October 22, 2025 – 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee – Video & Transcript
October 22, 2025 - 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee
5.01 p.m. Welcome to Buffalo Road of the Meeting of the 212-Visor Advisory Committee.
Those present at the time, who are in the room, Bill Whitney, Will Adams, Dean Milburn online,
we have Stephanie Lynch and John Thomas. No one else online, right? No. Okay. Maybe others that
will join us. And I'm Tom Fay. This meeting is being held in the COA room. Watch this.
Meeting remotely through the link on the town website will be recorded. You can watch it at a
later time. Invite public comment. We ask public comment to be limited to two minutes.
Our agenda this evening will include public comment and then we will meet with various individuals
online or in person to discuss our endeavor here for best use of four acres of town-owned land at 212-Visor Road. Individuals that will join us this evening may include Henry Bajwa, President, CEO, CEO, possibly another person from the Charles River Center, Elise Souza, CEO, Nando Maureen, Estelle Oche, and the others of the building for human services, and Nandu Reichardt, highly of the developer manager of the Menman ark. Consider minutes of our last meeting on October 8th. We'll discuss the community's interest in doing a site tour, discuss responses to town's question information regarding the property, and we'll follow up on legal questions raised at our last meeting in October 8th. And then we'll adjourn. So at this time, I invite anyone in the room. I'd like to give public comments. Anybody? Welcome, Catherine. Thank you. Catherine, probably with us, 503. And anybody online reaching in public comments? No, I see no online. Okay. So we'll move on to the main event, item three of our agenda. With us is Emory. And how do you pronounce your last name, Emory? Bajwa, you said it right. Thank you. So I understand you're the president, CEO of Charles River Center, correct? Yes. Well, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us this evening. Sure. You and I have chatted over the phone, and I think you have a sense as to what our committee is about, and however, we're here to answer your questions. But why don't we begin by you telling us about who you are, what you do, and your organization's efforts to assist individual adults with disabilities? Sure. So thank you for having me tonight. So the Charles River Center is in Needham. We've been, we're celebrating our 70th anniversary next year. So we've been in existence for 70 years. Fun fact, I'm the fourth CEO in 70 years. So the organization has a lot of stability and a lot of institutional knowledge, which I'm very proud of. That's, that's really a tremendous feat. So we are a nonprofit. We serve adults and children with developmental and intellectual disabilities, including autism and acquired brain injury. And our mission is to provide high quality services to promote as much independence as possible. Our organization serves, has four divisions. One deals with the kids and their families. So while they're still going to public schools or private schools, we support the families and keeping them at home. So we send staff in based on the family need, whether it's for a couple hours or after school or whatever. We keep, we help keep the fan, you know, the family intact for as long as possible. Even as they get older, we can still do some of that work. We also have a navigation service for the families, how to get benefits to make sure they have good doctors and all of that sort of thing. So we call that division, our family support division, our wings for autism program, which is a national program. Dow started with us about 14 years ago, that was born out of a family's desire to have the trap, the family travel as a unit travel together, and not to keep their loved one with autism home, because they couldn't handle the airport experience. So if you haven't checked out our website, that's a, that's a really very, uh, unique program that we offer. We also have a large, um, residential service. Uh, we have currently 33 residential group homes, uh, in and around the metro region, the Southeast region, and we have one in Wayland on Boston Post road, uh, 93 Boston Post road, I believe it is. It's been mistaken for a bank in the past. Somebody actually walked in and said, I thought this was a bank. So we've changed our house design since that experience. Part of the problem too, is we had lines in the driveway where staff is supposed to be parking because they were parking wonky. And you know, so that was part of the problem. We got rid of those lines too. So that's funny. Um, so 33 programs, we're expanding our residential program to include at least two more in the next fiscal year, which starts in July. So we've purchased a property development is happening. Um, our newer service entity in the residential world is acquired brain injury. We're down in Brockton and Easton and Stoughton, uh, serving people with acquired brain injury who were previously living in nursing homes because there was no community supports for them. We also offer day services. So where do they go? Great. We have a group home. Where do they go during the day? Well, we have a couple of different options. One is a medical therapeutic day program that they can attend where they get their nursing, their occupational therapy, their speech therapy, their physical therapy all under one roof five days a week. Or they go into our pre-work, pre-vocational or vocational programs. So if they have the skill sets to, you know, work on, uh, getting jobs, then that's the program for them. And we place them in jobs. We're in Olin College. We're at Newton Wellesley Hospital. We're at all kinds of places, um, working. So that is our day service. So, um, what am I forgetting? So that, so it's day residential family support. And what am I forgetting? I think that's, oh, family support. We talked about that. So in a nutshell, that is quickly what we do. And, um, yes, we are in Wayland. We've been there since, is it 2016 maybe? I can't quite recall. I should have looked it up, but I'm pretty sure. I'm Boston Post Road there. So if you have any questions I'm happy to respond to them at this point. I'm sure we do like open up, uh, building questions. Uh, first, uh, thank you for joining us this evening. Um, given that we are, uh, looking to provide housing for, uh, you know, potentially a wide range of people with disabilities, whether physical disabilities or intellectual or learning disabilities, what advice would you give to us as to how best to proceed to, uh, uh, I guess, uh, sort through the, uh, the kind of menu of choices as to the population that, uh, uh, should be served. So, so I think, you know, you could go after, I think you have by the other people that you invited to this, the guild and myself and one other organization. So I think that the community, your community and most communities are okay with serving folks, uh, with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I think what I hear a lot of times from the communities that we move into is, um, do they have mental illness? Do they have drug addiction? You know, we heard it from your community when we moved in too. There was, we did a town meeting. I don't know if any of you were there when we, when we first went into Wayland, I was there. We did a town meeting and people were very afraid because it was the first group home, I think for Wayland and they were very afraid and they have a lot of questions and they, they would question whether or not we're going to do a bait and switch. Yeah. Move in the cute little old ladies at first and then switch them out for folks that are worse intent. So I think that, you know, it's public education. It's, it's, it's public education. That's so much of our mission is it's not a really, it's not only just to, you know, give our folks an opportunity to live in the community, not in institutions, not nursing homes and to access community resources, but it's also to be seen by the community as valuable contributors to the community through volunteerism, through accessing your grocery stores, your, your libraries and, and things like that. It's really inclusionary. I don't know if you have other group homes there now. Um, I, do you have others in Wayland? No. So it's a very limited exposure to your community. So that's the first thing I would say is it's really an education and exposure to the value of having folks with disabilities as part of your community. Um, we did have a tough time to be honest with you in the beginning. Uh, the church that the guys went to, uh, didn't, they put us in the basement, um, because we were making coughing noises that were disruptive. Um, so we left that church and went to, I think it's a UU church. I'm not sure, but we went to a more open-minded church and talked to the pastor there, but yeah, people weren't happy with us. Um, when we first got there, so it really was a tough beginning. Um, so that's, that's, I don't know how you'd get exposure, um, other than increasing the offerings. And, you know, we looked at, when we look at properties, we look at a couple of different things. Maybe that would be helpful for you is one is a part of a neighborhood. Now Boston Post Road is not actually a neighborhood. It's the house right next to that theater. That's us. Looks like a bank. Um, but it's not really a neighborhood. So we've changed that since because that could be as isolating as an institution or a nursing home, when you have to hop in a van to get to any place. So since then, there's a couple of things we've done since that year. One, it has to be in a neighborhood with sidewalks. It has to be set back from the road a little bit so that it's safe for our folks. If