content here that you can see. But, you know, there are two points that I want to highlight. One is that for us as an organization, we really are focused on serving individuals with a variety of challenges, whether those are intellectual and developmental disabilities, behavioral health conditions, substance use conditions. You know, we are not a developer, though, as we'll go through. We have developed and operate a very large number of residential programs. We really are oriented around this mission of providing services to individuals with life challenges. The second thing that I do want to highlight, because I do think that this is an important part of our mission as well, is that we are an organization that is very much focused on meeting the individuals that we serve where they are and making sure that they are involved in the process of figuring out what they need and what level of service we're able to provide. We are very focused on self-determination. We pride ourselves on being an organization that engages exceptionally closely with the individuals we serve and their families, if their families are involved, and really look at that as part and parcel of our mission, not just of working with individuals with challenges to transform their lives, but transforming their lives together. And so that third word in our tagline at the top of the slide is really important and really critical to our mission. So how does that translate in terms of what we actually do? Well, Joe alluded to some of this, but we've been around for just about 50 years. We were founded in 1977 as part of the broader deinstitutionalization movement in Massachusetts around getting individuals with behavioral health conditions, developmental disabilities, out of institutions and into settings where they were integrated into the community. Our name actually comes from the location of our first group home, which is still in operation at the corner of Vining Street and Fenwood Road in Boston. The organization at the time combined those two to come up with the name, and we've been operating as VinFen ever since then. Joe mentioned sort of our footprint, at least in terms of revenue. But just to give you a sense of the scope of where we are in terms of geography and programs, we do operate across eastern Massachusetts, including in some of the communities adjacent to Weyland. We also do have a small presence in Connecticut, though 90-plus percent of the individuals we serve are here in the Commonwealth. We're the largest contractor in Massachusetts with the Department of Mental Health, and we are not quite the largest with the Department of Developmental Services, but we're pretty close to the top there. And with our 3 to 500 employees, we serve about 14,000 people each year. Now, the folks that we serve sort of fall into a couple of different buckets. We'll go into some detail on the next slide just to give you a sense as to what our footprint looks like from a programmatic standpoint. But that footprint does include about 200 group residences serving about 1,100 people, roughly evenly split between individuals with serious and persistent mental illnesses and individuals with developmental disabilities. We operate 16-day in employment programs serving about 1,200 people. And we also have 27 contracted clinical outreach teams that serve about 2,700 people across eastern Massachusetts. We're known for a couple of things in the state. One is that we're known for being incredibly innovative and forward-thinking when it comes to the quality of services that we provide. And again, that does include being individually focused in the interventions that we manage. We also are known in the state as serving a particularly high-need population. That certainly doesn't describe every individual we serve. We serve a broad continuum of individuals based on the level of acuity of need. But we are known in Massachusetts and Connecticut for serving some of the most complex individuals within the state. So this next slide just gives you an overview of some of our core services. It doesn't cover the whole range of services that we offer, but it does include some of the larger and more significant programs that have been established within VINFEN for a while. I mentioned on the residential side about 1,100 individuals that we serve, roughly half of those through something called the Adult Community Clinical Services Program offered by the Department of Mental Health, as well as about half through adult long-term residential services funded through the Department of Developmental Services. And we'll talk more about that in a second. We also offer a wide range of non-residential programs. I mentioned the 2,700 individuals that participate in a set of intensive 24-7 behavioral health and peer support programs that we operate. Within the developmental services space, we also provide support for families and caregivers with developmental services, as well as aussetism needs through information and referral services, networking events, other connections with resources. And again, we do have a set of day habilitation programs that we operate that really provide a therapy-based set of interventions for individuals with IDD and acquired brain injuries. One thing that we also do offer that I haven't mentioned here, just because geographically it's outside of the scope of what we're talking about, is that we also do have a behavioral health practice, including a 24-7 behavioral health center up in Lowell, that is part of the network of community behavioral health centers that the state set up over the last few years. So that's a little bit about our overall footprint. I'm going to turn it over to Joe just to talk specifically about DDS residential services and some of the specific needs that we're seeing within the population of late. Yes, thank you, Jonathan. Very briefly, residential, if you're not familiar with adult long-term residential services, it's pretty much for DDS philosophically, it's really developing a home for individuals with developmental disabilities or brain injury. And the referral basis is through DDS for both. Typically, it's four to five individuals that live together, and we provide 24-7 staffing levels based on the needs of the individuals. VINFIN is very collaborative, and their network is what they call the ISP team or their network of supports. That includes family members, guardians, other providers. So we work as a team to really foster community and social connections and build the skills that they need to live more independently. We provide unique services, medication administration, and nursing care as needed. Our staff are there to support the individuals in gaining skill sets and developing independent skills to be able to live more independent in their home. We work with the individuals around looking at developing goals and objectives that meet their specific needs and their interest. Additionally, we provide, as Jonathan mentioned earlier, a very tailored approach. Not any one home is the same, that it's all really based on the collective needs and the individual needs of the persons in the particular home. The staffing schedules may vary. The things that we work on with individuals may differ. But one thing is true, and we do work as a collective team involving families, guardians, and DDS in the facilitation of services. We have the next slide, please. Jonathan, the next slide. I was going to say, it might be delayed, I did flip it. Hopefully, you can see the next slide now. As Jonathan alluded to earlier, we're not a developer, so conceptually, we would not be in a position to develop the entire parcel, but we envision being a partner in developing potentially a portion of that parcel to meet the needs of the town and also the individuals that we support. The three areas of concentration currently, and we do anywhere from three to five developments each year in various, and we're in various states of development in this fiscal year as well. One area is the turning 22 population. As you may know, adult services for DDS starts at the age of 22, and that's when they become responsible for funding. And again, I won't bore you with the other details. Each year, there's a group that's identified, and typically, we have been concentrating on developing residential options for that turning 22 population. And the next grouping is acquired brain injury, and these again, the four to five people per home. And in here, it's the same adult long-term living. We're developing not only an area to provide services, but we're developing a home for these individuals long-term. In here, it could be people that need complex supports, mobility needs, maybe in wheelchairs. We may need to install Hoyer lifts. And typically, these are nursing models where we have 24-7 nursing. And the other thing that we're doing is looking at an emergency respite program that we're trying to relocate, which is currently nine individuals. And these are for short-term options for individuals that may be either in transitioning from family homes or in crisis somewhere else, and we're transitioning them into more permanent housing. So this is something that we run currently in another town, and we're trying to relocate the site. And just as context for that, Joe, the average stay in emergency respite is typically a few months, certainly some variability. But when we talk about emergency respite, it's not necessarily days or weeks. It is sort of a medium-term placement. Correct, yeah. Well, just to sort of close out and then open it up to questions, the last slide, which hopefully you'll see in a second if you can't see it yet. You know, we spent some time just sort of brainstorming a couple of questions that, you know, based on, you know, listening into, you know, the 10 minutes or so of the meeting, you know, that I, the discussion that I, that I heard just when I logged in. Sounds like things that you're, you're very much actively considering, but, you know, wanted to highlight a couple of questions that I think both help an organization like VINFEN or other organizations understand sort of what you're, you're trying to look at, but also questions, again, if I put on my, my town hat, you know, that, that I'd want to think through as well. They include, what are the uses that you'd want to see? Are there particular unmet needs or portions of the population that you'd want to serve or address? Secondly, how are you looking to develop the parcel? You know, four acres is a, is a pretty big parcel of land. You know, certainly for, for myself living in a more built up community than, than Wayland, you know, that you could do a lot with four acres in a lot of places. And so are you looking for a single partner? Are you looking at potentially splitting it up or creating different purposes? What kind of ownership structure are you envisioning? Is it a sale or a lease? If it's a sale, are there deed restrictions or use restrictions that you'd want to put in play? How does this tie into other resources that the town may have, whether it's through the Affordable Housing Trust, the Community Preservation Act? And then finally, you know, are there, are there any specific zoning or permitting considerations either that exist already or things that you'd want to put in place as you think about the appropriate use of, of the parcel going forward? So again, I don't think I'm, we're putting any questions out on this slide that you aren't already thinking about, but I just wanted to highlight some of those as, as, as things that help define what you may want to do going forward. So with that, let me stop sharing my screen. And that, that was just sort of the formal slides that we had, but really wanted to open it up for any questions that you had for us around what it is that we do or ideas that, you know, we might have as we think about the property that you're looking at. Great. Thank you, Jonathan and Joe. John Thomas, any questions or comments? You're muted, John. Sorry. Thanks for presenting. Appreciate your presentation. Could you talk a little bit about projects that you've been sort of at the inception point previously? Um, you mentioned that you don't build homes, but how would you approach, uh, an opportunity like this? Would you, uh, enter into a partnership with a developer? Do you have existing partnerships? How, how? Yeah, we, um, we, um, we do, as I mentioned, uh, anywhere from three to five developments a year. That's just within the DS that I'll talk about. Yeah, we do have, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh CIL programs, that's a corporation that does limited arrangements with providers, and we enter, they build it, we lease it, and after 30 years of ownership, we assume the title. So we do have a quite extensive experience in developing homes. As I mentioned, we have a lot of the maintenance is done by our internal facilities crews, so we do have quite a range of resources available to us to actually take very complex projects through the finish line. Yeah. And I think, you know, when we reference sort of not being a development company, you know, the way that I would think about or frame that sort of context, maybe with a little comment with a little bit more detail is, you know, if you had a vision of on this four parcel space, you were looking for, you know, a couple of programs for individuals with developmental disabilities, some general affordable housing, and, you know, kind of more of an apartment style thing. You know, we wouldn't be the entity that would pull all of that together, but, you know, we are used to, and in fact, you know, between Joe's division and our psychiatric rehabilitation division, you know, last year we did, I think it was 12, somewhere between 12 and 15 new developments, and that included either purchases and rehabs of existing homes that we retrofitted to meet our needs. It did include some ground-up construction for properties that we own, as well as, you know, some ground-up construction or rehabilitations with property owners with whom we, developers with whom we partnered. So we do have the ability to work with a number of flexible arrangements, but again, just thinking about the total sort of gestalt vision that you'd have for the parcel, if it was something larger than the types of programs that were organized to operate, you know, we would envision, if we were involved, being kind of part of a larger partnership and not necessarily the driver of, you know, something that was more intensive or involved than the types of programs that we operate. And we do do work with developers that have experience in doing multiple phases of construction. So we, as VINFIN, may not be the principal in that, but we could be a partner in working with a contractor that's doing the entire development. And so we have done that. We've worked with a number of developers over the years to really bring major projects into bear. We did work early on in my career with Olmstead, and we were developing out something in Roxbury. We ended up not being involved in a particular project, but we worked through planning of a nursing home and other phases of that particular project. So we have taken on some very large partnerships with developers, and either were a party to the service element within that development, or at least had that collaboration with the developer.