they were to, you know, go out to get the mailbox, it's, it's a little bit set back. Um, we like to have neighbors. We like to have neighborhood meetings. We like to have cookouts. We like to have open houses. Um, we do this in almost every community we go to. We have an open house and I think we even did it here. It wasn't well attended, but there were some people who did attend. Um, so we have an open house so they can see how, how great the folks are that live there. And there's nothing to be afraid of. Um, so, so those are the kinds of things we look at. We now build forever homes, we call them. And that is a five bedroom ranch home that takes about an acre of land. Um, so we don't do two stories. We don't, when we buy land, we'll tear down what's ever there if we have to. Um, that's Charles River. That's not all providers. This is what we've learned. Because right now I'm facing like, we have the first group home. We set up the first group home in Massachusetts and it's right here on my campus. And it's a nine person group home because they allowed you to do that back then. Now it's five or less. Can't do more than five, uh, people living in one residence. So, um, I'm faced with the issue now that they can't go up and down stairs. Where am I going to put them? So I have to, they've lived there, two residents have lived there for 40 years and now I have to move them because they can't do up and down stairs. So that's devastating. So we do forever homes. So we do five bedroom ranch style homes that, um, our extra wide corridor, you know, hallways, extra wide doorways. So that if God forbid they need wheelchairs in the future, they could still live there. There's overhead lift systems and so forth. So that that's when we're looking at parcels of land, that's what we look for. The guild might tell you something else. They have different experiences and your other providers might tell you something else. Stephanie, any questions on your part? Oh, let's see. Yes. My son attends, uh, the day program at Charles River and Natick and, and absolutely. He's getting into the community all the time with those groups. That's awesome. Can't wait till he can get back. He's dealing with some medical things right now. Mike, I was curious about, um, thinking there would be different people at different times in the residence. And then the idea of aging in place could, is, is there a need for flexibility in terms of how many people are having room there for, for, for sleep, uh, for, um, caregivers to live there, uh, or, or to be able to have more or less percentage of caregivers, depending on the needs of the individuals. And that's a great question. Very good question. I I'm sorry. I don't know your son. Is it Steven? Jason Silverman, JJ. Oh, JJ. Okay. Yeah. So I don't know him very well, but, um, so I can't speak to that, but what I would say is the way that groups homes, group homes are now configured, this has changed over the years, is that the state DDS does an assessment of the people who are going to live there. DDS, sorry, uh, the Department of Developmental Services. That's our primary funder. We also have Medicaid funding, but that's our primary funder. So they determine the level of staff support that each person needs. Okay. We do our own assessment as well. And that determines the level of staffing for the entire home. And oftentimes it is leveled by their safety skills. Primarily their survival cooking skills, be able to recognize danger and get out of the house and a fire on their own. And that sort of stuff. Mostly it's health and safety related or physical related meeting total support need. I need to be, you know, showered, changed, dressed that, that kind of thing. So that really determines the level of staff in a house and they try and we all try to have people live in the house with the same needs. So if JJ, you know, it doesn't need that much staff support, he will likely, if he ever gets to a group home, uh, is he living in a group home now, Stephanie? No, he's, he's, uh, with me and he has a lot of needs. He's AFC level two. So it's like hands on 24 seven. All right. So that's what he'll be. If he ever gets into a group home, he will live with like similar people with similar needs. So there'd probably be up with five residents, always three staff presence, except for the overnight, that kind of thing. So it's always, and it's always reevaluated. So as the needs of the house change, so do the ratios of staff to residents change. That's, that's very helpful. Thanks. So, uh, I do want to go back to one thing about the land for a group home. You know, a lot of time, the, the complaints we hear from our neighbors, we try to mitigate those, the common complaint by the selection of the land. That's why just not any land will work for us. Now, this is again, just Charles river. I'm not speaking for any other organization. When you, when we talk about a house that's set back, there's a couple of reasons for that too, is that's because this parking. So let's take, you know, Stephanie's son's example. So if there's five people in a home, always three staff present and the house has two vans assigned to it. The state authorizes two wheelchair vans or two minivans per group home. So right there, three staff. So that's five SUVs and minivans and wheelchair vans just every day, every shift all the time. So no driveway can accommodate that and allow people to get out without having the whole group move out while I move my car out. So we end up putting in mini parking lots on the properties. And that's not an attractive site for a lot of neighborhoods. So that's the other reason why we like a lot of land. Sometimes we'll put it off to the side of the house or the back of the house. But that's the only way we can accommodate because then if a nurse is also working there, that's a six car. Everybody has SUVs these days, right, too. Then parents are visiting. That's another car. That's seven big cars. And we don't want to park on the street. Neighbors hate that. Parking on the street all the time in front of my mailbox. That's another reason why the land has to be set back from others. We also hear if the houses are too close, they can hear some behavioral episodes going on, and it's disturbing. So here in Needham, the houses are 30 feet apart from each other. That's not a problem in Wayland per se. I can tell you that, which is good. But in Needham, some of our first houses are right on top of their neighbors, and that's not a good situation at all. Because staff also change every eight hours throughout the day, eight to ten hours. So you'll see headlights coming in at 11 p.m. You'll see 7 a.m. more headlights leaving, right? So that's the other complaint, which is why we like to be separate, a little bit separate from our neighbors. So I did want to address that. So if you're wanting to invite group homes into Wayland, you should really, first of all, look at what are the offerings for land. It can't just be any piece of land. You know, it's in the neighborhood. The neighbors have been spoken to. Whatever. I don't know. It's set back a little bit. It's an acre. That kind of thing. So, Anne-Marie, this committee is charged to advise the select board on the best use of four acres of land in particular at 212 Cajigwood Road. And I'm not sure if you've had a chance to look at that land on Google Maps or anything. But that's our focus. Is it going to be subdivided? Can it be subdivided? It might be. Depends what the select board decides. But it can be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No questions. I guess I had two questions. So I represent the neighbors. And so one thing I'd like to hear from you is how you move from that phase of people being worried and concerned to something that I think we've been described to us as very accepting and positive on Post Road in particular. Yes. So, so I am, again, this is just Childs River in particular. Not every agency does it this way. So we, so when we start, when we first buy a piece of land, we send a letter to all the abutters and then some people that would be affected by our vehicle traffic. We send letters out introducing ourselves. We invite them to come here for a coffee as a group or personally to come meet us, come see what we do. We show them our website and everything else. Um, then we go to the town hall and we do a town meeting, not a town meeting. Uh, I don't know what to call it. It was like a meet and greet, but it was at the town hall, um, where they could see our design plans for the house. They wanted to know where on the lot, it was going to be situated. Will it be fencing all that other stuff? Um, so we, we had those meetings. Uh, and I remember somebody objected because that meeting was being held on private school vacation week, and that wasn't fair to them. And I'm like, well, I don't know private school vacation week. So that was some of the stuff early on. But, and then once we move in, we send a letter again to the abutters and say, please come to an open house, come meet us. I would have, you know, hors d'oeuvres or whatever, and open house and the families would be there of the people there. And then it's really about being good neighbors, right? It's about, you know, when somebody calls to complain that, you know, you're, you're, you leave your trash out by the street three days after the pickup date, you know, that's a complaint or your head, your headlights are shining in my, uh, bedroom at 11 o'clock at night. Is there anything you can do? We'll put up, you know, Arborviti trees to try to block that or a fence or whatever. So we try to be responsive when complaints come in. Um, but it is, you know, there are eight hour shifts rotating through. So it, you know, it is a disruption sometimes to people and we try to keep that to a minimum.
So my other question is you've obviously been in business for a long time, but in your executive role, like what do you see as the biggest threats to financial stability and keeping a group house enterprise in business? And as we look to groups that might do this, like what should we be thinking about or asking when we wonder, you know, will they be able to be in existence in 10 or 20 or 40 years from now? So I, what I would say to that, and of course I'm no expert, but what I would say the biggest threat to us is Medicaid cuts. Of course, we just heard a plan for the next three years to have various Medicaid cuts. But what I would say is group homes are such a safety net for this population and their families. That's not going to be cut. That won't be cut. The biggest risk to the sustainability of the group home system is lack of staff and lack of staff is a result of low administered, uh, legislative appropriations. So it's really advocacy. So we're funded by legislative appropriations. Any services after the age of 22 is not an entitlement. It is, you have to be deemed eligible and the money has to be there through the legislature, special ed schools. That's an entitlement. You're guaranteed education. This is not an entitlement. Okay. That's a very important thing. So we're highly dependent on legislative appropriations. Highly dependent on, are we getting enough money to pay our staff a living wage? That's going to be the biggest threat. What I see coming down, honestly, not for, not for five, maybe 10 years is they're going to change the group home model once again. So it went from nine person group homes, like I said, 20 years ago, uh, uh, 50 years ago, 70 years ago, nine person group homes was okay in a campus setting here. Cause campuses were okay back then in 2014, the federal government, I don't know if you can hear me. I got some guy cutting my grass behind me. So in 2015, 14, the federal government said, all you campus settings have to shut down. We don't believe in campus anymore. You have to live in the community and one group had a, at a time. So now I'm seeing the pendulum swing back to, wait a minute, maybe campus settings are going to be okay. Melmark just put in a campus setting or they're about to, uh, Melmark. So, and the federal government said, okay. So I think it's going to swing back to, we can't afford these one-off group homes. Let's talk about how to save money by more people living in one setting. We are the best, safest bet for towns, affordable housing units. We're great dependable, uh, uh, tenants, if you will, for affordable housing, you know, that, right? So I don't know what your threshold is and whatever, but every bedroom is considered an affordable unit. It's not the whole house is one. So, and we're reliable, you know, yeah, they might come with some complaints, but you know, the, the funding is secure for now as much as it's going to be. Um, you know, we buy this land, we can sell this land later, I suppose, if something occurs, but, um, yeah, I think we're, we're a good safe bet for towns, quite frankly, but we have to feel it'll only work if we feel part of the community, in my opinion.
Debbie, you had a question?
Just, uh, just a, sorry, just a quick question. Um, because one of the things we were covering was the question of whether there could be, would be any preferential, um, preference for, for people from the town who grow up in Wayland to, to live there. How do you handle that kind of thing? It's a great question. Yeah, I hear that a lot. It's a great question. I would say, so, so again, the Department of Developmental Services funds us. So all the referrals come through them. Okay. Um, so we would say to them, have you looked at JJ? He's from Wayland. Does he fit this model? So JJ can't be plugged into a house that he's not going to be supported, right? But yes, there would be a discussion and there is an interest from both DDS's perspective and our perspective that whenever possible, families should be kept together in the same town. No guarantees because they have to be eligible. They have to fit the model of that house. That house might be, uh, only have one staff or five people. They're so skilled. Now you don't want JJ there. His needs won't be met. So those conditions, uh, matter, but yes, we do like to keep families in the same town. That's good. Do you want any questions on your part? Um, thank you, Ann Marie. I, I just wanted to, um, uh, thank you again for joining us and for your presentation and just full disclosure. One of my first jobs out of college was working as an employment specialist at Charles River. Ah, so that, that was a long time before I started working at ArcMass with Leo and John, John Grugan was one of my star hitters when we had to go to the state house to talk about workforce development. So I have some history with Charles River and just in terms of, um, just putting a pitch in, in terms of the question about, uh, the longevity of Charles River, you guys have been around since the fifties. Yeah. So I, I don't think you can really overstate that legacy and the fact that, I mean, if we're talking about group homes or whatever residential model, um, Charles River has been around probably longer than most other providers in Massachusetts. I just wanted to sort of throw that. Yeah. And honestly, John, four CEOs, give me a break. So that's like 30 years, you know, John Grugan was here for a number of years, Paul Mara before him and, and I'm before, so that you can't beat that legacy. So for stability and institutional knowledge, it's, it's tremendous. Yeah. So one, one of the things I wanted to ask Anne Marie, and this is sort of a question that we've been grappling with as a group, as you, as you can imagine, um, just based on your experience, I'm assuming it's a little unusual for a municipal, municipal group like this to actually sort of be proactively doing what we're doing. It's usually the other way around, usually probably more the norm, the experience that you went through with a group home on, on Boston Post Road, where either DDS or a provider agency is doing the proactive, uh, outreach to the community, not the other way around. So one of the things that I think we're sort of, uh, contending with is where, where do we begin? I mean, it, it, I, I keep going back to, you know, we, we don't want to put the cart before the horse, but we don't even really know for sure, given that we're kind of trailblazing a little bit here. Uh, what, what is the cart? I mean, we, we, some of the people in this meeting actually invited, uh, some folks from, uh, DDS central office, uh, for, for multiple discussions. And I think they were even kind of at a loss to, to understand how to sort of help guide us. They, I, I think they were feeling, uh, a little bit torn because they didn't want to dictate to the town what it ought to be doing with this property. But by the same token, they were trying to, uh, help us understand how to, how to proceed. And I think the, the water frankly got a little muddy. Um, I'm, I'm hopeful and I'm, I'm actually looking forward to, uh, getting some additional feedback from Deb Johnson at the area office level and, uh, in, in helping us to understand, you know, it's one thing to have providers such as yourself come in and sort of give us an explanation and a little descriptive history of, um, your organization and what it is that you do. But again, uh, to Stephanie's point, some of the, the, the questions that are, are sort of first and foremost on a lot of our minds are, can we, uh, request a local preference? How does that work? How do we proceed? How does this group proceed with the, the, the, the potential funder, whether it be DDS or DMH or, uh, you know, another, uh, entity? Um, so I guess, and this is maybe an impossible question to, to throw at you, but I'm going to throw, throw it at you. Um, how would you suggest that we proceed? We, we have a parcel of land. There is a, a strong sentiment in town to see it, uh, be developed for this particular purpose. Um, given that mandate as, as Tom outlined, um, is the mandate of this committee. How, if you, if you were sitting, uh, with us, how, how would you proceed? So, so I'm going to be very honest with you, is the land going to be donated or purchased because four acres and Wayland would be prohibitive for any organization. So the first thing is is we're going to sell it for a discount or it's going to be a donation to a non-profit serving people with IDD. We have to be able to, to sustain a DDS does not fund the purchasing of property. They don't, they only purchase the staffing service essentially. So, so that's one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of providers go into wealthier towns. Just quite honestly, the math doesn't work. And so that's the first thing you have to consider. Um, that's how you could get somebody to at least discuss it with you is to say, look, we understand the value of this loan is $5 million. We're going to sell it for whatever, whatever, or we'll donate half of it or whatever. I don't know. So that's the first thing to start the discussion. Then, you know, you couldn't really talk to DDS directly and say, you know, um, we want a Wayland preference. It's not typical that towns work with DDS directly is where the conduit, right? So you have to get us to partner with the town. You know, I don't, a lot of organizations don't partner with the towns. I think that's a missed opportunity. Meet with the fire, meet with the police, tell them who we are, all this stuff. They were invited to the town meeting, by the way, Wayland. Uh, I think it was police. Um, so I think that's, that's a missed opportunity. And if you should find a provider and I don't think you can pick it, you can't pick the provider that you want. Right. Um, yeah, you are asking. It is, it is a little strange, but it's going to be, I think the first thing to do is to attract providers based on your offering. Then people might get interested because we, um, I don't actually know if they're still doing it, but DDS was paying. I think they still are for new houses. They were paying a, um, uh, a bonus to the providers to try to get people to open up programs. So many people are so scared right now to expand their agencies because of the looming, uh, Medicaid cuts that could affect residential to a certain extent. I don't want to get into a whole big thing, but residential services on the back end is funded by Medicaid to the state of Massachusetts. So if Medicaid cuts were to come, it could affect it. I personally don't think so. I think it's such a safety net that there would be a huge outcry. Day services is one other thing. Residential, I don't think so. So a lot of organizations are not growing and they haven't been growing for the last couple of years. We continue to grow a craziness, I suppose, but also commitment to my families. Some of the families I made a commitment to grow. So it's a tough one, John, but you would say that the consideration would be to
for, for, uh, the, the town when it was looking to, um, to in, in terms of what, what this property is going to ultimately be developed for, who, who would be developing it, that cost would be one of the first things that we ought to think about. Yes. Yes. I know Medfield, I think it's Medfield was looking to donate land to a provider and, um, it did attract providers. Um, so, so that is the first thing is either donate land or a serious reduction or whatever. Right now I will tell you that it takes, so I'm trying to build a group home within 30 minutes drive of Needham. So wealthy towns around here, I cannot find anything that I consider sustainably affordable this close to the organization. And that's why we went into Easton and Brockton because it basically, um, the houses and the land was about 1.6 billion. That's about, that's my cap. I can't go over that all in because I can't sustain it moving forward. I don't know other providers what they're thinking, but that's, and, and we own much of our, if you look at our financials, we own all of our assets, very few are, our mortgage. So that's another portion, you know, consideration for us. About 1.6 all in John, that's not, would a, would a, a nominal, uh, lease, would that be something that would be attractive as well? So we don't lease anything. Lots of organizations do lease. Yes. That could be an enticement to some. Yes. Okay. We don't lease anything. Yeah. But yes, that could be absolutely.