Thank you. Jean, any questions? I was interested to see that you do programming with autistic clients, but you didn't mention housing for autistic clients in your chart. Right now, there isn't any funding for autistic housing for adults. Their services are relegated to today's services, and there's a cap on the amount of services that they provide. And we do provide residential services for people that are duly diagnosed. They may have a secondary diagnosis of IDD and autism, but the spectrum disorders alone diagnosis, they are currently not providing resources to do residential development for adults. I would also say sort of the dual diagnosis may not just be sort of something that falls within the developmental disability space, but again, as we look at some of our DMH-funded programs, there's a pretty high percentage of individuals in those programs that may have a dual diagnosis with autism as well. So we do provide, we do have run an autism center, which is pretty much a resource center, and we do a lot of community connections, but those are all children. So we do have a lot of experience with people with autism, or individuals that fall on the spectrum of disorders. But for adult services, it's pretty limited to day services, or they have that dual diagnosis. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Brian, any questions or comments? Yeah, thank you, John and Joe, for your very impressive agency. One of your questions you had for us on the visual was asking us what population we want to serve, and we're trying to figure that out. We haven't, we've been struggling with that question. So I ask you as a, as a agency that has done this in the past, how would you go about evaluating what the need of, of, in a community is, and what would be feasible to build in a community? Yeah. So, oh, go ahead, Joe. Yeah. No, I, I was going to say, I think, you know, I, I'd reference back to the, the slide that Joe presented, where we, we looked at those, those sort of three populations, the turning 22, acquired brain injury, and emergency respite populations, we found from our experience that that is sort of the sweet spot where both the level of greatest need seems to be in terms of demand for services, as well as, candidly, the availability of, of funding from the Department of Developmental Services. They've put a premium on those, because those are the populations that they're also struggling to find placement for. You know, in both cases, you know, the turning 22 population, obviously there's a cohort of individuals that are turning 22 every year. Um, and, and so, you know, that population isn't getting any smaller, um, on the brain injury side, because of the level of medical intensity for a lot of those programs, it's really, really hard to find suitable, uh, properties to be able to serve them, places where you can have handicap accessibility, where you can have, if you need Hoyer, Hoyer lifts and things like that. Uh, and so, from what we've seen and, you know, what, what we've observed in terms of the, the level of demand for services and the, the level of requests for referrals from the Department of Developmental Services, those are the two populations that, that really do, uh, pop out at this point. There, there are certainly other areas where there's need, sometimes, though, as Joe mentioned, the funding isn't there, um, but, but those two, two populations, plus the respite population, are the ones where we're seeing that combination of, of need and available resources. Yeah, we're trying to, um, tailor something that would somehow have a preference or serve the town of Wayland community. That may not be possible with DDS, but, uh, um, that's in the back of our mind, and that was the inception of this thing, was to, to serve local kids, young people. And I think, I think, I think that is the philosophy of DDS of, uh, typically, uh, providing services in the community that people live in. Um, so, uh, obviously there would need to be a lot of consultation with DDS around number one, need. Uh, number two, uh, they go through a saturation, uh, assessment so that, uh, uh, we don't want to saturate a particular area, like having two grown, two group homes, you know, in the same neighborhood, uh, not that they don't have the right to live wherever they want. It's, it's a matter of, of, of being sensitive to the community, uh, and not overburdening a community with, uh, um, um, I, I, I think that, uh, those kind of, of inquiries, if we were to pursue, uh, or, or you would be interested in, in inviting them to do that, would be the first kind of discussions. Uh, we're very familiar with, uh, uh, the DDS area that, uh, support your, uh, that your town is included in. It's the central Middlesex, uh, area, uh, uh, uh, which is part of the, the region six, greater metro, uh, Boston region. So, we do have homes in that particular region and, and, and as Jonathan mentioned, in neighboring, uh, homes, uh, neighboring communities. So, we're very familiar with the area and with the players, uh, uh, uh, that kind of drive the funding for, for services, both on the DS and the, uh, uh, uh, uh, the brain injury, uh, populations. And, and we would also have to look at, because one of the things that we, uh, strive to do is to fit into a community. Uh, you know, if in fact, uh, uh, uh, the, the, the community is, uh, very affluent, uh, and, uh, or, or we, we want to, we don't want to stand out. We don't want to, to be, uh, uh, uh, so we try to tailor our developments to, to fit into the, the, the makeup of that particular neighborhood or community. So, that would be another consideration, uh, for example, for brain injury, uh, because of immobility issues, uh, uh, typically it's a one-story, uh, home. Uh, uh, all the services on, uh, are our one floor, but we have adopt, uh, uh, adopted so that if the, the neighborhood is typically a two, a two-level home community or neighborhood, uh, we will design the home to have the major, uh, uh, portion of the home be services on the, the, the, the first floor and then we have office space in this, in the, the second part of the, or the second level of the home so that the home doesn't stand out, uh, uh, and fits into the, the, the makeup of the, the particular neighborhood. Uh, so we have done those kinds of, of developments and, and there are a lot of considerations, uh, again, typically for a turning 22 population, younger population, uh, we can build a garrison. We can build pretty much anything that we, uh, that, that accommodates the people that we're supporting there, uh, mobility typically isn't an issue there. Uh, so, again, it, it really depends on what you're looking for as far as the, uh, uh, the type of neighborhood that this fossil is on and, uh, the, the neighboring, uh, uh, infrastructure. Yeah, I, I think I, I would just add two things. Um, you know, whenever we develop a new program or, or look at, uh, creating a new program, we, we work very, very closely with DDS. Um, you know, because ultimately, I mean, these are services that are closed referral services. They are managed through DDS. And so it's important to make sure that we're developing something that fits within their need. You know, we don't know, we haven't had the conversation with DDS, but, um, you know, certainly a community like Wayland is one where you, you generally don't see a lot of, uh, residential programs for DDS just because the cost of housing is, is pretty high. Um, and so I, I think that they would be favorably inclined. Again, I, I can't say for sure, but I think that they would be favorably inclined to, you know, working with us in some creative way to, you know, meet the needs of your community. Again, given that, you know, it's, it's very difficult for an agency like ours, otherwise, uh, to, to come into a community, given just the, the cost of real estate. Um, the second thing that I, I want to make is, as we point that I want to reinforce is we also do, you know, when we open up a program, you know, we want the individuals who live there to be part of the, to, to be part of the community, even if it's not where they're originally from. Um, we want them to be engaged with the community. I mean, this isn't, this is a home. We have all these services that are there, but I mean, this is where these individuals live. And so, you know, we want them to be, you know, kind of going downtown and, you know, going out to get, you know, to, to dinner. If, you know, if that's what they want to do, we want them to use the library. We want them to use the parks. Um, you know, we want them to find volunteer opportunities if that's something that, you know, they're, they're able to do. Uh, and so as we think about the, the little community that we would create within a program within Wayland, we want to be mindful of, you know, making sure that that little community is also integrated within the larger community as a whole. Um, yeah, I'm just, you know, that's been my largest stumbling block is that we're serving Wayland residents. I mean, the town of Wayland is contributing a significant resource to this. And, you know, I hear as I work at the housing authority and we hear from parents all the time concerned about their, uh, soon to be adult kids turning 22 and the aging in place and, uh, the parents are becoming more and more elderly. But it seems like, especially with DDS, that the local preference isn't there. I mean, it's a, it seems like a long shot if that, if that, if it ever did occur. I think they try. Um, I don't think they always are able to succeed. And again, I think part of that is because there is a mismatch between where programs are located and where the population is. But again, given that, you know, was, we talk about Wayland, given that it's, it's not a community where there, there is a large saturation of programs that might be a different conversation with DDS than if we were talking about, you know, creating something in a community that, that already had some saturation. Yeah. Too bad we couldn't get those assurances up front. It's true. No, but I, I think to Jonathan's point, uh, we do work with, with the department, uh, uh, to, to make sure that, uh, and families have a lot of involvement, uh, especially the guardians and the individuals themselves. Uh, we typically, when we get a referral, we go through a screening process, uh, to make sure that, uh, we can support them, uh, uh, in, in the particular home, uh, uh, looking at their, their, their specific needs, uh, so that we're, we're matching up the services, uh, to, uh, really, uh, derive success, uh, for all of the individuals. And the other thing that, that we do very, uh, in partnership with DDS and the families is making sure that we have good pair matches, uh, in the particular home. Uh, because again, uh, we found through a lot of experiences that not everybody can live together. Uh, so I think we, uh, we need to kind of, uh, do our due diligence and making sure that, uh, we're working with, uh, DDS. The families, uh, to make sure that we have a good pair match, uh, that, uh, uh, totally enhances the success and the, uh, the quality of life in that particular home for everyone involved. Uh, uh, and I think they do consider, uh, where families live, uh, because the families are, uh, typically very involved, uh, and, and are part of the selection process. Uh, we have families come out and do visits. We have families do a tour of the, the home before they even are considered, uh, to be, uh, a referral for that particular home. Thank you. Uh, uh, a couple questions. Thanks again for being here. Um, uh, one question I may have missed it is how, how it actually works. Does the, do you partner with a developer, the developer builds it, and then you lease it from the depart, the developer for some period of time and then you own it, or how does that actually work? How does that actually work and kind of related to that because it is a bit of a risky endeavor. How do you see the DDS landscape these days? And, um, for some folks we've heard, it's pretty stable. If you have a relationship and a commitment, it's good. Other people have said, there's a lot of clouds on the horizon. It's kind of scary. And, um, this is a very uncertain time. And so both how do you approach risk and then how do you see the broader DDS risk right now would be great to hear about. Thank you so much. Well, I, I think to, to Jonathan's point, uh, people for, uh, with brain, with brain injury, for example, uh, that would be the, a sudden development around brain injury, uh, came at, uh, through a Hutchinson lawsuit. Um, so that was a pretty much a class action lawsuit. Uh, uh, a lot of folks that had acquired brain injury had languished many for many years in nursing homes. Uh, and then the department was sued and there was a class action, a lawsuit that was settled, uh, to provide, again, nursing home level or medically, uh, viable options in the community for a lot of these folks. Uh, and there, uh, are people each year that are becoming eligible for services. And again, not everyone with a brain injury lives in a group home. A lot of them live on their own or with some supports and, and similar to, to DDS. And the turning 22 population is a, a mandate, uh, as well. Uh, as well. So, uh, there has to be some provision for services for those individuals. Uh, and, and VINFEN, as Jonathan mentioned, we provide, uh, services to the most, some, some of the more challenging individuals. Uh, uh, those services are, in my opinion, are very stable, uh, cause it, it's kind of a, a have to do. Uh, it, it's not, uh, uh, something that DDS is going to put on the back burner because it's a mandate. Uh, uh, uh, uh, yes, I think we, we all are concerned about the future of, of surfaces in general for, uh, Medicaid eligibility and so on and so forth. Uh, but I think, uh, as the, for the populations that we support, uh, uh, there may be struggles and barriers, but overall, I think, uh, the services will stay intact. Yeah, I think the nature of the legal settlements that, um, mandated a lot of the services that are offered through DDS are, you know, they, they provide a level of, um, security of funding, even in a, a challenging fiscal environment. That's, that's not the case with all of the services that we provide. You know, we are, for example, on the Department of Mental Health side, um, you know, we are seeing some, um, some retrenchment, retrenchment in terms of, uh, what they're able to fund. You know, we developed a lot of programs with the Department of Mental Health over the last 18 to 24 months. You know, that, that development is, is running dry because of funding constraints there. But again, it's a little bit of a different world with, with developmental services, um, on the way that we handle development, I would say it is, it is very, um, situationally dependent. So we have, you know, probably a couple of dozen models that we worked through, uh, over the years with the 200 or so programs that we operate. Um, and so I think, um, as we think about a potential opportunity in Wayland, it would also depend upon what it is that, that you're looking to do. I mean, if there's a larger, um, kind of development plan for the parcel that we're, you know, we would be part of, you know, we would be thinking about, you know, working with that developer and potentially occupying a property on a lease. We do have circumstances though, and actually we, we probably own, uh, slightly more than 50% of the properties that we, uh, where we have residential programs. So we, we also do, uh, own and develop a number of properties on our own in partnership with, um, you know, the contractors that, uh, that we, we typically use. So a lot of flexibility there. We, because we're a large organization with a lot of scale, um, you know, there, there aren't a whole lot of, uh, development scenarios that we haven't worked on. Um, and so that, that does give us, you know, because we have a strong and experienced real estate team that does give us the flexibility to work in a number of different areas that, um, you know, might be a little more challenging for an organization that didn't have that, that same scope. Yeah. And, and, and again, we, uh, to Jonathan points, we, we have a number of different scenarios. As I mentioned, the HUD programs, we have several HUD programs, uh, that we've, uh, uh, have developed, uh, we work with CIL, which is that, that private agency that, uh, does specifically provide housing for people with disabilities. And they, we, we enter into a 30 year lease with that. And as I mentioned, uh, uh, uh, a capital lease, uh, so that we, uh, retain the, uh, the home after the, the, the, the time is lapsed. Uh, we have, uh, uh, arrangements with, uh, townships and, uh, housing authorities, uh, within the towns. We have several of those that we occupy the services, and we have longstanding supports, whether in Boston or Watertown. So we have several of those kinds of arrangements as well. And the scenario around we work with develops where we lease the property back, and then we have other situations that they develop the property, and we purchase at an agreed-upon price. And, again, all of our occupancy costs are determined by the department. There are caps on all of our occupancy rates. So, again, and that's something that came into effect with Chapter 257, which is our legislative rate structure for services for all of disability services going forward.
Do you have a question? I wondered if you could talk about projects you have that are higher occupancy. So, I mean, your property is what's the most clients and residents. Yeah. I mentioned the respite program as an example. For a brain injury, if you did actually like a duplex environment, you could actually do four and four, but that needs central office development or approval. So you could do up to eight individuals. It has to then be two addresses. It can't be one address. We're restricted by federal mandates around CMS, which pretty much restricts no more than five unrelated individuals living in one address. So, but if you had, if you developed a duplex with an A and B side, then you could do four and four. Yeah. A good example of that is there's a project that we're developing right now where it is a two-family house where we'll have a turning 22 floor and then a floor for individuals with acquired brain injuries, so two addresses, but the same building in a duplex, and we'll have a total of eight individuals there. We do also have some apartment-style projects that we've done, more so within the behavioral health population. Typically there, when we're talking about individuals that need 24-7 support, we would typically kind of stay within that four to six individuals per home range. We found with a lot of trial and error and experience over the years that that is sort of the optimal number of people to maintain in a 24-7 setting, both to have enough people where you have the scale to have the staff there that you need, but also to make sure that you can provide that individual attention. We do, though, however, also have some programs, again, more on the behavioral health side for individuals that are maybe not quite ready to live on their own, but ready to step away from a 24-7 setting where they'll be living in, you know, their own apartment or efficiency within a building where you might have 15 or 20 units and maybe not 24-7 support, but, you know, 18-hour-a-day support or 16-hour-a-day support so that there are resources on site basically during waking hours for individuals that need that level of attention. Again, we see less of that on the developmental services side, both because the, you know, the frequency of sort of graduation into a less intensive setting on the developmental services side is just less common, but also because some of the legal constraints that Joe mentioned as well. Do you need a follow-up?
Yeah. On the people who are 22 and aging out of the system, are there meaningful groupings within that set of people that, you know, kind of form the basis for housing design for you? Can you give us any sense? They've got, I know they're highly varied, but there must be some meaningful groupings where people have similar service needs. Yeah, I think that's what I described earlier about developing a pair matches. So everyone does have an individualized service plan, but often the grouping is homogeneous enough that they have very similar kinds of needs. Regarding, and then the staffing is adjusted based on that variation of needs. You can have, again, a lot of staffing to support the four or five individuals in there, or you can have minimal staffing to support their needs based on their level of function and their needs and challenges within that particular home. So we tried as much as possible to pair people up that have, again, common interests, common skill needs, so that the staff that we provide to support them are able to support them in a similar manner because of their common interests. But that's as much as we do as far as developing, again, the pair matches for them. A lot of it is also social, and we try as much as possible. In some cases, we do have mixed gender. In other cases, it's all men or all women. So it really depends on what the individuals need, and the fact – and UDS also has a lot of say in their referral process because they will say, all right, we're opening up a home in Wayland for five individuals, and they will scrutinize their turning 22 population, for example, and say, okay, we have three people that have families in Wayland and two that have them in Holliston, and these are good – they're good pair matches. But the important part of it is not where they come from, but what they – how they best feel that they will interact with each other and kind of have common interests and kind of similar needs. So we're not providing someone that has visual issues here and also three people that have medical needs. So it's got to be kind of more homogeneous so that we can better support them with the staffing proposal that we submit to TDS.
Thank you. Stephanie, any questions or comments? Oh, no, but thank you very much. This has been very helpful to hear about. I've got a couple of questions. Jonathan, in your slides, you referenced a clubhouse. Can you talk about that? How many of your properties have clubhouses, and could you tell us how they work? Sure. So the clubhouse is actually a – it's actually a discrete model of service for individuals with either mental health conditions or developmental services. There's actually an international clubhouse association that has sort of created this model. What it is, is it's intended to be basically a member-driven sort of rehabilitative day program for individuals with challenges. It is lightly staffed. Obviously, we will have program staff there that basically help to facilitate what goes on there. But the intent behind the model is that the individuals who are members of it really work together to figure out what it is that they want to do. What kind of meals do they want to serve during the day? What are the activities that they want to do? What are the types of employment opportunities that are there? Typically, a clubhouse will have somewhere between 100 and 120 active members. That doesn't mean all those members show up every day. But, you know, you might see in a – you know, depending on the geography in the area, if you've got 100 members in the clubhouse, you know, kind of an average daily census of 40 people that show up, either to participate in skills training activities, some employment work, or just to be there for socialization. They're generally located – they're not located kind of, you know, at the same location as our residential programs. They are typically located in more of a commercial area where they're accessible for people who either are living in other residential programs or living in non-VinFen settings. We operate seven of those programs, though, you know, spanning from the Merrimack Valley down to the Cape. I want to follow up on one of Brian Bosch's questions.
I know you're not a developer, but you work closely with developers. And the sense I have from this committee is that when we – the recommendation to the select board is not necessarily, in the RFP, specifying the nature of disabilities, the degree of disabilities, high functioning, middle functioning, low functioning. Is that typically what you see in RFPs from – that you've come across?
Go ahead, Joe. We're a piece from – from developers? Well, here we're a municipality, right? So we would issue an RFP. And maybe you haven't dealt with many municipalities issuing RFPs for this type of housing. But that's kind of what I'm getting at. Yeah. We respond to – I guess from a municipality, you can include whatever you want in the RFP, as long as you are – do so in a non-discriminatory manner, so that to specify a particular population,
you can ask for what population that the agency is considering developing for. But I think we need to be very careful about not including language that's discriminatory or identify the population specifically.