So the lease is offset in our residential contracts with DDS. Right. Right. Um,
so that could be an afford, uh, a way to attract people. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Um, Brian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, um, we're looking at a number of agencies and a lot of them have specific clients that they work with that meet specific needs. So do we put this out and just see what comes in, what's viable and roll the dice and see what kind of a population we'll be working with? Yes. Cause you won't actually be working with them. So it's really, uh, if I were you, I would look first at the agency and their reputation. Uh, it doesn't, you know, it's the actual clientele. So we, we spoke about earlier that we only serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism, required brain injury. And I will also say that the people that are getting funded for residential services through the department of developmental services are more medically complex and behaviorally complex. So gone are the days, John, when we serve down syndrome guys who just melt into the community, that that is not who DDS is prioritizing for funding quite honestly. Right. So, so it's, so it's, you know, I think that if I were you, I'd look at the reputation of the organization. How stable are they? What population did they serve? Neighborhoods get nervous if it's the department of mental health services. So, so you have to address that because they think it's a methadone clinic. Actually, I came up at the town meeting. It's a frequent thing. We just broke ground in Stoughton and I got a call from somebody on the street and says, are you putting up a methadone clinic? I can't believe she said that, but no. So come meet us, come have a cup of coffee with me. Let's, let's figure this out. So you don't really have a say on the clientele, but you do a, you might want to call up certain providers that have a solid reputation that are well-respected in their communities, that kind of thing. I mean, autism is a particularly difficult group to, to, to manage sometimes, especially the folks that are being funded, but again, providers should be able to manage them. Good advice. Yep. Catherine. Anne-Marie, thank you so much for this presentation. It's been incredibly informative. I really appreciate your insight on the process. Um, my question goes back to the campus setting that was just recently approved. I wanted to look it up and I couldn't hear where it had been approved. Is that in Massachusetts? Yeah. Uh, I think it's Andover. It's Melmark. Melmark and Andover? Yeah. I want to say it's in Andover, North Andover, something like that. It's three and a half acres of a development and there's group homes and a community center being put into that three and a half acres. Um, you don't want that in Wayland. No, we don't want that. Uh, I can't imagine I I'm not in a butter, but I can imagine pushback, but I, at the same time would, I mean, I can see for economies of scale and lots of other reasons why it would be excellent to serve seven to nine residents as opposed to five, especially with the success of the Boston post road development. But, um, so I was curious about that. Thank you. Yeah, I did. The approval is not there right now to have one group home have more than five. I can see it coming in the future. In fact, when we buy property, we make sure that the septic is good for at least six for that very reason. I'm envisioning converting the garage into a bedroom when DDS says you can have six now. DDS is a very fickle partner. I'm sorry. They just are. They change their mind all the time. So yeah. Oh, I'm glad you found it helpful. I, I, I, yeah. May I ask why, um, you want to serve folks with disabilities on this property? Is there a reason? The, the, the town, uh, came to own the property through tax title and the select board, you know, discussed different, uh, ideas for its use. We decided that this idea would be worth for something. So we presented the town, town meeting, town meeting, gave approvals. Oh, well, that's good. I would add that Brian and I both work at Wayland Housing Authority and we have lots of, um, adults with disabilities in public housing and, um, for many, it works well, but for many, it doesn't. And there's a lot of isolation and we'd like to see more community services, uh, provided, um, you know, common, common area for cooking or movie watching or whatever, just to make it more of a community like setting. So, uh, we've been pushing for this for a long time too. Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know if you looked at our website, but we're developing three and a half acres in Needham for, um, folks who can live on their own with wraparound support services. So it's a little bit step up from, um, housing authorities because they don't offer the job support, the socialization, the community integration. So it's a brand new thing that we're getting funded by the executive office of housing and livable communities to put up 86 affordable units, um, right here across the street from my office. So it's pretty cool. If you should look at it on our website, it's called Charles river Heights. Um, and yeah, for that very reason, we also heard that there's a huge need because the elderly parents still have somebody living with them that's quite capable, but haven't been pushed out of the nest yet. That's right. Yeah. That's what we see all the time, all the time. So that's why this is not going to be group home living. This is going to be those people with wraparound drop in staff supports, no overnight supports, just drop in staff supports. Thank you for being with us this evening and and, uh, no question from me. You've already been very generous with your time. Oh, great. Great. Thank you. John, did you have something else you wanted to say when I just wanted to throw in, uh, in response to your question, Ann Marie, and also I like to remind everybody here. Uh, it's, it's stated in the town's housing production plan that there, there needs to be more housing to serve the population that we're looking at. So yeah, just, just for the record. Right. So we have got a few questions and, um, like others, I really appreciate you joining us. Um, so we have four acres at this, uh, that we're looking at, are you saying that under the rules, it's not an option to have, uh, say offer an RFP to one or more developers to have two different homes, um, housing, say three to five per home. Are you saying that that is or is not possible? Yes. John, uh, so, so, uh, that is actually a great question that I forgot to cover. So DDS has what they call, um, site limitations. So no two group homes can be within, I think it's two miles, three miles of each other period, end of discussion. So if I were to say, I want to build a house on Constituate Road, I have to go to DDS, give the address. They pull out some map and they say, sorry, a BAMZ is only a mile away. You can't do it. Or Delta projects is only a two miles away. You can't do it. So that is true. You cannot subdivide this property and have two group homes even run by the same provider in one location. Unless they give the waiver, correct? Makes me crazy. Unless they get no, they won't give a waiver. No, not a citing waiver. There's no way. Why would that be if they're trying to encourage communities to have, um, homes to house adults with disabilities? The reason is they said that we don't want to saturate a neighborhood and, and therefore jeopardize their integration in that neighborhood. Oh, it's that campus, you know, kind of a thing. We don't want to saturate a neighborhood. So there's a sighting. Now it was 10 miles and five miles and four miles. I don't even know what it is now. I think it's two or three apart, but that's what they said is we do not want to take over and saturate a neighborhood because that is not integration. I'm just going to ask, um, so how far away is our site from your other home? About one and a half miles. 