We have had RFPs in the past, not necessarily from a municipality, but other entities around development. We did a development of housing development for DDS at one time for a state op that we controlled. And we worked with the developer to plan it, construct it, and worked with a contractor to deliver that particular product. And then we managed it. But that's really the only example of most of our RFPs that we respond to are from the funders. Because, again, we're first and foremost a service provider and not a developer. I think the other thing that I would suggest is there is some nexus between the perspective that you have in terms of physically what do you want on the site with what's the population that you would serve. So, for example, you know, if you wanted to create, you know, some level of density so that you were able to, you know, serve a larger number of individuals, that probably lends itself to, you know, a population that is more independent, that has a lesser level of need. You know, again, when we're operating an acquired brain injury or turning 22 program, you know, we're talking for an individual housing structure, you know, whether it's half of a duplex or a freestanding house, we're talking about serving four to five individuals. So very, very different than if you were looking at something that was more of like a, you know, again, an apartment complex or something like that. And my last question is, are you, is your organization for profit or non-profit? We're a not-for-profit. Okay. So do all the members have questions or comments? Before we bid adieu, Jonathan and Joe, hearing none, again, gentlemen, this has been very helpful to us. A lot of great information gives us a lot of good things to think about. And as we head down our homestretch, and we thank you for your time and for appearing tonight. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity, and also thank you for the thorough work that you're doing. It's great to see you. And again, I know it's worked from a lot of volunteers. I know that can be bankless. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bert. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thanks. Take care. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thoughts or comments on what we just heard? Anybody?
Let me answer. I thought it was interesting that they mentioned that it would potentially be a minefield, a discriminatory minefield to specify a disability. I hadn't even really thought of that, but it's a really, really good point. We really could get into hot water if we went down that road too far. The other thing that I think is important to bear in mind, which I guess I've thought about before, but I hadn't given it probably enough weight, is the fact that the more vulnerable populations, generally speaking, are the beneficiaries of class action lawsuits. And as a result, their operational funding for the lifetime of the individual is oftentimes, for the most part, much more secure and protected than for somebody that doesn't fall into that category. And if, you know, I hate to say it, but if we are giving some weight in consideration to the long-term fiscal stability of a particular program, that's something to think about. Yeah, John, you mentioned that in prior meetings about being too specific about which population we're going to serve, more in terms of offending one group versus another. But I think that's a really good point.
Let's turn back to our discussion before these gentlemen joined us. John, I think you had the floor at that point. I didn't want to prevent you from making any further points you were making at the time.
So we were still sort of talking about general vision and guidance that we would think about providing to the select board, I think. Is that what we were sort of talking about? Right. And my sense, John, is that you might have a different vision than, say, two homes with, you know, three to five or three to seven people per home at this property. Is that fair? Honestly, Tom, no. Again, I'm going to stick to my guns, regardless of what the final product looks like. I don't want to limit myself, or I don't think this committee should spend a lot of time trying to think about what that final configuration is going to look like. I mean, I may have personal preferences. I just think it's a waste of my time and this committee's time for me to explain what they are, because I don't think that's the right thing for us to do. I mean, I'm happy to share what I think. I just don't think it's relevant. I don't think it's important. It doesn't matter what I think the final residence ought to look like or how many people ought to be served in the residence versus what tools are we giving the select board to employ when considering bidders that are going to come out of the woodwork, hopefully, to put a proposal on the table. What are the important things that they ought to be considering, you know, Bill Adams is going to talk about some environmental issues and concerns and things that are important to him, which I think are probably great. I think those are the types of things, regardless of what the final program or the final configuration looks like, that we ought to be advocating for. Well, let me, before I get to you, Bill Adams, I just want to follow up with one of your points, but wouldn't it be helpful to the select board to hear, for example, thoughts from our committee on the number of residents per structure based on what we've heard from other organizations and from what the law is, right? And what, for example, Vinton just said, the feds won't permit them to deal with homes with more than five residents, right? That isn't the case with the people in Norwood, the Roach Family Foundation. I think they have one house with nine, and I think the difference is that they're a for-profit organization, and so there are different rules. So I guess on that point, do you think it would be helpful for the select board to at least get a sense from our committee on that point, John? I think it would be helpful, Tom, for them to hear what we've heard in terms of what's out there, okay? Sure, a for-profit development that has fewer regulatory hurdles to have to overcome may have some advantages in terms of density, to your point. On the flip side, I would make the argument that a development, maybe not that particular developer and those particular programs, but I would say in general, you're rolling the dice and taking a greater chance with long-term fiscal stability of a program like that. I mean, that's just my own personal feeling. I don't know if the rest of the folks on this committee agree with me or not, but the point is, yeah, sure, to provide them with some maybe a little bit more clearly defined examples of models that are currently out there, along with the track record of, okay, how long have those programs been viable? Are they new programs, are they new models, are they old models? Sure, but I think at the end of the day, the natural vetting process of people approaching the town with actual bids is going to kind of self-select, you know, whether or not it's a DDS-funded and regulated group home versus some of these more unconventional, unconventional, more private, more private, funded, and organized programs. I'm going to go to Bill next, and then we'll go to Gene, and then Stephanie. So, Bill? I definitely hear what you're saying, but I think we can say more about size and design because it's tightly tied to functional status. Like, if you're going to have folks who are substantially disabled, I'm kind of liking getting back to that earlier older people having disabilities conversation. I'm kind of thinking about what I just went through with my dad, where there's independent living, there's assisted living, and then there's skilled nursing. And I think this type of living in the smaller houses is more like skilled nursing, but it has a community, and it's a little different, but it does have that level of nursing support and 24-7 requirement. And that, by necessity, requires a smaller structure in terms of number of units. It doesn't prevent having privacy for individuals who live there, a private space. It doesn't prevent a lot of other features, and it certainly doesn't limit itself to one condition, but it does tend to lead towards one size building. And we've learned that that type of building with that type of level of support is financially sustainable within current models. So, you know, the committee is saying that recommending something like that as being both feasible and consistent and also lends itself to a relatively isolated space where a larger unit of 20 or 30 people is better in a more walkable space or could require a lot of parking. Or, you know, you could imagine things that would also say that larger building isn't necessarily a good fit. So, I guess I wouldn't rule out saying something about the size of the building and the level of complexity of the people living there that we would recommend, but we certainly wouldn't have to say what specific conditions have to be there. Could I just respond? So, Bill, I actually agree with you. I don't think what you're saying and what I just said is inconsistent at all. I think I would actually take issue with just the characteristics of a structure going into that parcel that was going to be serving 35 residents. I think that would be out of place. I think it would be out of character. That's just my own personal thought. I think it's probably consistent with what you just said. But I don't think who's to say who is being served. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the size of the structure as being consistent or inconsistent with the part of town, the neighborhood, the zoning for that particular area of the town. I think that's perfectly fine for us to comment on. Thanks. Jean Milburn? A number of thoughts. I guess I'm guessing that this asset that we're talking about, this piece of land, is worth about a million bucks. And, you know, it's a question of how do we suggest the, you know, what benefit is the community going to get for a million dollar asset? You know, I keep wanting to put more disabled people on this site, one way or another. It's a lot of money for the community to probably donate to get this kind of project built. And I'd like to see the community to get as many disabled people supported on the site as possible. So that's one thought. The other thought is probably in the report we should say something about opportunities to subdivide the property. Um, it could be divided in half or it's a, it's an R60. So you could do an acre and a half lot and a two and a half acre lot. So maybe we're talking about two different vendors building a project that is in their scope of business. Um, and maybe they're not, um, the projects aren't that similar, you know, that one targets a higher need group and another one, um, targets a group that has more ability to, um, go out and do things like have a job. Um, well, that's it for the moment. Um, Stephanie. Well, I'm thinking if we, if we laid it out as, as, as suggestions of what principles would be good, what boxes to tick as far as what the, you know, what the, um, the thing would provide that under those, we could mention certain models as taking more of those boxes than other models. Um, fitting with the, um, fitting with the community, um, you know, able to, uh, support and also support people that do not have another, um, option in the local area too. Um, for instance, if we're an elderly person might, might, might want to live in one of the, um, other place, you know, the places that are already there, uh, for elderly people. Um, and it's, but it's just kind of organizing it rather than limiting it to a certain model or two is, is, is, you know, having an opportunity to say this model fits many of these criteria. Um, and this one doesn't, you know, it does two things. Another one does 10 of the things, um, kind of organizing it that way, but still putting the information out there. So the select board understands, um, which type of model would, would actually, um, be more desirable when they see what the options are in front of them that have been presented. Bill Adams, you're muted, Bill. Following up on Jean's point. Um, I think we, we don't necessarily have to measure the amount of good we're doing by the number of people we help, right? Because if we help someone with twice the disability complexity, if we help half as many people with twice the level of complexity, we're doing the equivalent amount of good, in my opinion. Um, so how you measure the amount of good you're doing, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be based only on the number of people. It could include the complexity. Um, and I think that's part of what we're wrestling with, right? Is do we, um, do we, is it better to help 30 people with, who are relatively more functional or, you know, 10 or 15 people who have much higher need? And, um, I think for this committee to say a little bit about that would, about what we think, based on what we've heard, would be helpful to the selectmen. Yeah, I, I have in, in the report included that the estimate of underserved people in the Commonwealth with disabilities is 70,000 people, you know, I guess I'd be happy to include any other measurements that might help. Well, I think we've learned one thing, right, that disability doesn't mean the same thing, right, to everybody. It's, it's, it's, it means a lot of different things, um, but we also know that some type of disability is reliably supported by DDS and some isn't, I guess that's one thing, another thing we've learned. Jean, um, I think somewhere in your report, you, you mentioned, you do mention the word barn. Yeah. So, um, do you think an RFP that would include suggesting a large common space, possibly a third structure for an arts type center for the residents who live there, but an openness to engage with, um, other way on residents? Right. Yeah. So, I, I've offered, yeah, I've offered examples in two days. There's two different ways for the select board to look at. One is examples of, um, trying to do analyses of what would fit on the site under all these different regulations. And so I think I have six different scenarios and that the analysis that I've done so far was mostly driven by financing. And that, you know, the, the, the, they would be eligible, uh, some of them for DDS, some of them not from DDS, but from the other sources of funding, but really looking to make sure that we didn't build, accept a proposal for something that might not be financially stable. So that was one kind of, um, um, the other set of examples I offered are, uh, sort of generic, uh, descriptions of existing projects that are operating. So the short description with a link so that they can then click and go look at the website and I'm happy to add in there any projects that people might want to include. So I just, you know, I didn't mean to be restricting those examples, just showing how examples might be made in two different ways. The two to come to mind, Jean, you might want to add. One of them was the one with the barn. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. So one of them was, um, three, three small houses looking like farmhouses with a barn structure. When I, when I looked at that model, the challenge was that most of these, um, entities don't want to have to finance and operate an enrichment facility. This is what they end up being called in the literature I've been reading. So an enrichment facility, usually they don't have a reimbursement stream that will cover that and they don't want to build own operate it. So it becomes a separate project where you find something like a foundation whose business it is to enrich the lives of disabled people who becomes the funding source for operating it. And then you look for a non-profit to actually run the place and come up with a definition. I think in the example I, I gave to you, it was like, um, half an art center, um, and half a food bank, uh, project. Um, because food bank banks bring people onto the site, but it's not in large numbers so that the people who live there could actually, you know, stock the shelves in the food bank and, um, prepare the bags of food for people picking them up. And so there's some traffic, but not real heavy traffic onto the site. There's pretty, pretty heavy traffic, Jane. There's heavy, very heavy traffic. I can tell you from personal experience. It depends, it depends on, um, how you set up the model. Right. A food bank can be, can be by appointment only. So all the querying is done through a computer. They don't stand up and stand in the lobby and ask for food. They contact and say, can I get on the list for distribution this week? And there's actually, you know, very organized and controlled number of people out on the site. So John, your food bank, do the, um, family members come and take food or, or is it simply a distribution point where? No, no, we're, we're actually very, very limited in the number of people that can come to the pantry. And that was dictated to us before we even moved into 534 Boston post road. It was dictated by COVID and public health concerns. So we had to move away from in-person shopping to, uh, remote access. So people to Jean's point do sign up ahead of time and we have 15, uh, individuals at a time coming with a car and, uh, we, we fill their order. But those are 15 cars every 50, every hour, basically, that are coming into, into the parking lot. Every day, John? Every distribution day, every day that we're open for distribution, that's on top of all of the volunteers. And we typically have at least that number of volunteers that are, uh, operating the pantry. I see. It's simpler to, um, St. Anne's, you know, the, um, the food pantry in Wayland. The, with the day they're open, there's, the lot is half full of cars, people everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. The open table, the same thing in Maynard. All the cars. So given the hour, I think it's a good time to end our discussion. I appreciate everybody's Frank, Frank, uh, Clements, um, we meet tomorrow night, and I think tomorrow night, uh, well, let me say that William Hearn is going to join us from Melmark. Now, you'll remember Melmark is the organization that, um, has, uh, developed, uh, group home, I think three structures, uh, north of Boston. So that should be an industry discussion who joined us at 630, and then we continue on with our discussion regarding Jean's report. Um, I'm thinking maybe come with questions regarding Jean's report and, um, think about what was discussed tonight and let's see if we can shape it so that, and make, um, come to a point where Jean might be able to go back and revise it for our, the meeting, uh, after that, which is scheduled for January 27th. Um, if no final comments, I'm happy to entertain a motion to adjourn at 850. So here's my final content, uh, comment. Yes. Um, there's a lot of editorial errors in this document at this point. Don't spend any time on that. Really, the question is what information do we put in front of the selectmen? Have I got it in there or is it not in there? Um, and, um, what I tried to do was make, you know, at every salient topic, have a section for it in the discussion, but then refer to an appendix for details. Um, if I've missed something, then I would want to get it in between tomorrow and the next meeting. Cause after that I'm going on vacation, so I need to get my big edits in in the next, that 10 day interval or whatever it is. Um, so that I leave everybody in good shape here. Um, we can talk more about this tomorrow, but, um, we do want to leave time for the neighbors to give some input. And if we wait till that meeting after that, then you'll be gone. So we'll have to think of some way to get it to them, but I'm sure you're thinking about that. Um, I'm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, uh, Bill, we'll be in a position to have the neighbors in in the 27th. So if you can plan on that, um, that would be great. And I'll make sure it's in the agenda. And I think by then we'll have a framework that we can, um, share with them, but, but, you know, can I say, we'll try to get them a draft like two days ahead of time, or will we, will we have to? Oh, I think, well, I think so. It'll be part of the packet. Okay. But, but they should know that we won't be picking paint colors, tile of window, one bay or two bay, nothing like that. More, more big picture. Okay. Oh, I don't know. It's an amazing work. Sorry. Go ahead. What did you say, John? I was going to say, they're, they're probably going to be bored with what they read. Yes. Right. And, and they may be frustrated, frankly, but, um, we do our best. Uh, any other questions before, uh, I entertain a motion to, uh, adjourn? So moved. I hear a second by Jean at, uh, Second. Second by John. Thank you. Those in favor of Brian. Aye. John. Aye. Stephanie. Aye. Bill. Aye. Jean. Tom. Aye. Great. Uh, seven, nothing. Uh, have a great evening, folks, and we'll see you, um, in less than 24 hours.