1.2, 1.3. So 1.2, 1.3. So in that instance, I think it's good that you reached out to Deb Johnson because she's the one, she's one of the ones that would make the exception. I've had them say, oh, it's in a completely different neighborhood, even though it's under the, our allowable distance, you know, it's in a, it feels like a different neighborhood, but they won't. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Deb Johnson is a very straight shooter. She, she actually follows the rules. Actually, I just want to interject. Deb Johnson was, was on a call with Chris Flaskin and a number of other people from DDS central office. They were aware of the sighting of your other group home on Boston Post Road, Ann Marie. Yeah. They, they said for the record that that would not pose a problem. Oh, good. I mean, I'm just, I'm just repeating what they said. I'm not, uh, advocating one way or the other. I'm just getting what they said. Yeah. Very good. So yes. Unfortunately, you can't put them side by side though. So this question, Ann Marie is what percentage of residents are private pay, uh, the challenge of a deal. So of the 150 residents, uh, uh, only three are private pay. And here's the reason. The reason is now we have people who private pay because they are, they were not deemed eligible for DDS services. Uh, we have people who private pay. Um, yeah, it's primary, that primary that they didn't get, they weren't deemed eligible for residential services. They're either too high functioning or I don't know what, but they, they didn't. So we accepted private pay for those people. And then as they, and, and, and when you do a private pay, uh, the way it should be done is it should keep up with the funding of the state. So let's say it's $140,000 a year to serve JJ right now. That's what the state pays for all the other people in the house. Stephanie, if you're private paying, you should keep up with the rate of increase of the other people. We're not allowed to basically give away services at a lesser rate per our contract, if that makes sense. So, but the truth is who can afford that? Not a lot of people. So what happens is let's, I'll use JJ as the example. Now he's older, he needs more support. You, you know, you want DDS to reevaluate him. DDS says, why would I look at him? You've private paid him all these years. He's your problem, Charles River. You accepted him as a private pay. He doesn't get to jump the line. So I limit the private pay to just one or two exceptions. John Grugan did those private pays. I've not done a single one because we're in that situation where one person is private paying $30,000 a year for residential services because, and that didn't keep up with the other rates. So I don't like to do private pay. John Grugan did those private pay. But you elaborate a bit on this entity called Malmark, I believe you mentioned. It's another provider just like us. John Grugan. You're not monitoring.
Sorry. Welcome Ms. Costello Shea. You feel free to watch our meeting, of course, and we'll be with you in a few minutes. So, Anne-Marie, is Malmark a developer or not really? No, it's a school. It's a school. It's like a Charles River Center. So Malmark is a school. I think they're in Andover, but they also provide turning 20 services to people who are over the age of 22. So why are they permitted to have a campus setting versus other people? So when I questioned that, I don't know if you heard this. When I questioned that, they said, oh, they're making sure there's a robust community center in the campus. So the community is coming to us. Yeah, I can't make heads or tails of it, honestly. That's what I say when DDS is a fickle partner. Sometimes you just can't. There's Maureen. Sometimes you just can't figure it out why they make those decisions.
And my next question is, just to be clear, your organization does build homes to achieve your ends, right? You don't necessarily only buy homes that might exist. You also build them from the ground up. I prefer to build them, yes. Because you can control the design. And then it's a forever home. Yes, I can control the design. And finally, it was mentioned earlier about the day program in Natick. Can you elaborate on that day program in Natick and who does it serve? How many individuals and from what community is today? So they come from the metro region, which the metro west region, which is, you know,
Wayland and all the community, Natick and and all those communities around that area, the South Bridge and whatever else. So what that is, is called the community based day services. And we've kept it small intentionally. And it's about maybe 40 people who we serve out of that program. And it just turns out the majority of folks that are served out of the program have autism. That was not a design, it was just the way it worked out by when we set it up, maybe what, maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And they are community based day program, which means they go out in the community all the time, they do structured volunteerism, they do social recreational activities. They also do pre vocational skills, money management, they get people jobs as well with job coaching. And they operate Monday through Friday. It's in an industrial park. So it's an industrial setting. And it's like eight to four Monday through Friday. So it's a really nice, small, very active. Individuals love it. And the families love it. It's very active. They go out all the time and do some really great stuff. They have a group doing CrossFit training. I think that's original. So again, they give and they've done sailing and golfing. So they do some really crazy, great stuff. All right. Does any other member have a question for Anne-Marie? I see none. Anne-Marie, do you have any questions for us before you move on with your evening? No, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. Well, we're very fortunate to have you join us, Anne-Marie. You're a wealth of knowledge and wealth of experience. And we really appreciate you being here. I do see Stephanie has her hand raised. Stephanie, you have a question? I was just trying to unmute and say, thank you so much for joining us. It's been very informative. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye. And now, welcome to Amy Souza and Maureen Costello-Shea. Good to have you both with us. You're from the Guild for Human Services. Spoken with you, Amy. I think Maureen as well, and told you a little bit about what our committee is about. And just to be clear, we're charged to advise the select board here in Wayland on best use of four acres of land here, and not far from where we're eating here at the town building on Petituit Road. And our charge includes making recommendations for possible use of that land for adults with disabilities. And you're in that world. And I'd like to have you introduce yourselves and tell us about your organization and your experiences, if you like. Amy, do you want to start? Sure. I can start briefly. I am window dressing here as the CEO of the organization. Maureen Costello-Shea runs our adult programs as our chief program officer. So Maureen, oh, we are reversed. Our names got switched somehow. That's fun. I'm Amy. I'm not Maureen. So I'm the CEO. Maureen is in charge of programs, our adult programs. And so Maureen's going to speak to you a bit about that. And we're also expecting our chief financial officer, Yvette Rodriguez, in the event that you have questions about costs and building and all the financing. In the event that Yvette can't join us, I'm happy to cover that portion of the presentation. But I'll let Maureen start us off with a bit about the Guild and our programming. Maureen Costello-Shea and I'm the chief program officer at the Guild. So the Guild was founded in 1952 when our headquarters were in Concord. And our mission is really to educate, encourage, and empower individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to achieve their full potential and to achieve quality of life and really participate meaningfully in their community.