And then we will consider minutes for our most recent meetings of December 8th and December 17th of 2025. And then we'll discuss most recent draft put together by Gene Milburn relative to a report to the select board, and then we'll adjourn. So anyone for public comment, I look at the participants. I see no hands raised. Therefore, we'll close the public comment period. So then we'll move on to item three of our agenda. Welcome, Heather Ryan. Heather, I'm seeing this, resident of Wayland and has thoughts on the work we're doing. And Heather, again, welcome. Glad to have you here. Why don't you tell us where you live and tell us about your life experience and any thoughts you'd like to share. Sure. Hello. Thank you for inviting me. I moved here in 1992, so a few decades.
When I moved here, we had a two-year-old and I was pregnant with our next child. And life was busy with two young kids and, you know, I knew my immediate neighbors. I can't say I knew the community itself as well. But of course, over the years, we've grown to know and love Wayland. And another thing to know about me is I have a master's degree in public health. I have worked both in care-providing organizations and I also wound up being pretty good with analytic work. So I wound up working for several software-based health care organizations. And so I know health care data rather well. Anyway, I am also disabled. I developed MS.
It's your 12th committee. Pardon? I think we heard a voice in the background, but go ahead, Heather. I developed MS when I was 27, and it really didn't affect me much for a good 15, 20 years. But over the last dozen years, it's really kind of added up. Um, I spent, um, part of, a good part of one year in a wheelchair in 2019. Um, but I had a wonderful PT, um, whom my doctor sent into my house twice a week. And, um, I might be a little bit stubborn, as my mom told me for many years. And I was not going to stay in the wheelchair if I had any say. Um, so I use a rollator now. Um, that's, some people call it a walker. A walker is actually two wheels and then two back tennis balls for most people. A rollator has four big wheels. I can walk pretty fast, but I need it for balance and also to sit sometimes. Anyway, so I've become much more aware of how friendly and sometimes unfriendly Waylon can be. Um, the nice thing is people in this community are incredibly helpful. Uh, I rarely have to open a door myself. Often there's someone running to open and hold it for me. Um, but, you know, there are times not. Um, anyway, um, so you know a bit about me. Um, now I'll try to save time. I have probably two main points or questions and I'll get to those. Um, the first point is, um, it, you know, I understood that you're looking to develop a home or homes for disabled people. And that's an incredibly broad population. Um, and one thing I learned after my years working in healthcare is we always want to help more people. Um, but when you try to address too broad a population, um, it, it doesn't work so well. So I would highly recommend focusing more because if you have someone who, you know, basically is a quadriplegic and you have someone, um, who has more minor disabilities, if it's a small facility, sometimes people can wind up helping each other out. But sometimes it, it really, it's too much and no one gets well cared for. Um, so, um, I, I would personally focus a bit. Um, the other thing is the more disabled people you might care for, usually the more services they're going to need. So you really have to think about what you have room to provide. Um, what kind of staffing you can put in the facility. Um, so it, you know, that's just my two cents from working in healthcare for decades.
Um, the other thing I wanted to mention is, um, the site itself is, you know, right smack in the middle of town. Well, not totally the middle, but, you know, on a main road. Um, but in some weird way, it's, it's kind of isolated. And I know personally, I have limits how far I can walk. And from that location, I couldn't walk to like a coffee shop and make it back. Um, and so it, it occurs to me that you might want to have a decent size rec room in the facility and bring things in. So like, you know, um, we have all sorts of activities that, um, happen at the senior center, but maybe bringing some of those things into a rec room would integrate the people in the facility with people in the community and also provide with them with the ability to do things. So like something like, uh, chair yoga or having a movie screen, um, you know, a big TV basically so that social things could happen at the place. Um, it would help the community to integrate and it would help the people at the facility to not be isolated. Um, I think, um, in general, um, I don't know, um, what's, what the layout. The layout of the place will be personally, I like to get outside, um, and if you could even have a paved path or something like that, that goes around the perimeter, um, it might be a nice thing both, um, for, you know, activity. It also might invite neighbors, um, to walk there. I live on Old Farm Circle, which is attached to Old Farm Road and Rolling Lane. We're, uh, a neighborhood of very wide, very flat streets. Um, a neighbor once told me that, um, they pulled a lot of, uh, soil and whatnot out of this neighborhood to create part of the fill for the big dig. I don't know if that's true. I've not been able to verify that, but, um, we do have wide, flat streets and especially during the pandemic, the first few years, we had so many people walking over to our area because they knew it was a good place to walk. So even having a walking path around the perimeter of this place might bring people, you know, there to walk. Um, and it would allow both the people there to get outside and, you know, if they're able to exercise, do that, um, and also be another thing that might integrate part of the community. And, um, um, I think those are probably the key points I would recommend you consider. I do appreciate the fact that you're talking to people who might one day need to use this facility. You know, I'm, um, we live in a four bedroom, two and a half bath house and, um, it's a branch by design. When we were looking at houses, I was doing fine, but we knew that that would be helpful. So that was, you know, what we chose to do. Um, I don't think I appreciated how having, you know, wider streets than many places in Wayland would make such a big difference, but it definitely has. So, um, those are what I feel, the points I feel I can add that maybe you wouldn't have, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to chat with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. Appreciate that. Um, any questions, uh, Stephanie, any questions for Heather? Um, I don't think so. Those are some nice ideas though.
Brian, how about yourself? Yeah, I think, I think a good quality of life, uh, points to be made. Uh, there's probably a lot of other, um, fine points we could add to this development down the road.
All right. Jean? No questions. And, um, John? No, no questions. Thank you, Heather, for sharing your story. And Phil? Yeah, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. And, you know, my takeaways are green space and accessibility and, um, uh, community, right? So those are all really important things and they're top of mind for this committee, I think too. Okay. And also, um, maybe slightly limiting the, how functional people are in the community. You know, it can, you can have anything from, you know, uh, an intellectual disability to being a quadriplegic, you are all disabled at some level, but for a smaller facility like this, um, I would look into both what services different groups would need and also, you know, uh, how, how it would work essentially. So.
So Heather, what struck, one comment that you made, which is interesting, was your recognition as a disabled person that, um, the need is so great and we need to be careful not to, um, address everybody's needs or to put it another way, um, recognize that we have limits to our own ability to help, uh, those in the disabled community, right? Right. I mean, if you had a facility with hundreds of people, you could try to do more. But I don't think you're going to have, you know, that many people on that site. Well, I appreciate you coming this evening, Heather, and passing on your, uh, your experiences and your thoughts and, uh, it's very helpful to us. Sure. Thank you for the, for doing this. Thanks, Heather. Thanks, Heather. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Why don't we jump to item four of our agenda, which is a consideration of the minutes in our packet. There was a packet, initial packet and a supplemental packet, minutes of the meeting of December 8th, 2025 and December 17th, 2025. Happy to entertain a motion to approve those two sets. I would move both, both sets of minutes. And do I have a second? Second? Thank you, Gene. Any discussion on the minutes? Any proposed changes?
I'm hearing none. Uh, those in favor of the motion. Stephanie?
Aye. I'm sorry. I was muted. Thank you. Bill? Approved. John? Yes. Approved. Gene? Yes.
We have some time until the next individuals appear before us, so I think it's appropriate to address the most recent draft that Gene Milburn put together, which is her proposed draft to the select board. First of all, Gene, I really appreciate all the time you put into this. It's very thorough and organized and helpful information, not only for the select board, but anyone who has an interest in this topic.
I think the best place to start might be to kind of address the question that was posed when we last met, and that was for members to think about what their vision would be based on what they've heard, based on what they've learned for this property. And maybe we could start there and go around, and then at that point, we can go, and Bill Whitney sent me an email, which I'll read to, so his voice can be heard. He could make a nice meeting. And then maybe we can, from there, we can discuss those thoughts, and then maybe get into the substantive portion of the report. But, Bill Adams, why don't we start with you? So, based on what you've learned and heard in all these meetings we've had, do you have a vision of what would work well and be effective for that space, the four acres?
Yeah. So, I guess I would say I'm still aligned with what you originally presented to the town at the town meeting, that there would be two buildings that resemble, you know, the neighborhood buildings in size and would have kind of the six to eight residents that you were talking about with support. And given the distance from downtown, would have transportation, but, you know, not be expected to be able to get themselves back and forth, that they would be individuals who would benefit from quite a lot of support. And, you know, that it would celebrate the green space that we heard about is so important, so walkability and, you know, safety to get to the aqueduct areas for walking and around the areas which are all located there. And the other thing we haven't talked about too much is there is that little funny triangular bit that is in the back of the property, which gets quite narrow. And, you know, for the neighbors, I think it would be ideal if that was kind of a green space or I know some neighbors have offered to buy it from the town or something, but that that, you know, maybe wouldn't be developed somehow and that some reasonable setbacks would be included too. But, and I think that model would work. We've seen examples of that from multiple folks. And obviously accessibility top of mind. I'd love it to be an innovative technologically innovative community that really advances the care and is kind of a model type of community for folks with these types of needs. And that we, you know, get some recognition for the town and for the effort, you know, to do the right thing and to be innovative that could be spread to other places and replicated. And I think Bill's original document kind of highlights that pretty well, I think. And I'm still aligned with that idea. Bill, I have a question for you. I want to clarify your point about the triangle, the triangular section. And so this isn't a gray aerial, but I think, I think this home here is the Reuben home. Is that fair right here where my cursor is? I can use them in a little bit. Sure. Sure. Sure. I think. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.
I think the LaPierre home is here, I believe. And these trees are full of leaves. So just so I'm clear, is the triangle area you're talking about back here among the trees?
It's a little more north, but I can get a plot plan actually. Okay. While other folks are talking and I can bring that up because it's, that's our place right there with the big garden in the front. And so it's, it's a little farther back than that, but it's a tight triangle, but it looks better with, from a plot plan. So let me see if I can dig that up and I'll bring that back later. Right. Thank you. Stephanie, what vision do you have for this space? I'm right along with Bill on just every point. Um, my vision would be, um, kind of many, several, about that number of, um, little mini units in two buildings with a, where each individual might have a bedroom and a sitting room with a common, maybe common kitchen, living room, dining room area. And, um, the, the units could be set up for either a resident or caregiver. So if some of the people needed, uh, uh, live in caregiver, you know, that they, they would be able to, um, have a place to stay, I would, um, would expect that the residents would have a day program or work in some way. Um, the caregivers could be paid through their AFC as needed. And, and, um, the housing may be for them under the section eight. Um, so they wouldn't have to rely on DDS for housing, although they probably would be in DDS for day program and DDS for provide transportation and sort of, you know, like I deal with a couple of buildings and, um, and outdoor space, uh, I guess for, for community and, and recreation and that all the units would be, uh, access, fully accessible and, um, pretty much all the, the same kind of vision as Bill was talking about.
Brian, Boja, thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think we're all in agreement on what the, um, the buildings themselves should look like in the type of, uh, facilities they provide. I think from the housing authority perspective, we'd like to see more numbers giving, given the, um, the size, the rare opportunity that this is for the town and the size of, you know, four and a half acre size of the lot. Um, so, um, yeah, I, I, I'm still, uh, it's so, so complicated to see what types of populations will we be serving. And I just, every time, seems like every time we talk about it might just, it, it becomes more and more complicated to me. And I'm really hoping that we find a good developer that partners with an agency that will tell us what is possible, um, because I don't feel like I'm in a position to, to, uh, say exactly what population will be serving. Um, um, but I mean, even, um, tonight we heard from somebody who, um, has had a different, you know, more of a physical disabilities, but, um, it's just, it's very complex and she's right. We have to focus on one, one set of population. Uh, Jean. Um, yeah, um, I, I've been studying a lot about, uh, economic size of projects and for sustainability over time and for the purpose of my own, just sort of exploratory exercise, um, I sort of picked 30 years as a time horizon for a successful organization on the site. Um, and when I was working on models, looking at, um, you know, cost structures and, and how these places function, I repeatedly came up with models that had 36 to 40 people on this site, um, um, as ones that were extremely financially secure, um, and not depending on DDS funds, um, which I'm reluctant to do. The, the more I've learned, I think their system is one in deep distress. Um, the cost per head for providing a home for, for folks by DDS is very high. Um, and, um, um, my guess is that eventually there's going to be some rebellion against that. Uh, I think there's evidence for that and that we can see DDS placing people in facilities that seem to be contrary to where they say they will place someone, that they're placing more people within embedded units inside of larger projects. So their community of five or six people becomes a wing or floor, um, within a much larger structure, basically because the fixed costs get spread over so many more housing units and it allows that DDS level of service to be come more sustainable over time. Um, so I don't know exactly what the buildings would look like on the site other than, you know, I'd want to see us specify, um, a new England style architecture, clabbered buildings, probably, uh, two story within a mansard roof or a gambrel roof, hiding a third story if we needed it. Um, so they'd look like, um, you know, shingle style mansions or something like that, but very simple buildings. Um, I'd like to, I know I've, I've thrown a lot at the group in this report and maybe I'll wait till later to start talking about the pieces of the report. Okay. Thank you. Are you there? I'm here. Okay. Oh, there is a, there is a section for you, for you in here. For Appendix O, um, optional measures to address abutters concerns. If, when you're reading, Bill, if you could turn to that fairly soon and, and let us know what you think of the things I found from other projects where they tried to do things to improve, uh, you know, quality of life for the abutters. John, John Thomas, your thoughts? Um, yeah, so I, I actually, uh, continue to have a slightly different take on, um, you know, defining a vision. Uh, I continue to struggle with, with, uh, coming up with sort of an idea of, of what this development is going to look like before we have a better sense of who, who we're going to serve, and I think it's difficult to really, uh, know who, who this development is going to house and who it is going to serve because we don't have a crystal ball that could really, excuse me, foresee which, uh, entities might approach the town to, uh, develop the parcel. I, I, I don't think the committee necessarily has empirical data that could help guide us right now as to, to what population is most in need, uh, in our community. I mean, we've heard from different groups, which is great, um, but again, you know, as to whether or not this is going to be a program, uh, that's going to serve exclusively people with disabilities, physical disabilities only, uh, people with Asperger syndrome, um, other folks on the autism spectrum, people with a head injury, uh, et cetera. So, I mean, it's difficult for me to envision what the final structure, uh, is, is going to look like, given the fact that we don't know who, who, uh, is actually going to be living, um, in this development. And I think, you know, trying to envision what the brick and mortar is going to look like before knowing who's, who's going to be living inside that brick and mortar, uh, you know, is staffing going to be part of the picture? Um, that's all going to dictate what the, the final product is going to look like. So I think trying to come up with an idea for what that's going to look like again, is kind of like building the roof before laying the foundation. Um, so that, those are my thoughts. I'll just comment, John, that, um, I, um, I think this process is so challenging for us for the reasons why you just set forth. I'll just say that I think that's where the RFP process comes in, right? We, the select board will, my, my sense is they'll put out a fairly specific, but not too specific invitation and we'll see who comes forward. And then the select board, at least we'll have a set of tools, if you will, that our committee has given them to say, all right, based on our, our due diligence, these are the things that see that should be prioritized or should be highly considered. But, um, I want to put it another way, John, I think it's very tough to really nail down, you know, okay, we want, you know, higher functioning individuals, you know, with this, with this disability, because for all we know, there won't be any, um, organizations that respond to the RFP along those lines. It may be totally different. So let me take a moment to read Bill's, Whitney's, uh, note to me and, uh, it's a bit lengthy, but bear with me. Uh, as we discussed, um, unable to attend the January 7th meeting of the 212 Constituate Road Advisory Committee due to a scheduling conflict. Nevertheless, I offer the following thoughts with respect to my sense of what a preferred development scenario might look like on the town-owned property we have been discussing. In thinking about how to approach this question, I began by trying to describe for myself the characteristics of a successful development rather than a specific build-out scenario. That is, rather than initially describe what I thought should be built, I've tried to consider how a successful project should be developed. The following thoughts are informed by the advice from many actual and aspiring developers of housing for people with disabilities, as well as service providers, public housing, and other government officials, people having family members who will need support in their eventual absence, and others. In listening to these valuable resource people, I think that the project that ideally would be built on the 212 property should be characterized by the following. And here's a series of bullets here. Each structure should accommodate no more than five to six residents, as well as the number of staff people needed to address the residents' particular needs for support. Next, there should be, there should eventually be a sufficient number of structures and residents, obviously, to permit the creation of a semblance of a small community, particularly insofar as the site is somewhat remote from the constituent and town center areas. Next, each structure should be developed as to flexibly accommodate a broad range of residents' disabilities over time and to enable some or all of its residents to age in place. Next, the structures developed should provide for common areas and other gathering spaces for residents, while also enabling each resident for his own private space. Next, the development should be exceptionally well designed, having a modestly scaled residential versus institutional character. Next, the development's admission policy should, to the greatest degree possible, accommodate the needs of Wayland families seeking an appropriate long-term residential placement. Next, open spaces within the development should be attractively landscaped with the placement of structures either screened or preferably generally oriented away from adjacent residential for Butters. He could, he continues, with regard to what I envision as the optimal development on the site, my thinking has evolved over time. Initially, I was interested in the tried and true approach of a traditional DDS sponsored group home. This model is tested, it enjoys the financial support of the Commonwealth, and it provides badly needed housing for a population requiring significant support. It provides, however, neither the ability of the project sponsor to establish a preference for family members of Wayland residents for more than one structure, housing five or six residents to be developed. We have heard that DDS may be willing to be flexible on the latter point, but there is no assurance that a larger number of residents could be accommodated on this four-acre site. Further, any such discussion on the question of the permitted number of residents likely would involve only DDS and the project sponsor and not the town. I'm personally more inclined to opt for a model wherein the residents would have financial support from the Commonwealth, Social Security, SSDI, or other assistance that is oriented to the person with the disability rather than to the development. The exception to that approach ideally would be to have sufficient project-based Section 8 housing vouchers for use by income eligible residents, like many or all of the residents. Likely many or all of the residents. In this way, residents would pay what they could afford in rent, and other public financial assistance could largely pay for needed support services. Depending on the characteristics of the resident's population, a well thought out reliable transportation program should be implemented to serve those residents having jobs, volunteer positions, or day program placements remote from the project site. And the alternative program spaces should be developed for use by those residents who likely will spend the majority of their time on the development due to their disability for learning, enrichment and entertainment. The latter types of activities could be conducted by the development staff and or volunteers from the Wayland community. Finally, given the difficulty in financing such a development in view of limited income, escalating construction costs and the like, it is hoped that the town could be flexible on the question of the amount and timing of consideration for the land as the financial feasibility of the project dictates. I look forward to hearing other thoughts and ideas as we near our reporting deadlines. So let me add my thoughts on the issue. When we have the commissioners. When we have the commissioners before us, I was really struck with her comment that this project should be innovative. And what I read from that comment was, as Bill Whitney commented in his note, you know, not your typical facility serving adults with disabilities that we might see throughout the Commonwealth today. Rather, the structures where there is a home-like field for the residents, I think is consistent with the comments of Heather Ryan this evening and others that we're building a home for people here. We're not, you know, I think we're generally in agreement. We don't want to build an institutional, institutional. When I say we build who the developer is. We don't necessarily support an institutional feel to this property. We want to build, we want to support a structures and a real home for, you know, for the residents with a healthy staff to resident ratios, but that integrates into the community. We want to put another way. We want to put another way that it's possible where the residents can work in the community, participate in the community. And if possible, residents can engage with the residents at 212 in whatever way is appropriate, which brings me to the vision of the structures. You know, I support two to three structures. You know, I support two to three structures on this property. But what I'd like to see is some of the space be a large common space that might be made available to, say, the arts community in Wayland, where they would engage with the residents, but also maybe do their own activities there with the support and backing of the of the developer. It's a bit out of the developer. It's a bit out of the box and wouldn't be a town run or town owned space. But the RFP could include an ask that that the one of the structures or a third structure be committed to this. I noticed in Jean's proposal, she mentioned like a barn. So that's an idea, right? Build a third structure, which is a barn and maybe have it have it four seasons, built out for four seasons and have space for art-like activities and other activities where there could be an engagement. I'm looking at my notes. So I'll leave it at that. So in a nutshell, then, I kind of own the same page, I think, with Bill Adams and Stephanie and others who kind of support the two or three structure approach with a structure based on what the developer seeks. I'm not a fan of a large structure or a structure that houses 20 to 30 people. I think it's contrary to what we've heard. To me, if I was a parent of an adult disability, that structure wouldn't satisfy me that my adult child is in a home-like feel. And I don't think it would fit well in that space. So other thoughts or comments on what people have said? I open it up. Is there anybody? Yes, John? So I just wanted to comment. I agree with a lot of the stuff that Bill mentioned in the comments that you read. But again, I'm here and I have to sort of call this out. He mentioned that the development should serve people with a broad range of disabilities. I wrote that down. I'm just going to have to disagree. I don't think the RFP is the place to specify that. I think that goes against what you mentioned after my comment, Tom. We've heard from many folks, including the last speaker, who have said it's very difficult to be all things to all people. Many folks with specific disabilities require specific supports that don't necessarily carry over to other subgroups. Again, somebody with Asperger's may have different needs and in fact, different preferences than someone with cerebral palsy. So I just wanted to comment on that. So I think that's a great point, John. And Stephanie, or Jean, I like your thoughts on that. I think it's almost a matter of how it was phrased, rather than it requiring a diversity of people to be included to say that, you know, there's a diversity of proposals that would be accepted.
Yeah. Yeah. So in the draft document, I took Bill Whitney's RFP document and then worked on it and reorganized it. I basically tried to keep the content, reorganize it, and then stress a couple things. What I like about it at this point is that it's written as a two-phase process where entities who are interested in talking to the town have a very small paperwork burden to submit to the select board in advance of being invited to come and have a more open conversation and ask a lot of questions. That would allow a thinning out of the group, and only the people who were, their vision was close to something the town was willing to accommodate would go to the more complicated phase. But in general, I think what the RFP should ask for is, you know, that they should propose what their organization does well, what they want to do. Ultimately, we will not be able to get a vendor to come and do something that they don't think fits their business model. And I do think probably a lot of them are in transition now, because I do think we're trending away from these small building models. We'll see. Maybe I'm wrong. But it's not that none will be built. I just don't think so many will be built because of the economic issues with it. But an additional thought away from the RFP is that, you know, there's a question about what is a home and, you know, something like a quarter of the people in the United States live in apartments and their apartments are their homes. And I think a building being an apartment building does not make it not a home. The other thing we're hearing is that, and this came up with Tony Wolf, the commissioner, is that a lot of disabled people want more independence. They want more private space, places. I mean, part of being a home is that it's theirs, that they're not forced to have a roommate they don't want. They're not forced to have a tiny bedroom. So the only place they hang out is a commons that maybe is full of people they don't want to hang out with. Maybe they don't want to be forced to eat all their meals with a bunch of other people. Maybe they'd rather eat their own dinner in their own apartment. So I think in our effort to make sure that people feel cared for and connected, that we may have erred in our model a little bit in kind of balancing the need for privacy and autonomy that make them feel like a whole adult person between, you know, having them become isolated and not connected to a community. I think we can put more people on this site in an apartment-style building and still have each person feel like they have a home. But they have more autonomy and more feeling like they have control over their life. Thanks for listening.
I was speaking with someone over the weekend about a model that is somewhere in the Commonwealth. It kind of goes to your point, John, where there are actually different levels of disabled individuals in this large home with multiple units. And, for example, the highly functional autistic residents are paid staff members to help others who are less functioning. And that was intriguing to me. Where was that? Oh, the person who told me about it wasn't specific as to where, but it was definitely interesting. I'll try to find out more. Bill Adams.
So a couple of thoughts. One is, I think it is innovative and less isolated to put two buildings together, right? It would take some agreements from folks to let us do that, but that begins to create a little community where people have autonomy and privacy, but also live with another group of people. And then my other point was, I think we'd have to ask Bill what he meant by that, accommodating all types. But I interpreted that as, you know, we would have flexibility to accommodate different types of people with substantial disability, but that it wouldn't necessarily be that the development would accommodate all types. Like if you're really good at one group of disabled people and you have a really good plan, and that plan is sustainable and stands out, then that community would probably support people with that disability. But we, to John's point, we can't know for sure what that disability is going to be right out of the gate. So that's kind of how I interpreted it, but we should ask him, of course.
That's my sense, Bill, as well, that in a way this process is driven by the organizations that respond at the RFP. Like this is what we do. This is what we're good at. This is our vision. And maybe when they present, maybe they've got five out of nine boxes checked, but maybe another group serves a different type of disabled adult. But they've got maybe eight out of nine boxes checked. So I think that's how this will go. But my sense, and tell me whether people disagree, but my sense is that we won't be putting in any report or RFP, that we're looking for, you know, highly functioning individuals versus less functioning. I think it's, are we in agreement that the process will dictate itself along those lines?
Or do people have a preference for more higher functioning residents? That's my hope, Tom. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think that a developer who's in this business already, this is what they do, like you said, Tom. This is what we do well, and we can pull this off. They're going to tell us what will work.
By the way, Brian, in the comment that somebody made, it might have been John. It reminded me of a comment you made to me many months ago relative to the project at St. Anne's. And I think you had commented to me about the idea of having some of the units over there, which are primarily dedicated to individuals who are 60 or over, who are low income, but have, you know, maybe one or two units for individuals with disabilities. Do you remember that? Right, yeah, and we talked about that with the Archdiocese. But, yeah, I mean, if we had a segment of the development, a wing, like a wing that would be developed, set aside for disabled folks, might actually be helpful for all involved. Yeah, and, Jean, is that what you were getting at before about the model of individual disabilities being placed in larger apartment buildings by the state? Is that what you were referring to? I've sort of lost the thread here of what it is you're asking. Well, I guess the question – go ahead, Stephanie. I was just wondering, are you talking about people with physical disabilities? Because that might actually be nice, you know, they'd have the proximity to the other people living there, and maybe that wing – but they wouldn't have the need for caregivers. I don't know. So, Jean, the topic was – I was just reminded of a conversation Brian and I had many months ago about the project that's going to be built next to St. Anne's Church. Yeah. And that project – and that's going to be housing, affordable housing for individuals who are age 60 and over. Yes. With low income. Yes. And Brian was chatting with me about the idea of having people with disabilities housed there as well. So, Brian did, in fact, reach out to the archdiocese about that idea, and I'm not sure whether it's being considered or not, but – here's John. Well, I think in senior facilities, they assume there's going to be disabilities because it's an age factor that you're going to need an elevator and you're going to need wider halls and wider doors and still showers and things like that. Because maybe everybody's 60, 65 when they move in, but 20 years from then, you're going to need all kinds of, you know, life assistance. You know, it's a little different when you have a broad age range and overlap with disability.
John Thomas? Yeah, so, again, I think we can move forward without having to pigeonhole ourselves into, you know, being wedded to a particular model. I mean, I keep hearing conversations, you know, reverting back to a particular model, whether it be apartments or group homes or whatever. But I think the guidance that we should decide on could be applicable to a wide array of programs, a wide array of types of housing models, right? I mean, you know, if I had to come up with a laundry list to give the select board, you know, what's the criteria that you're going to use when considering bids? Well, I would think that they would consider, you know, a bidder that demonstrates a strong track record of serving whatever client population they serve, that has a strong track record of managing programs. You know, Gene, you know, Gene, to your point that, I don't know how you'd say it, but invokes a strong, comfortable, home-like setting, for example, right? I mean, and then you could apply that to an apartment setting. You could, or it should be applicable to a group home setting. You know, we can dicker and debate about what models we have a personal preference for, but that's a hope and dream, I think, that would be applicable to any kind of model, right? I mean, and so other things would be, you know, a bidder that demonstrates, we've talked about this, demonstrates fiscal stability, a commitment to maybe conducting outreach to Wayland and neighboring communities, possibly with the hope of attracting interest amongst local families who could then advocate for inclusion in the residence. I mean, those are things that could be considered regardless of what the final configuration of the building looks like, right? I'm going to stop you there, John. Let's come back to that. I'm going to invite Mr. Gomes and Mr. Chines to join us at this time. Hi, Jonathan. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. Thanks so much for having us today. I appreciate you joining us, and I see Mr. Gomes is with us. Thanks, as well. Hi, Joe. Tom Fay here. Nice to see you.
Thanks for joining us this evening. No problem. So, gentlemen, I think you both have a sense as to what our committee is about. We're an advisory committee to the Wayland Select Board to make recommendations concerning a four-acre lot here in Wayland that Town Meeting has authorized the Select Board to develop, not with town money, not with town money, but with generally private money, or by a developer to house individual adults with disabilities. So, we've had, over a few months now, many different individuals come in who are in the industry to talk to us about their experiences and what they've learned and what they do. And we appreciate you joining us tonight. So, I turn it over to you, and feel free to tell us about yourselves and your organization. Absolutely. So, maybe we'll just start by way of introductions of ourselves, and then we do have a couple of slides that we put together just to help guide the discussion, but certainly we'll be as interactive as you would like us to be. So, just introducing myself, I'm Jonathan Chines, the Chief Operating Officer for VinFenn, which is one of the largest behavioral health and developmental services providers in Massachusetts. I'm new to the organization, have been in healthcare for a long time, but only with VinFenn since May. And outside of my time at VinFenn, I actually do serve in town government in Wakefield, where I live. And so, actually, we have a similar opportunity in Wakefield with a parcel of town-owned land that we're looking at opportunities for. And so, I, first of all, just appreciate the time that you all are spending as volunteers working on this and maybe taking notes on the process that you've taken as we think about our process in my town. And, Joe, do you want to introduce yourself? Yes, I'm Joe Gomes. I'm the Senior Vice President for Developmental and Brain Injury Services at VinFenn. And unlike Jonathan, I've been with the organizations going on 44 years.
Pretty much started off as a child. But, when I first started, the organization was $5 million, and we had very limited scope in the services that we provided. We're now over $320 million. And just in DDS alone, we operate over 120 programs, both for – with a full range of services. But the larger portion of that services is what we will be talking about, is residential services. And I'll leave it at that for now, and we can go into that PowerPoint and get further into some other details. Great. Let me just see if – oh, excellent. Let me pull up the PowerPoint.