The Guild supports individuals in two programs, the adult residential program, which I'm going to share a little bit more about with you, and the Guild School. The Guild School is located in Concord, and the students that attend the school who are residential live in Billerica, Bedford, Watertown, and Waltham. The Guild's adult residential program spans eastern Massachusetts. We have kind of our farthest north home is in Billerica, down to Foxborough, Norfolk area. We do have a cluster of homes that are in the metro west region. So the folks from our homes you might see in Wayland live in Framingham, fairly close to the Wayland line in Sudbury and in Maynard, in a kind of out and about and actively engaged in those communities. Our homes are really meant to be homes for life. Our goal is that we really make a lifelong commitment to the individuals we support. The kind of individuals that are supported by the Guild in our adult residential programs, all have the common feature of having intellectual and developmental disabilities, but also have a very large percentage of folks have autism, along with behavior and mental health challenges, as well as folks with medical needs. And two of our homes are very accessible, but other homes have accessibility features kind of based on the current or future needs of the individuals we support. Our adult homes are funded by Department of Developmental Services, and we provide 24-7 staffing for folks. So we, you know, operate homes where really folks need staff support around the clock. We do not operate homes where folks live independently in the home and only, you know, receive a few hours a week of support. Really one thing that is common among the folks across the Guild's adult program, though they span a wide range of abilities and needs, is that everyone really requires staffing when they are in their home around the clock. The individuals we support do have a wide range of day and work programs. Programs, you know, folks attend, in fact, we have folks who attend the program that Marie talked about in Natick who live in our home in Framingham. We also have folks who are employed at Market Basket and Whole Foods, and then we have folks who attend what's called day habilitation programs where the focus of their program is more on requiring, you know, having OT, speech services, physical therapy, you know, and need kind of a different kind of programming. So really across a wide range. In addition to the direct service staff that provide support in the homes, our homes have clinical and nursing staff assigned to them that provide training and consultation and support to both the staff and the individuals. A vet can talk a little bit about how DDS funds homes, because given kind of your mission, that might be helpful for you to understand. Thank you. So as Maureen mentioned, the program provides service delivery and so DDS provides funding for both service delivery and then for occupancy costs, which includes acquisition of new properties. So the service delivery model is based on the house type. So that funding will fund all of the direct care staff that Maureen talked about. And when we think about our houses, and when we develop, we often do them in cohorts, because it provides an economy of scale. They don't necessarily cover the full cost of say an RN. So doing a couple of houses or grouping them together allows us to then bring on a full time staff person to provide all those necessary services to them. Occupancy is another thing that they fund. And that includes things like acquisition, but it does not include the cost of the land of the land. So if we purchase a house, we can contract with them to have them help, you know, cover the cost of a mortgage per se, but they will then back out the cost of the land. So they're not fully funding the cost of that house. And because they cap the amounts, you can't find yourself in a position where with our high housing costs in the state and interest rates, where providers are then required to make up some of that difference. The occupancy contracts generally will run over the span of a mortgage. So if you're purchasing a property, you contract with the bank for 30 years, the occupancy rate that has been set by the state would go on for about 27 and a half years, and then they would drop it and only cover the cost of maintaining that property. So utilities, they include food and as part of that occupancy contract, and then any other repairs that might that might be necessary. So those are the two vehicles. And then they also expect for uh, so what we call charges for care, which comes from the residents themselves. And then that gets backed out of that maximum obligation that the state has for occupancy.
So there were two, two current streets. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Can I ask the three of you to right click your screen and put in your proper name? And this is the reason this will be on. This is a tape meeting and people want to know who you are. And the person who does the minutes will want to know who's speaking. So if I could ask you to take a moment and just put in your proper name on the box, that would be great. Awesome. Thank you very much.
Amy, did you want to take from here? We're back to charming. So I wanted to share some current strategic plan initiatives that we have that, you know, are aligned with some of your discussions around this property as well as really aligned with our focus of community inclusion and really providing, you know, a high quality of life as part of local communities for our individuals. So the first area that really is a priority for us right now is to address the critical shortage of residential options for adults with intellectual disabilities and complex mental health needs by developing additional specialized group homes. And, you know, I know you've talked to other providers and you've talked to Amy, um, a bit, but I can tell you a little bit what that would look like at the guild. And that really is, um, for the majority of our homes right now, five person standalone homes. Um, but really looking at duplexes or homes that are located fairly near each other, you know, similar to our homes in, um, Sudbury and Maynard that are just a couple of miles apart from each other. So that really, you know, as Yvette talked about nursing and clinicians that are shared across homes that we're really maximizing those resources. Um, you know, up until now, the homes that we have purchased have been existing properties where we've done renovations, additions, um, those sorts of things, but in understanding the aging and really home for life, you know, one of our goals is also to look at potentially building based on the property, you know, to the needs of the individuals we, um, support. The second major, um, initiative Yvette is going to talk a little bit about, which is really looking to launch a community cafe business. Yeah. So Maureen talked about our school, um, as part of our school program, we have a vocational contingency there. And so what we have is an in-house, uh, cafe right now where staff can pull upstairs and order coffee and bake goods and the students staff the cafe, uh, prepare the coffee and the, and bring the food down to, um, to our staff offices. And so we're looking on expanding upon that model, um, and opening a cafe in a community. So we're really looking for that community experience. We're, we're looking to be able to bring people to into the, into the, the cafe and get to know the guild and the folks that we serve. Um, we have a restaurateur who is a partner, um, and they are helping us look at what is development for this look like? You know, how do we scout the appropriate locations? And then they're also going to be, um, a partner and the sense of providing the food that will be, you know, the product that we sell at the cafe. Um, but our expectation would be that our residents would be the staff working at the cafe, um, along with their support staff that, um, that we would provide. Um, and then this restaurateur would really help us build that out. And so we're excited about it. It's, it's a really different, uh, opportunity for us. And I think that one of the things that we're really, um, we're feeling really lucky about is having someone with such a good experience, uh, be a partner in this, this venture with us. I think it's worth noting and, um, Tom, you and I talked about this briefly, but our real estate partner in that is Graffito, um, which may be an organization familiar to all of you. Can you elaborate on that organization? So, um, our restaurant partner is Revival Kitchen and Cafe. Um, they are the, the organization with which we've been working for the last eight years. Um, our individuals, our residents and students have been really working closely, um, at Revival. And then, um, one of our, our community partners, um, has been Graffito and we have asked that they help us to scout locations, um, for our new cafe. So do they develop, do they look for land or homes for, uh, any good services or just, just the cafe? No, they're, as far as I understand commercial and we are, we are looking to them for that, that commercial partnership. Um, but among the organizations that we work with, we're, we're very careful to make sure that we have community-based partners, that everything that's done at the Guild is done in connection with community, that we tend not to have, you know, isolated homes and then not engage in community. We don't have campuses. That's not how we operate. We operate in separate group homes, um, that look just like a home that you or I would live in. And then we work in, in community-based businesses. This is the first business that we will be developing a partnership with another, rather than working in collaboration and having our, our residents working at another person's business that we will actually own and operate this one with the support of, of these community partners, including, uh, Revival, the cafe partner, and then Graffito, the real estate partner, who's again, helping us scout those locations. Well, why don't we turn it over to the committee and let them answer some questions. Although, unless you have a few more comments on your end. I think the one other thing I would add is, you know, Amy talked about our homes really being integrated within communities. Um, you know, one of the stories that I feel like really speaks to how well integrated our homes are is that, you know, probably three years ago, I received a phone call from someone who was buying a home next door to one of our group homes. And she said that, um, you know, she was calling to talk to us because they were buying a fairly expensive piece of property and, you know, going to be knocking it down and building a new home and making a big investment. And that she had gone around and knocked on doors of all the neighbors to find out what their experience had been with our group home. And most of the neighbors didn't even realize that it was a group home, um, which speaks to, you know, to really how well integrated, um, both the home was in terms of it's looking just like the neighbors and being well cared for and maintained, but also the fact that, you know, these five young men had been living in the community with supportive staff for at that point, seven years and neighbors really didn't even realize it was a group home and had no concerns. So I think that speaks to what our ultimate goal is, is really for our folks to be included in the community and be viewed no differently by their neighbors than any other, you know, um, next door neighbor. Great. Thank you. Jean, any questions? Sure. Could you tell us a little bit about the kind of characteristics you look for in the communities where you place your homes? You have lots of choices, but how do you pick?