All right. Are you able to see my screen? Yes. Yes.
Well, we started talking a little bit about the organization, VinFenn, but, you know, one of the things that I like to do is start with this slide of just laying out our mission, vision, and values. And I won't obviously read through all of this. There's content here that you can see. But, you know, there are two points that I want to highlight. One is that for us as an organization, we really are focused on serving individuals with a variety of challenges, whether those are intellectual and developmental disabilities, behavioral health conditions, substance use conditions. You know, we are not a developer, though, as we'll go through. We have developed and operate a very large number of residential programs. We really are oriented around this mission of providing services to individuals with life challenges. The second thing that I do want to highlight, because I do think that this is an important part of our mission as well, is that we are an organization that is very much focused on meeting the individuals that we serve where they are and making sure that they are involved in the process of figuring out what they need and what level of service we're able to provide. We are very focused on self-determination. We pride ourselves on being an organization that engages exceptionally closely with the individuals we serve and their families, if their families are involved, and really look at that as part and parcel of our mission, not just of working with individuals with challenges to transform their lives, but transforming their lives together. And so that third word in our tagline at the top of the slide is really important and really critical to our mission. So how does that translate in terms of what we actually do? Well, Joe alluded to some of this, but we've been around for just about 50 years. We were founded in 1977 as part of the broader deinstitutionalization movement in Massachusetts around getting individuals with behavioral health conditions, developmental disabilities, out of institutions and into settings where they were integrated into the community. Our name actually comes from the location of our first group home, which is still in operation at the corner of Vining Street and Fenwood Road in Boston. The organization at the time combined those two to come up with the name, and we've been operating as VinFen ever since then. Joe mentioned sort of our footprint, at least in terms of revenue. But just to give you a sense of the scope of where we are in terms of geography and programs, we do operate across eastern Massachusetts, including in some of the communities adjacent to Weyland. We also do have a small presence in Connecticut, though 90-plus percent of the individuals we serve are here in the Commonwealth. We're the largest contractor in Massachusetts with the Department of Mental Health, and we are not quite the largest with the Department of Developmental Services, but we're pretty close to the top there. And with our 3 to 500 employees, we serve about 14,000 people each year. Now, the folks that we serve sort of fall into a couple of different buckets. We'll go into some detail on the next slide just to give you a sense as to what our footprint looks like from a programmatic standpoint. But that footprint does include about 200 group residences serving about 1,100 people, roughly evenly split between individuals with serious and persistent mental illnesses and individuals with developmental disabilities. We operate 16-day in employment programs serving about 1,200 people. And we also have 27 contracted clinical outreach teams that serve about 2,700 people across eastern Massachusetts. We're known for a couple of things in the state. One is that we're known for being incredibly innovative and forward-thinking when it comes to the quality of services that we provide. And again, that does include being individually focused in the interventions that we manage. We also are known in the state as serving a particularly high-need population. That certainly doesn't describe every individual we serve. We serve a broad continuum of individuals based on the level of acuity of need. But we are known in Massachusetts and Connecticut for serving some of the most complex individuals within the state. So this next slide just gives you an overview of some of our core services. It doesn't cover the whole range of services that we offer, but it does include some of the larger and more significant programs that have been established within VINFEN for a while. I mentioned on the residential side about 1,100 individuals that we serve, roughly half of those through something called the Adult Community Clinical Services Program offered by the Department of Mental Health, as well as about half through adult long-term residential services funded through the Department of Developmental Services. And we'll talk more about that in a second. We also offer a wide range of non-residential programs. I mentioned the 2,700 individuals that participate in a set of intensive 24-7 behavioral health and peer support programs that we operate. Within the developmental services space, we also provide support for families and caregivers with developmental services, as well as aussetism needs through information and referral services, networking events, other connections with resources. And again, we do have a set of day habilitation programs that we operate that really provide a therapy-based set of interventions for individuals with IDD and acquired brain injuries. One thing that we also do offer that I haven't mentioned here, just because geographically it's outside of the scope of what we're talking about, is that we also do have a behavioral health practice, including a 24-7 behavioral health center up in Lowell, that is part of the network of community behavioral health centers that the state set up over the last few years. So that's a little bit about our overall footprint. I'm going to turn it over to Joe just to talk specifically about DDS residential services and some of the specific needs that we're seeing within the population of late. Yes, thank you, Jonathan. Very briefly, residential, if you're not familiar with adult long-term residential services, it's pretty much for DDS philosophically, it's really developing a home for individuals with developmental disabilities or brain injury. And the referral basis is through DDS for both. Typically, it's four to five individuals that live together, and we provide 24-7 staffing levels based on the needs of the individuals. VINFIN is very collaborative, and their network is what they call the ISP team or their network of supports. That includes family members, guardians, other providers. So we work as a team to really foster community and social connections and build the skills that they need to live more independently. We provide unique services, medication administration, and nursing care as needed. Our staff are there to support the individuals in gaining skill sets and developing independent skills to be able to live more independent in their home. We work with the individuals around looking at developing goals and objectives that meet their specific needs and their interest. Additionally, we provide, as Jonathan mentioned earlier, a very tailored approach. Not any one home is the same, that it's all really based on the collective needs and the individual needs of the persons in the particular home. The staffing schedules may vary. The things that we work on with individuals may differ. But one thing is true, and we do work as a collective team involving families, guardians, and DDS in the facilitation of services. We have the next slide, please. Jonathan, the next slide. I was going to say, it might be delayed, I did flip it. Hopefully, you can see the next slide now. As Jonathan alluded to earlier, we're not a developer, so conceptually, we would not be in a position to develop the entire parcel, but we envision being a partner in developing potentially a portion of that parcel to meet the needs of the town and also the individuals that we support. The three areas of concentration currently, and we do anywhere from three to five developments each year in various, and we're in various states of development in this fiscal year as well. One area is the turning 22 population. As you may know, adult services for DDS starts at the age of 22, and that's when they become responsible for funding. And again, I won't bore you with the other details. Each year, there's a group that's identified, and typically, we have been concentrating on developing residential options for that turning 22 population. And the next grouping is acquired brain injury, and these again, the four to five people per home. And in here, it's the same adult long-term living. We're developing not only an area to provide services, but we're developing a home for these individuals long-term. In here, it could be people that need complex supports, mobility needs, maybe in wheelchairs. We may need to install Hoyer lifts. And typically, these are nursing models where we have 24-7 nursing. And the other thing that we're doing is looking at an emergency respite program that we're trying to relocate, which is currently nine individuals. And these are for short-term options for individuals that may be either in transitioning from family homes or in crisis somewhere else, and we're transitioning them into more permanent housing. So this is something that we run currently in another town, and we're trying to relocate the site. And just as context for that, Joe, the average stay in emergency respite is typically a few months, certainly some variability. But when we talk about emergency respite, it's not necessarily days or weeks. It is sort of a medium-term placement. Correct, yeah. Well, just to sort of close out and then open it up to questions, the last slide, which hopefully you'll see in a second if you can't see it yet. You know, we spent some time just sort of brainstorming a couple of questions that, you know, based on, you know, listening into, you know, the 10 minutes or so of the meeting, you know, that I, the discussion that I, that I heard just when I logged in. Sounds like things that you're, you're very much actively considering, but, you know, wanted to highlight a couple of questions that I think both help an organization like VINFEN or other organizations understand sort of what you're, you're trying to look at, but also questions, again, if I put on my, my town hat, you know, that, that I'd want to think through as well. They include, what are the uses that you'd want to see? Are there particular unmet needs or portions of the population that you'd want to serve or address? Secondly, how are you looking to develop the parcel? You know, four acres is a, is a pretty big parcel of land. You know, certainly for, for myself living in a more built up community than, than Wayland, you know, that you could do a lot with four acres in a lot of places. And so are you looking for a single partner? Are you looking at potentially splitting it up or creating different purposes? What kind of ownership structure are you envisioning? Is it a sale or a lease? If it's a sale, are there deed restrictions or use restrictions that you'd want to put in play? How does this tie into other resources that the town may have, whether it's through the Affordable Housing Trust, the Community Preservation Act? And then finally, you know, are there, are there any specific zoning or permitting considerations either that exist already or things that you'd want to put in place as you think about the appropriate use of, of the parcel going forward? So again, I don't think I'm, we're putting any questions out on this slide that you aren't already thinking about, but I just wanted to highlight some of those as, as, as things that help define what you may want to do going forward. So with that, let me stop sharing my screen. And that, that was just sort of the formal slides that we had, but really wanted to open it up for any questions that you had for us around what it is that we do or ideas that, you know, we might have as we think about the property that you're looking at. Great. Thank you, Jonathan and Joe. John Thomas, any questions or comments? You're muted, John. Sorry. Thanks for presenting. Appreciate your presentation. Could you talk a little bit about projects that you've been sort of at the inception point previously? Um, you mentioned that you don't build homes, but how would you approach, uh, an opportunity like this? Would you, uh, enter into a partnership with a developer? Do you have existing partnerships? How, how? Yeah, we, um, we, um, we do, as I mentioned, uh, anywhere from three to five developments a year. That's just within the DS that I'll talk about. Yeah, we do have, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh CIL programs, that's a corporation that does limited arrangements with providers, and we enter, they build it, we lease it, and after 30 years of ownership, we assume the title. So we do have a quite extensive experience in developing homes. As I mentioned, we have a lot of the maintenance is done by our internal facilities crews, so we do have quite a range of resources available to us to actually take very complex projects through the finish line. Yeah. And I think, you know, when we reference sort of not being a development company, you know, the way that I would think about or frame that sort of context, maybe with a little comment with a little bit more detail is, you know, if you had a vision of on this four parcel space, you were looking for, you know, a couple of programs for individuals with developmental disabilities, some general affordable housing, and, you know, kind of more of an apartment style thing. You know, we wouldn't be the entity that would pull all of that together, but, you know, we are used to, and in fact, you know, between Joe's division and our psychiatric rehabilitation division, you know, last year we did, I think it was 12, somewhere between 12 and 15 new developments, and that included either purchases and rehabs of existing homes that we retrofitted to meet our needs. It did include some ground-up construction for properties that we own, as well as, you know, some ground-up construction or rehabilitations with property owners with whom we, developers with whom we partnered. So we do have the ability to work with a number of flexible arrangements, but again, just thinking about the total sort of gestalt vision that you'd have for the parcel, if it was something larger than the types of programs that were organized to operate, you know, we would envision, if we were involved, being kind of part of a larger partnership and not necessarily the driver of, you know, something that was more intensive or involved than the types of programs that we operate. And we do do work with developers that have experience in doing multiple phases of construction. So we, as VINFIN, may not be the principal in that, but we could be a partner in working with a contractor that's doing the entire development. And so we have done that. We've worked with a number of developers over the years to really bring major projects into bear. We did work early on in my career with Olmstead, and we were developing out something in Roxbury. We ended up not being involved in a particular project, but we worked through planning of a nursing home and other phases of that particular project. So we have taken on some very large partnerships with developers, and either were a party to the service element within that development, or at least had that collaboration with the developer.
Thank you. Jean, any questions? I was interested to see that you do programming with autistic clients, but you didn't mention housing for autistic clients in your chart. Right now, there isn't any funding for autistic housing for adults. Their services are relegated to today's services, and there's a cap on the amount of services that they provide. And we do provide residential services for people that are duly diagnosed. They may have a secondary diagnosis of IDD and autism, but the spectrum disorders alone diagnosis, they are currently not providing resources to do residential development for adults. I would also say sort of the dual diagnosis may not just be sort of something that falls within the developmental disability space, but again, as we look at some of our DMH-funded programs, there's a pretty high percentage of individuals in those programs that may have a dual diagnosis with autism as well. So we do provide, we do have run an autism center, which is pretty much a resource center, and we do a lot of community connections, but those are all children. So we do have a lot of experience with people with autism, or individuals that fall on the spectrum of disorders. But for adult services, it's pretty limited to day services, or they have that dual diagnosis. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Brian, any questions or comments? Yeah, thank you, John and Joe, for your very impressive agency. One of your questions you had for us on the visual was asking us what population we want to serve, and we're trying to figure that out. We haven't, we've been struggling with that question. So I ask you as a, as a agency that has done this in the past, how would you go about evaluating what the need of, of, in a community is, and what would be feasible to build in a community? Yeah. So, oh, go ahead, Joe. Yeah. No, I, I was going to say, I think, you know, I, I'd reference back to the, the slide that Joe presented, where we, we looked at those, those sort of three populations, the turning 22, acquired brain injury, and emergency respite populations, we found from our experience that that is sort of the sweet spot where both the level of greatest need seems to be in terms of demand for services, as well as, candidly, the availability of, of funding from the Department of Developmental Services. They've put a premium on those, because those are the populations that they're also struggling to find placement for. You know, in both cases, you know, the turning 22 population, obviously there's a cohort of individuals that are turning 22 every year. Um, and, and so, you know, that population isn't getting any smaller, um, on the brain injury side, because of the level of medical intensity for a lot of those programs, it's really, really hard to find suitable, uh, properties to be able to serve them, places where you can have handicap accessibility, where you can have, if you need Hoyer, Hoyer lifts and things like that. Uh, and so, from what we've seen and, you know, what, what we've observed in terms of the, the level of demand for services and the, the level of requests for referrals from the Department of Developmental Services, those are the two populations that, that really do, uh, pop out at this point. There, there are certainly other areas where there's need, sometimes, though, as Joe mentioned, the funding isn't there, um, but, but those two, two populations, plus the respite population, are the ones where we're seeing that combination of, of need and available resources. Yeah, we're trying to, um, tailor something that would somehow have a preference or serve the town of Wayland community. That may not be possible with DDS, but, uh, um, that's in the back of our mind, and that was the inception of this thing, was to, to serve local kids, young people. And I think, I think, I think that is the philosophy of DDS of, uh, typically, uh, providing services in the community that people live in. Um, so, uh, obviously there would need to be a lot of consultation with DDS around number one, need. Uh, number two, uh, they go through a saturation, uh, assessment so that, uh, uh, we don't want to saturate a particular area, like having two grown, two group homes, you know, in the same neighborhood, uh, not that they don't have the right to live wherever they want. It's, it's a matter of, of, of being sensitive to the community, uh, and not overburdening a community with, uh, um, um, I, I, I think that, uh, those kind of, of inquiries, if we were to pursue, uh, or, or you would be interested in, in inviting them to do that, would be the first kind of discussions. Uh, we're very familiar with, uh, uh, the DDS area that, uh, support your, uh, that your town is included in. It's the central Middlesex, uh, area, uh, uh, uh, which is part of the, the region six, greater metro, uh, Boston region. So, we do have homes in that particular region and, and, and as Jonathan mentioned, in neighboring, uh, homes, uh, neighboring communities. So, we're very familiar with the area and with the players, uh, uh, uh, that kind of drive the funding for, for services, both on the DS and the, uh, uh, uh, uh, the brain injury, uh, populations. And, and we would also have to look at, because one of the things that we, uh, strive to do is to fit into a community. Uh, you know, if in fact, uh, uh, uh, the, the, the community is, uh, very affluent, uh, and, uh, or, or we, we want to, we don't want to stand out. We don't want to, to be, uh, uh, uh, so we try to tailor our developments to, to fit into the, the, the makeup of that particular neighborhood or community. So, that would be another consideration, uh, for example, for brain injury, uh, because of immobility issues, uh, uh, typically it's a one-story, uh, home. Uh, uh, all the services on, uh, are our one floor, but we have adopt, uh, uh, adopted so that if the, the neighborhood is typically a two, a two-level home community or neighborhood, uh, we will design the home to have the major, uh, uh, portion of the home be services on the, the, the, the first floor and then we have office space in this, in the, the second part of the, or the second level of the home so that the home doesn't stand out, uh, uh, and fits into the, the, the makeup of the, the particular neighborhood. Uh, so we have done those kinds of, of developments and, and there are a lot of considerations, uh, again, typically for a turning 22 population, younger population, uh, we can build a garrison. We can build pretty much anything that we, uh, that, that accommodates the people that we're supporting there, uh, mobility typically isn't an issue there. Uh, so, again, it, it really depends on what you're looking for as far as the, uh, uh, the type of neighborhood that this fossil is on and, uh, the, the neighboring, uh, uh, infrastructure. Yeah, I, I think I, I would just add two things. Um, you know, whenever we develop a new program or, or look at, uh, creating a new program, we, we work very, very closely with DDS. Um, you know, because ultimately, I mean, these are services that are closed referral services. They are managed through DDS. And so it's important to make sure that we're developing something that fits within their need. You know, we don't know, we haven't had the conversation with DDS, but, um, you know, certainly a community like Wayland is one where you, you generally don't see a lot of, uh, residential programs for DDS just because the cost of housing is, is pretty high. Um, and so I, I think that they would be favorably inclined. Again, I, I can't say for sure, but I think that they would be favorably inclined to, you know, working with us in some creative way to, you know, meet the needs of your community. Again, given that, you know, it's, it's very difficult for an agency like ours, otherwise, uh, to, to come into a community, given just the, the cost of real estate. Um, the second thing that I, I want to make is, as we point that I want to reinforce is we also do, you know, when we open up a program, you know, we want the individuals who live there to be part of the, to, to be part of the community, even if it's not where they're originally from. Um, we want them to be engaged with the community. I mean, this isn't, this is a home. We have all these services that are there, but I mean, this is where these individuals live. And so, you know, we want them to be, you know, kind of going downtown and, you know, going out to get, you know, to, to dinner. If, you know, if that's what they want to do, we want them to use the library. We want them to use the parks. Um, you know, we want them to find volunteer opportunities if that's something that, you know, they're, they're able to do. Uh, and so as we think about the, the little community that we would create within a program within Wayland, we want to be mindful of, you know, making sure that that little community is also integrated within the larger community as a whole. Um, yeah, I'm just, you know, that's been my largest stumbling block is that we're serving Wayland residents. I mean, the town of Wayland is contributing a significant resource to this. And, you know, I hear as I work at the housing authority and we hear from parents all the time concerned about their, uh, soon to be adult kids turning 22 and the aging in place and, uh, the parents are becoming more and more elderly. But it seems like, especially with DDS, that the local preference isn't there. I mean, it's a, it seems like a long shot if that, if that, if it ever did occur. I think they try. Um, I don't think they always are able to succeed. And again, I think part of that is because there is a mismatch between where programs are located and where the population is. But again, given that, you know, was, we talk about Wayland, given that it's, it's not a community where there, there is a large saturation of programs that might be a different conversation with DDS than if we were talking about, you know, creating something in a community that, that already had some saturation. Yeah. Too bad we couldn't get those assurances up front. It's true. No, but I, I think to Jonathan's point, uh, we do work with, with the department, uh, uh, to, to make sure that, uh, and families have a lot of involvement, uh, especially the guardians and the individuals themselves. Uh, we typically, when we get a referral, we go through a screening process, uh, to make sure that, uh, we can support them, uh, uh, in, in the particular home, uh, uh, looking at their, their, their specific needs, uh, so that we're, we're matching up the services, uh, to, uh, really, uh, derive success, uh, for all of the individuals. And the other thing that, that we do very, uh, in partnership with DDS and the families is making sure that we have good pair matches, uh, in the particular home. Uh, because again, uh, we found through a lot of experiences that not everybody can live together. Uh, so I think we, uh, we need to kind of, uh, do our due diligence and making sure that, uh, we're working with, uh, DDS. The families, uh, to make sure that we have a good pair match, uh, that, uh, uh, totally enhances the success and the, uh, the quality of life in that particular home for everyone involved. Uh, uh, and I think they do consider, uh, where families live, uh, because the families are, uh, typically very involved, uh, and, and are part of the selection process. Uh, we have families come out and do visits. We have families do a tour of the, the home before they even are considered, uh, to be, uh, a referral for that particular home. Thank you. Uh, uh, a couple questions. Thanks again for being here. Um, uh, one question I may have missed it is how, how it actually works. Does the, do you partner with a developer, the developer builds it, and then you lease it from the depart, the developer for some period of time and then you own it, or how does that actually work? How does that actually work and kind of related to that because it is a bit of a risky endeavor. How do you see the DDS landscape these days? And, um, for some folks we've heard, it's pretty stable. If you have a relationship and a commitment, it's good. Other people have said, there's a lot of clouds on the horizon. It's kind of scary. And, um, this is a very uncertain time. And so both how do you approach risk and then how do you see the broader DDS risk right now would be great to hear about. Thank you so much. Well, I, I think to, to Jonathan's point, uh, people for, uh, with brain, with brain injury, for example, uh, that would be the, a sudden development around brain injury, uh, came at, uh, through a Hutchinson lawsuit. Um, so that was a pretty much a class action lawsuit. Uh, uh, a lot of folks that had acquired brain injury had languished many for many years in nursing homes. Uh, and then the department was sued and there was a class action, a lawsuit that was settled, uh, to provide, again, nursing home level or medically, uh, viable options in the community for a lot of these folks. Uh, and there, uh, are people each year that are becoming eligible for services. And again, not everyone with a brain injury lives in a group home. A lot of them live on their own or with some supports and, and similar to, to DDS. And the turning 22 population is a, a mandate, uh, as well. Uh, as well. So, uh, there has to be some provision for services for those individuals. Uh, and, and VINFEN, as Jonathan mentioned, we provide, uh, services to the most, some, some of the more challenging individuals. Uh, uh, those services are, in my opinion, are very stable, uh, cause it, it's kind of a, a have to do. Uh, it, it's not, uh, uh, something that DDS is going to put on the back burner because it's a mandate. Uh, uh, uh, uh, yes, I think we, we all are concerned about the future of, of surfaces in general for, uh, Medicaid eligibility and so on and so forth. Uh, but I think, uh, as the, for the populations that we support, uh, uh, there may be struggles and barriers, but overall, I think, uh, the services will stay intact. Yeah, I think the nature of the legal settlements that, um, mandated a lot of the services that are offered through DDS are, you know, they, they provide a level of, um, security of funding, even in a, a challenging fiscal environment. That's, that's not the case with all of the services that we provide. You know, we are, for example, on the Department of Mental Health side, um, you know, we are seeing some, um, some retrenchment, retrenchment in terms of, uh, what they're able to fund. You know, we developed a lot of programs with the Department of Mental Health over the last 18 to 24 months. You know, that, that development is, is running dry because of funding constraints there. But again, it's a little bit of a different world with, with developmental services, um, on the way that we handle development, I would say it is, it is very, um, situationally dependent. So we have, you know, probably a couple of dozen models that we worked through, uh, over the years with the 200 or so programs that we operate. Um, and so I think, um, as we think about a potential opportunity in Wayland, it would also depend upon what it is that, that you're looking to do. I mean, if there's a larger, um, kind of development plan for the parcel that we're, you know, we would be part of, you know, we would be thinking about, you know, working with that developer and potentially occupying a property on a lease. We do have circumstances though, and actually we, we probably own, uh, slightly more than 50% of the properties that we, uh, where we have residential programs. So we, we also do, uh, own and develop a number of properties on our own in partnership with, um, you know, the contractors that, uh, that we, we typically use. So a lot of flexibility there. We, because we're a large organization with a lot of scale, um, you know, there, there aren't a whole lot of, uh, development scenarios that we haven't worked on. Um, and so that, that does give us, you know, because we have a strong and experienced real estate team that does give us the flexibility to work in a number of different areas that, um, you know, might be a little more challenging for an organization that didn't have that, that same scope. Yeah. And, and, and again, we, uh, to Jonathan points, we, we have a number of different scenarios. As I mentioned, the HUD programs, we have several HUD programs, uh, that we've, uh, uh, have developed, uh, we work with CIL, which is that, that private agency that, uh, does specifically provide housing for people with disabilities. And they, we, we enter into a 30 year lease with that. And as I mentioned, uh, uh, uh, a capital lease, uh, so that we, uh, retain the, uh, the home after the, the, the, the time is lapsed. Uh, we have, uh, uh, arrangements with, uh, townships and, uh, housing authorities, uh, within the towns. We have several of those that we occupy the services, and we have longstanding supports, whether in Boston or Watertown. So we have several of those kinds of arrangements as well. And the scenario around we work with develops where we lease the property back, and then we have other situations that they develop the property, and we purchase at an agreed-upon price. And, again, all of our occupancy costs are determined by the department. There are caps on all of our occupancy rates. So, again, and that's something that came into effect with Chapter 257, which is our legislative rate structure for services for all of disability services going forward.
Do you have a question? I wondered if you could talk about projects you have that are higher occupancy. So, I mean, your property is what's the most clients and residents. Yeah. I mentioned the respite program as an example. For a brain injury, if you did actually like a duplex environment, you could actually do four and four, but that needs central office development or approval. So you could do up to eight individuals. It has to then be two addresses. It can't be one address. We're restricted by federal mandates around CMS, which pretty much restricts no more than five unrelated individuals living in one address. So, but if you had, if you developed a duplex with an A and B side, then you could do four and four. Yeah. A good example of that is there's a project that we're developing right now where it is a two-family house where we'll have a turning 22 floor and then a floor for individuals with acquired brain injuries, so two addresses, but the same building in a duplex, and we'll have a total of eight individuals there. We do also have some apartment-style projects that we've done, more so within the behavioral health population. Typically there, when we're talking about individuals that need 24-7 support, we would typically kind of stay within that four to six individuals per home range. We found with a lot of trial and error and experience over the years that that is sort of the optimal number of people to maintain in a 24-7 setting, both to have enough people where you have the scale to have the staff there that you need, but also to make sure that you can provide that individual attention. We do, though, however, also have some programs, again, more on the behavioral health side for individuals that are maybe not quite ready to live on their own, but ready to step away from a 24-7 setting where they'll be living in, you know, their own apartment or efficiency within a building where you might have 15 or 20 units and maybe not 24-7 support, but, you know, 18-hour-a-day support or 16-hour-a-day support so that there are resources on site basically during waking hours for individuals that need that level of attention. Again, we see less of that on the developmental services side, both because the, you know, the frequency of sort of graduation into a less intensive setting on the developmental services side is just less common, but also because some of the legal constraints that Joe mentioned as well. Do you need a follow-up?
Yeah. On the people who are 22 and aging out of the system, are there meaningful groupings within that set of people that, you know, kind of form the basis for housing design for you? Can you give us any sense? They've got, I know they're highly varied, but there must be some meaningful groupings where people have similar service needs. Yeah, I think that's what I described earlier about developing a pair matches. So everyone does have an individualized service plan, but often the grouping is homogeneous enough that they have very similar kinds of needs. Regarding, and then the staffing is adjusted based on that variation of needs. You can have, again, a lot of staffing to support the four or five individuals in there, or you can have minimal staffing to support their needs based on their level of function and their needs and challenges within that particular home. So we tried as much as possible to pair people up that have, again, common interests, common skill needs, so that the staff that we provide to support them are able to support them in a similar manner because of their common interests. But that's as much as we do as far as developing, again, the pair matches for them. A lot of it is also social, and we try as much as possible. In some cases, we do have mixed gender. In other cases, it's all men or all women. So it really depends on what the individuals need, and the fact – and UDS also has a lot of say in their referral process because they will say, all right, we're opening up a home in Wayland for five individuals, and they will scrutinize their turning 22 population, for example, and say, okay, we have three people that have families in Wayland and two that have them in Holliston, and these are good – they're good pair matches. But the important part of it is not where they come from, but what they – how they best feel that they will interact with each other and kind of have common interests and kind of similar needs. So we're not providing someone that has visual issues here and also three people that have medical needs. So it's got to be kind of more homogeneous so that we can better support them with the staffing proposal that we submit to TDS.
Thank you. Stephanie, any questions or comments? Oh, no, but thank you very much. This has been very helpful to hear about. I've got a couple of questions. Jonathan, in your slides, you referenced a clubhouse. Can you talk about that? How many of your properties have clubhouses, and could you tell us how they work? Sure. So the clubhouse is actually a – it's actually a discrete model of service for individuals with either mental health conditions or developmental services. There's actually an international clubhouse association that has sort of created this model. What it is, is it's intended to be basically a member-driven sort of rehabilitative day program for individuals with challenges. It is lightly staffed. Obviously, we will have program staff there that basically help to facilitate what goes on there. But the intent behind the model is that the individuals who are members of it really work together to figure out what it is that they want to do. What kind of meals do they want to serve during the day? What are the activities that they want to do? What are the types of employment opportunities that are there? Typically, a clubhouse will have somewhere between 100 and 120 active members. That doesn't mean all those members show up every day. But, you know, you might see in a – you know, depending on the geography in the area, if you've got 100 members in the clubhouse, you know, kind of an average daily census of 40 people that show up, either to participate in skills training activities, some employment work, or just to be there for socialization. They're generally located – they're not located kind of, you know, at the same location as our residential programs. They are typically located in more of a commercial area where they're accessible for people who either are living in other residential programs or living in non-VinFen settings. We operate seven of those programs, though, you know, spanning from the Merrimack Valley down to the Cape. I want to follow up on one of Brian Bosch's questions.
I know you're not a developer, but you work closely with developers. And the sense I have from this committee is that when we – the recommendation to the select board is not necessarily, in the RFP, specifying the nature of disabilities, the degree of disabilities, high functioning, middle functioning, low functioning. Is that typically what you see in RFPs from – that you've come across?
Go ahead, Joe. We're a piece from – from developers? Well, here we're a municipality, right? So we would issue an RFP. And maybe you haven't dealt with many municipalities issuing RFPs for this type of housing. But that's kind of what I'm getting at. Yeah. We respond to – I guess from a municipality, you can include whatever you want in the RFP, as long as you are – do so in a non-discriminatory manner, so that to specify a particular population,
you can ask for what population that the agency is considering developing for. But I think we need to be very careful about not including language that's discriminatory or identify the population specifically.