So I would say one of the first things we look at is, um, access to activities in the community. So, you know, is there a YMCA or a health club nearby? What's the proximity to grocery stores and libraries and kind of all those things that we might look at what's, you know, a nearby hospital. Um, in many cases, if folks are already living in the community, we look at where do they work and where do they go to day program? Often we look at where do their families live? So they'll be nearby or their social connections. Um, in many cases, you know, what really is, where are they, where are they connected with? And then, you know, we also look at not wanting a home to be isolated and not be in a neighborhood where, you know, they ideally, um, you know, there were going to be other homes fairly nearby or where they can easily go to parks and walking trails and those kinds of things. I think it's worth noting that all of our homes are five bedrooms. And so a community that can support a home of substantial size is, is an important factor as well. And in some cases, you know, consistent with that, you know, neighborhood neighbors that are all septic and where the homes may only have three bedroom septics become a difficult place for us to move because we'd be looking at then adding a five bedroom septic, obviously, you know, kind of proximity to all the things any of us look for when we're going to be living in terms of, um, services and interest and supports and being able to, you know, get to a grocery store in 20 minutes or, you know, a nearby movie theater and those kinds of things. And also not wanting to be in a space where our house, especially if you're going to be building is going to stick out and not blend with the neighborhood. You know, one of our focuses is really that, you know, we are part of the neighborhood and, and aren't viewed as kind of some institutional type of, of setting or home within their neighborhood.
That's okay. Thank you. John, any questions on your end? You're muted. I'm not sure you say
you're muted, John. Yeah, sorry about that. No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. Um, a quick question on residency preference. I, I'm not sure there can be, um, an actual preference for members of the Wayland community. Uh, but if DDS is, it sounds like DDS is doing the placement of the five residents, right? And have, has the guild had much success in encouraging DDS to, um, really consider family located within the same town and, um, you know, have they been receptive to that and successful? Absolutely. In terms of, you know, some folks within a home and I'll give an example, you know, we have homes in Walpole and Norfolk and we really worked with the Newton South Norfolk area office and, you know, um, many of the individuals that live in those homes, family either live in that town or in a connecting town and are fairly nearby. Um, you know, often it may end up being a couple of people are because one of the big things that we really try to focus on is making sure that it's the right group of people living together because, you know, as an adult, if you're going to be living in community with other folks, you want to, you know, I always say folks should live with folks that they would want to live with if, you know, as much as somebody who's non-disabled does. And, you know, I've, I've been in this business for a very long time and I've had times where families have come to me because the families are all friends and neighbors and say, we would like this group to live together in a group home. And when you look at the needs of the individuals, you say like, these are five people who would, or four people who would never choose to live together. So we really try and look at, you know, both proximity, but also kind of what's the right mix of people and DDS, um, because their system first starts area-based. So Wayland is part of an area that includes Framingham and Natick and Sudbury. Um, you know, they start off by first looking at who do they have from that area. And then who do they have from areas that are close by that would be, you know, that are going to be a match. Um, but it kind of begins at the area level and then moves to the, you know, regional level in terms of finding match. Perfect. Thank you. Ryan. I just had a quick question, um, about serving, um, clients with intellectual disabilities and mixing them with, uh, clients who have autism, you know, how, how does that mix work? So the, the majority of the folks that we support, except for a very small number, have an intellectual disability and autism. Um, in fact, you know, DDS and the state really does only fund on an exception basis services for people who just have autism. And so the folks that we support that have autism also have intellectual disabilities. Um, and you know, their needs are the, as folks are grouped together, they're really grouped by folks who, you know, have similar needs in terms of the kind of staffing and support that they need and the things that they're interested in doing in the community and, and those kind of things. So you guys, and also the previous speaker talked a lot about isolation and that not being something you want to seek out. And I don't know if you've driven by this piece of land, but it is a semi rural sizable piece of land surrounded by two acre zone housing. Um, I can drive here though, to this meeting in three minutes from being a neighbor of that place. So do you consider that an isolated and there's great walkability on sidewalks and also sort of rail trail type stuff? Is that considered an isolated place or not an isolated place? Not at all isolated. I mean, I'm very familiar with the property because I drive by it on the way to our house in Framingham, actually going down Contituate Road. And there's lots of, um, it actually is very similar to where many of our houses are located. You know, when I say isolated, I say, you know, kind of a home that stands along out, um, you know, in central master in certain areas where there are no other homes, where there are not sidewalks, where it's a 45 minute ride to a grocery store kind of thing. Um, one thing Wayland has is lots of great opportunities for folks that honestly are folks in Sudbury and Framingham access pretty regularly in terms of grocery stores and restaurants and those kinds of things. And for the cafe idea, it wouldn't be in the home where people live. It would be like downtown or something like that, right? Be a business like any other. Yeah, that's a, it's, it's a, yeah, it would be exactly a business. We're looking for a place that has some foot traffic, um, you know, that, that, that would encourage customers, uh, because we'd like to be able to, to pay for it. Right. So we, we really want that business. Um, I think that one of the things that we are looking at is just making sure we would hope that it would be the type of place that could encourage that community activity, because we really want it integrated in there.
Can I ask one more question? What does it take to build a house that meets the needs of these types of, um, adults? Like, is that a tricky thing or are there out of the box solutions or how do you approach building a five bedroom house that meets the needs of these guys? So we have some other examples. Yeah. Have you done it with other projects? We have, so we have not completely built yet. Um, we have basically bought regular houses like you or I would go out into the community and buy for our families and then retrofitted those. There are some requirements from DDS already. So they required things like two, um, two spaces that for community spaces, and we need five individual bedrooms and they all need to meet a certain size. Um, and so that's really the beginning of it for us. And then we consider the, you know, the folks that are going to live there and what maybe additional modifications we might need. We have purchased, uh, raised ranches with, uh, with attached garages that we then have converted the garages into bedrooms, um, or converted the, the lower level. Um, and then even have looked at houses have, who have already come with five bedrooms. So the houses are not necessarily that special, if you will. I, you know, they're a house like any one of us would buy five bedrooms needs to have two spaces for community. Um, we look at like making sure that there's a good space in the backyard for them to access, um, and those sorts of things. If it were multi-level, then we need to consider what the safety, uh, requirements would be. But in a nutshell, uh, they, they don't have any remarkable requirements. Yeah. And, and, and you know, though, while I've been at the guild, we have not built, I've been involved over my career in building many, many houses. And, you know, there are design build plans that have been developed because of agencies building and, and have worked both with housing authorities, building, building homes on property that they were developing, like in the entranceway into a senior, um, a senior community or, um, building duplexes or accessible ranches. Um, and, and truly kind of the specs specifications that are required by DDS have been very consistent for a long time. So it's really taking those plans and just adjusting them so that if, for instance, you know, two of the people are in wheelchairs or three of the people were blind, that there are additional modifications you would make when you build, you know, in many ways, um, it's easier to build from scratch. Um, sometimes if you have that land because you're not spending a lot of time, you know, retrofitting or changing what's been existing to try and make it, make it work. Um, but, but because we have, you know, when we started our adult services, we were serving younger people who are primarily mobile and active and really wanted them to be, um, in the communities that had been identified by their families in DCF. We were really fortunate enough, um, you know, based on how the housing market was at different points in times to find those homes. Um, because often five bedroom homes might be attractive to us, but, you know, today there are not many families with the number of children that are looking at five bedroom homes. So that for us, you know, finding them, we weren't necessarily competing so much with, with others wanting as many bedrooms, but those who might want to, you know, way bigger common spaces or many