We have had RFPs in the past, not necessarily from a municipality, but other entities around development. We did a development of housing development for DDS at one time for a state op that we controlled. And we worked with the developer to plan it, construct it, and worked with a contractor to deliver that particular product. And then we managed it. But that's really the only example of most of our RFPs that we respond to are from the funders. Because, again, we're first and foremost a service provider and not a developer. I think the other thing that I would suggest is there is some nexus between the perspective that you have in terms of physically what do you want on the site with what's the population that you would serve. So, for example, you know, if you wanted to create, you know, some level of density so that you were able to, you know, serve a larger number of individuals, that probably lends itself to, you know, a population that is more independent, that has a lesser level of need. You know, again, when we're operating an acquired brain injury or turning 22 program, you know, we're talking for an individual housing structure, you know, whether it's half of a duplex or a freestanding house, we're talking about serving four to five individuals. So very, very different than if you were looking at something that was more of like a, you know, again, an apartment complex or something like that. And my last question is, are you, is your organization for profit or non-profit? We're a not-for-profit. Okay. So do all the members have questions or comments? Before we bid adieu, Jonathan and Joe, hearing none, again, gentlemen, this has been very helpful to us. A lot of great information gives us a lot of good things to think about. And as we head down our homestretch, and we thank you for your time and for appearing tonight. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity, and also thank you for the thorough work that you're doing. It's great to see you. And again, I know it's worked from a lot of volunteers. I know that can be bankless. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bert. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thanks. Take care. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thoughts or comments on what we just heard? Anybody?
Let me answer. I thought it was interesting that they mentioned that it would potentially be a minefield, a discriminatory minefield to specify a disability. I hadn't even really thought of that, but it's a really, really good point. We really could get into hot water if we went down that road too far. The other thing that I think is important to bear in mind, which I guess I've thought about before, but I hadn't given it probably enough weight, is the fact that the more vulnerable populations, generally speaking, are the beneficiaries of class action lawsuits. And as a result, their operational funding for the lifetime of the individual is oftentimes, for the most part, much more secure and protected than for somebody that doesn't fall into that category. And if, you know, I hate to say it, but if we are giving some weight in consideration to the long-term fiscal stability of a particular program, that's something to think about. Yeah, John, you mentioned that in prior meetings about being too specific about which population we're going to serve, more in terms of offending one group versus another. But I think that's a really good point.
Let's turn back to our discussion before these gentlemen joined us. John, I think you had the floor at that point. I didn't want to prevent you from making any further points you were making at the time.
So we were still sort of talking about general vision and guidance that we would think about providing to the select board, I think. Is that what we were sort of talking about? Right. And my sense, John, is that you might have a different vision than, say, two homes with, you know, three to five or three to seven people per home at this property. Is that fair? Honestly, Tom, no. Again, I'm going to stick to my guns, regardless of what the final product looks like. I don't want to limit myself, or I don't think this committee should spend a lot of time trying to think about what that final configuration is going to look like. I mean, I may have personal preferences. I just think it's a waste of my time and this committee's time for me to explain what they are, because I don't think that's the right thing for us to do. I mean, I'm happy to share what I think. I just don't think it's relevant. I don't think it's important. It doesn't matter what I think the final residence ought to look like or how many people ought to be served in the residence versus what tools are we giving the select board to employ when considering bidders that are going to come out of the woodwork, hopefully, to put a proposal on the table. What are the important things that they ought to be considering, you know, Bill Adams is going to talk about some environmental issues and concerns and things that are important to him, which I think are probably great. I think those are the types of things, regardless of what the final program or the final configuration looks like, that we ought to be advocating for. Well, let me, before I get to you, Bill Adams, I just want to follow up with one of your points, but wouldn't it be helpful to the select board to hear, for example, thoughts from our committee on the number of residents per structure based on what we've heard from other organizations and from what the law is, right? And what, for example, Vinton just said, the feds won't permit them to deal with homes with more than five residents, right? That isn't the case with the people in Norwood, the Roach Family Foundation. I think they have one house with nine, and I think the difference is that they're a for-profit organization, and so there are different rules. So I guess on that point, do you think it would be helpful for the select board to at least get a sense from our committee on that point, John? I think it would be helpful, Tom, for them to hear what we've heard in terms of what's out there, okay? Sure, a for-profit development that has fewer regulatory hurdles to have to overcome may have some advantages in terms of density, to your point. On the flip side, I would make the argument that a development, maybe not that particular developer and those particular programs, but I would say in general, you're rolling the dice and taking a greater chance with long-term fiscal stability of a program like that. I mean, that's just my own personal feeling. I don't know if the rest of the folks on this committee agree with me or not, but the point is, yeah, sure, to provide them with some maybe a little bit more clearly defined examples of models that are currently out there, along with the track record of, okay, how long have those programs been viable? Are they new programs, are they new models, are they old models? Sure, but I think at the end of the day, the natural vetting process of people approaching the town with actual bids is going to kind of self-select, you know, whether or not it's a DDS-funded and regulated group home versus some of these more unconventional, unconventional, more private, more private, funded, and organized programs. I'm going to go to Bill next, and then we'll go to Gene, and then Stephanie. So, Bill? I definitely hear what you're saying, but I think we can say more about size and design because it's tightly tied to functional status. Like, if you're going to have folks who are substantially disabled, I'm kind of liking getting back to that earlier older people having disabilities conversation. I'm kind of thinking about what I just went through with my dad, where there's independent living, there's assisted living, and then there's skilled nursing. And I think this type of living in the smaller houses is more like skilled nursing, but it has a community, and it's a little different, but it does have that level of nursing support and 24-7 requirement. And that, by necessity, requires a smaller structure in terms of number of units. It doesn't prevent having privacy for individuals who live there, a private space. It doesn't prevent a lot of other features, and it certainly doesn't limit itself to one condition, but it does tend to lead towards one size building. And we've learned that that type of building with that type of level of support is financially sustainable within current models. So, you know, the committee is saying that recommending something like that as being both feasible and consistent and also lends itself to a relatively isolated space where a larger unit of 20 or 30 people is better in a more walkable space or could require a lot of parking. Or, you know, you could imagine things that would also say that larger building isn't necessarily a good fit. So, I guess I wouldn't rule out saying something about the size of the building and the level of complexity of the people living there that we would recommend, but we certainly wouldn't have to say what specific conditions have to be there. Could I just respond? So, Bill, I actually agree with you. I don't think what you're saying and what I just said is inconsistent at all. I think I would actually take issue with just the characteristics of a structure going into that parcel that was going to be serving 35 residents. I think that would be out of place. I think it would be out of character. That's just my own personal thought. I think it's probably consistent with what you just said. But I don't think who's to say who is being served. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the size of the structure as being consistent or inconsistent with the part of town, the neighborhood, the zoning for that particular area of the town. I think that's perfectly fine for us to comment on. Thanks. Jean Milburn? A number of thoughts. I guess I'm guessing that this asset that we're talking about, this piece of land, is worth about a million bucks. And, you know, it's a question of how do we suggest the, you know, what benefit is the community going to get for a million dollar asset? You know, I keep wanting to put more disabled people on this site, one way or another. It's a lot of money for the community to probably donate to get this kind of project built. And I'd like to see the community to get as many disabled people supported on the site as possible. So that's one thought. The other thought is probably in the report we should say something about opportunities to subdivide the property. Um, it could be divided in half or it's a, it's an R60. So you could do an acre and a half lot and a two and a half acre lot. So maybe we're talking about two different vendors building a project that is in their scope of business. Um, and maybe they're not, um, the projects aren't that similar, you know, that one targets a higher need group and another one, um, targets a group that has more ability to, um, go out and do things like have a job. Um, well, that's it for the moment. Um, Stephanie. Well, I'm thinking if we, if we laid it out as, as, as suggestions of what principles would be good, what boxes to tick as far as what the, you know, what the, um, the thing would provide that under those, we could mention certain models as taking more of those boxes than other models. Um, fitting with the, um, fitting with the community, um, you know, able to, uh, support and also support people that do not have another, um, option in the local area too. Um, for instance, if we're an elderly person might, might, might want to live in one of the, um, other place, you know, the places that are already there, uh, for elderly people. Um, and it's, but it's just kind of organizing it rather than limiting it to a certain model or two is, is, is, you know, having an opportunity to say this model fits many of these criteria. Um, and this one doesn't, you know, it does two things. Another one does 10 of the things, um, kind of organizing it that way, but still putting the information out there. So the select board understands, um, which type of model would, would actually, um, be more desirable when they see what the options are in front of them that have been presented. Bill Adams, you're muted, Bill. Following up on Jean's point. Um, I think we, we don't necessarily have to measure the amount of good we're doing by the number of people we help, right? Because if we help someone with twice the disability complexity, if we help half as many people with twice the level of complexity, we're doing the equivalent amount of good, in my opinion. Um, so how you measure the amount of good you're doing, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be based only on the number of people. It could include the complexity. Um, and I think that's part of what we're wrestling with, right? Is do we, um, do we, is it better to help 30 people with, who are relatively more functional or, you know, 10 or 15 people who have much higher need? And, um, I think for this committee to say a little bit about that would, about what we think, based on what we've heard, would be helpful to the selectmen. Yeah, I, I have in, in the report included that the estimate of underserved people in the Commonwealth with disabilities is 70,000 people, you know, I guess I'd be happy to include any other measurements that might help. Well, I think we've learned one thing, right, that disability doesn't mean the same thing, right, to everybody. It's, it's, it's, it means a lot of different things, um, but we also know that some type of disability is reliably supported by DDS and some isn't, I guess that's one thing, another thing we've learned. Jean, um, I think somewhere in your report, you, you mentioned, you do mention the word barn. Yeah. So, um, do you think an RFP that would include suggesting a large common space, possibly a third structure for an arts type center for the residents who live there, but an openness to engage with, um, other way on residents? Right. Yeah. So, I, I've offered, yeah, I've offered examples in two days. There's two different ways for the select board to look at. One is examples of, um, trying to do analyses of what would fit on the site under all these different regulations. And so I think I have six different scenarios and that the analysis that I've done so far was mostly driven by financing. And that, you know, the, the, the, they would be eligible, uh, some of them for DDS, some of them not from DDS, but from the other sources of funding, but really looking to make sure that we didn't build, accept a proposal for something that might not be financially stable. So that was one kind of, um, um, the other set of examples I offered are, uh, sort of generic, uh, descriptions of existing projects that are operating. So the short description with a link so that they can then click and go look at the website and I'm happy to add in there any projects that people might want to include. So I just, you know, I didn't mean to be restricting those examples, just showing how examples might be made in two different ways. The two to come to mind, Jean, you might want to add. One of them was the one with the barn. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. So one of them was, um, three, three small houses looking like farmhouses with a barn structure. When I, when I looked at that model, the challenge was that most of these, um, entities don't want to have to finance and operate an enrichment facility. This is what they end up being called in the literature I've been reading. So an enrichment facility, usually they don't have a reimbursement stream that will cover that and they don't want to build own operate it. So it becomes a separate project where you find something like a foundation whose business it is to enrich the lives of disabled people who becomes the funding source for operating it. And then you look for a non-profit to actually run the place and come up with a definition. I think in the example I, I gave to you, it was like, um, half an art center, um, and half a food bank, uh, project. Um, because food bank banks bring people onto the site, but it's not in large numbers so that the people who live there could actually, you know, stock the shelves in the food bank and, um, prepare the bags of food for people picking them up. And so there's some traffic, but not real heavy traffic onto the site. There's pretty, pretty heavy traffic, Jane. There's heavy, very heavy traffic. I can tell you from personal experience. It depends, it depends on, um, how you set up the model. Right. A food bank can be, can be by appointment only. So all the querying is done through a computer. They don't stand up and stand in the lobby and ask for food. They contact and say, can I get on the list for distribution this week? And there's actually, you know, very organized and controlled number of people out on the site. So John, your food bank, do the, um, family members come and take food or, or is it simply a distribution point where? No, no, we're, we're actually very, very limited in the number of people that can come to the pantry. And that was dictated to us before we even moved into 534 Boston post road. It was dictated by COVID and public health concerns. So we had to move away from in-person shopping to, uh, remote access. So people to Jean's point do sign up ahead of time and we have 15, uh, individuals at a time coming with a car and, uh, we, we fill their order. But those are 15 cars every 50, every hour, basically, that are coming into, into the parking lot. Every day, John? Every distribution day, every day that we're open for distribution, that's on top of all of the volunteers. And we typically have at least that number of volunteers that are, uh, operating the pantry. I see. It's simpler to, um, St. Anne's, you know, the, um, the food pantry in Wayland. The, with the day they're open, there's, the lot is half full of cars, people everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. The open table, the same thing in Maynard. All the cars. So given the hour, I think it's a good time to end our discussion. I appreciate everybody's Frank, Frank, uh, Clements, um, we meet tomorrow night, and I think tomorrow night, uh, well, let me say that William Hearn is going to join us from Melmark. Now, you'll remember Melmark is the organization that, um, has, uh, developed, uh, group home, I think three structures, uh, north of Boston. So that should be an industry discussion who joined us at 630, and then we continue on with our discussion regarding Jean's report. Um, I'm thinking maybe come with questions regarding Jean's report and, um, think about what was discussed tonight and let's see if we can shape it so that, and make, um, come to a point where Jean might be able to go back and revise it for our, the meeting, uh, after that, which is scheduled for January 27th. Um, if no final comments, I'm happy to entertain a motion to adjourn at 850. So here's my final content, uh, comment. Yes. Um, there's a lot of editorial errors in this document at this point. Don't spend any time on that. Really, the question is what information do we put in front of the selectmen? Have I got it in there or is it not in there? Um, and, um, what I tried to do was make, you know, at every salient topic, have a section for it in the discussion, but then refer to an appendix for details. Um, if I've missed something, then I would want to get it in between tomorrow and the next meeting. Cause after that I'm going on vacation, so I need to get my big edits in in the next, that 10 day interval or whatever it is. Um, so that I leave everybody in good shape here. Um, we can talk more about this tomorrow, but, um, we do want to leave time for the neighbors to give some input. And if we wait till that meeting after that, then you'll be gone. So we'll have to think of some way to get it to them, but I'm sure you're thinking about that. Um, I'm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, uh, Bill, we'll be in a position to have the neighbors in in the 27th. So if you can plan on that, um, that would be great. And I'll make sure it's in the agenda. And I think by then we'll have a framework that we can, um, share with them, but, but, you know, can I say, we'll try to get them a draft like two days ahead of time, or will we, will we have to? Oh, I think, well, I think so. It'll be part of the packet. Okay. But, but they should know that we won't be picking paint colors, tile of window, one bay or two bay, nothing like that. More, more big picture. Okay. Oh, I don't know. It's an amazing work. Sorry. Go ahead. What did you say, John? I was going to say, they're, they're probably going to be bored with what they read. Yes. Right. And, and they may be frustrated, frankly, but, um, we do our best. Uh, any other questions before, uh, I entertain a motion to, uh, adjourn? So moved. I hear a second by Jean at, uh, Second. Second by John. Thank you. Those in favor of Brian. Aye. John. Aye. Stephanie. Aye. Bill. Aye. Jean. Tom. Aye. Great. Uh, seven, nothing. Uh, have a great evening, folks, and we'll see you, um, in less than 24 hours.