more bathrooms, you know, or great rooms of those kinds of things. So, you know, we've been fortunate to find existing, um, but building really is, you know, if you have the right land and the right, um, and the right utilities and services available really is in some ways less complicated. Um, as we've learned with a couple of the houses where we have done, um, you know, needed to do additions and kind of work with things that were approved or code years ago where the code may have changed. Thank you. Um, uh, thank you again for joining us. Um, uh, I take it that, uh, or I infer that, uh, there may be an interest on the part of the guild to, to do a new construction poem. Is that a correct assumption? Yes, we are looking into it in several locations at this point. And would the, the guild, uh, be the, uh, the contracting party, the, the owner, or would you, uh, work with, uh, uh, a developer or a real estate consultant? We would certainly work with partners, but we would be the owners. Um, we tend not to lease properties from others. Um, we like to have control over the quality and maintenance of the home. And when we lease, we can't guarantee that. What about a ground lease where the, the building would be owned by, uh, you know, the, in this case, the guild, uh, subject to a ground lease, uh, with the town? That's a possibility. Yeah. It's what we're really concerned about is making sure that we can maintain the quality of, of the home, which is why we tend to own rather than lease. That means we can make repairs instantly and we can make them to our liking rather than a landlord's liking. Yeah. And the process generally is that you would, uh, go, or the, uh, the proponent would go to the state and say, Hey, we've got a line on this piece of property. Uh, and would you then enter into some kind of grant agreement with them to provide, uh, the, uh, uh, the capital that you need to, uh, operate the building and pay for the, uh, the debt service? Yvette, you want to start with that? Yeah. Yeah. So usually, um, what we'll do is when we're looking to expand, we do reach out to DDS and begin that conversation. Um, and Maureen and I, um, once there's a wait list, there's always a wait list. And so, you know, generally they're not turning us away. There's oftentimes where they turn to us and say, would you guys be interested in doing a house? Um, so once we've made a decision that we are looking to, to, uh, to expand Maureen and I begin our, our, our weekend trips to open houses, um, and start thinking about locations and that sort of thing, if we find a house that we think, um, is viable and we're interested in, then Maureen would reach out to, to DDS and get approval for the address, um, um, to whichever region, uh, is responsible for that area. And then once we've got clearance for that, then we move forward and we begin with, with the process of purchasing the property. Uh, what we have done historically is that we will pay for the property, um, in cash and then figure out what modifications it would need, um, and then what additional, uh, financing we would need after the fact, um, we have relationships with our banks. And so, you know, we know what our debt capacity is and what the options are available to us. Um, so those conversations are happening in conjunction with our conversations with DDS. And then once we've determined how much work the house needs, we will support, um, send those plans over to DDS to get approval. And as I mentioned, with their occupancy contracts, they have their max obs. And so we're running those numbers in house too, and kind of figuring out what is that budget that's going to be allowed for that and making our internal decisions. But, but DDS does not begin paying us for the actual cost of the occupancy until the first person moves into the home. And so, um, you know, they may give us startup money, for furniture or appliances or those kinds of things, you know, or to hire staffing in advance of the home opening, but the actual cost of, you know, whether it would be, you know, in the case of building, acquiring the land and building the home would be, you know, absorbed by the guild until the first month the house is open and they begin paying occupancy on the house. We know going into it, that they're, that they're going to fund the pro that they're going to fund the house and they're going to, uh, send referrals to us. And we've gotten all of those approvals in place. Um, and then we start looking and just get approval for the address and the additional work that it might require, but as we mentioned, but as we mentioned kind of the critical need, you know, we're approached on, uh, probably weekly basis by DDS being asked if we will open new homes, because there is so many people waiting for services. Um, so that the issue really is never them having people to move in. It's really, you know, for us as an agency, it's really the cost of, of acquiring the home and the renovate, you know, either building or renovations. That's the upfront cost. We have to absorb until they start paying, which just as you're interviewing or, you know, talking with a variety of providers, it's something to consider that the provider needs to be able to put down a large amount of money upfront in order to either, you know, purchase and renovate a house or to, to build from scratch. Most of that, you know, the leverage, the leverage comes from that organization for the borrowing power or for the cash. Um, so any of the expenses that you're asking for, you can't depend on DDS to front that money. It's always going to be the provider who starts. And so any public private partnerships that help to reduce that cost, whether it's the land that's never covered, it's the down payment, it's the initial construction costs, all of those prevent providers from being able to open new houses, which then causes that backlog in, in housing. Um, and as the interest, uh, you know, the mortgage interest rates rise, it becomes very challenging for providers to continue to leverage what they have in order to support new houses. And so it slows down again. But at the, uh, at the end of the day, I take it, you've got permanent financing that would, uh, would enable you to pay your debt service, uh, and operating costs, uh, but for the, uh, the investment of the land. So the, the equity that you ultimately end up investing is, is the land cost, I gather.
Yes. And then the down payment, which we eventually get back 27 years later. And so there's an upfront cost to that, um, just in terms of outright cash, the down payment being, I think if you're going to buy a home, um, or if you're going to construct a property, you have to put money down upfront. And so then you're 20% down for your mortgage comes out of our pockets. And then over 27 years, we recoup it. So there is, so there is an equity investment. Um, there is, yeah, there is. Okay.
Stephanie, any questions in your part? No, I think, um, I don't think so at this time. Thank you. So to some of the Whitney's questions a moment ago, do you set up separate mini corporations under your umbrella for each property or not? No, absolutely not. It's all under one. And you're a nonprofit, correct? Yes. So you don't pay taxes to the municipalities where you have the towns, correct? Correct. So when we are in, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Once the house is in service, uh, we, we file annual reports with, uh, with the specific towns and we don't pay for the property tax. Is your understanding that for-profit entities that do what you do, they do have an obligation to pay taxes to municipalities. Do you have an understanding either way? We are not a for-profit, so we can't answer for others. What we can answer for is as a nonprofit, we do not. And in the communities where you have homes, do those communities enjoy affordable housing credits for some or all of the units, to your knowledge? You know what I mean by that question? So are you asking if our houses count towards their affordable housing credits? Yes. Um, I don't know that. Okay. I believe they do, um, having, having done this and having kind of worked with a lot of the towns that they're very cognizant of, of, of, you know, how many group homes they have and, and knowing that the individuals who live in a, in a, um, group home, you know, are covered under the Medicaid waiver and, and do, you know, the, it does count as affordable housing. And, and some of it is often why- Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Say it again. That, that, that, you know, they do count as affordable housing. And I think it varies from municipality to municipality, how closely they track the number of group homes. But I do know, you know, many do and, um, and, and include that in, within their, their town statistics and, and requirements. Hold on, John. I just thought the previous speaker said that each room counts as one unit. Each bedroom. Yeah. I mean, that's, and, and for the couple of towns where we've worked with, with section eight, they've indicated each bedroom counts as a unit because it's one disabled adult. Just keep in mind, we're talking about five people, right? So we're not going to, if you're looking for us to put a, you know, a big dent in that number, we won't put a dent in that number more than five. Oh, you understand. For a town like Maryland, five is a dent. Fair enough. Okay. I just wanted to clarify just for the record that, that it's not on the provider. It's the, the onus is not on the provider to demonstrate that a, that a bedroom, a unit is affordable. That is a communication that occurs between the, the funding agency, whether it be DDS or DMH and, uh, the, the state housing authority. So let me ask, thank you, John. Let me ask you a question I asked, um, Anne Marie. Um, we have four acres here. Is your understanding that the state would not permit two homes, both dedicated to, to adults with disabilities next to each other, one on two acres, one on the other two acres, for example. So we can't answer on behalf of the state, but we can say in our experience, it hasn't happened before, but things are changing. And so I can't, you know, we can't talk about all the exceptions that have happened. I know that you spoke about Melmark briefly, briefly, but those are the exception to the rule. So it really would be, um, dependent on, on EOHHS to give you that determination, not us. Yeah. It sounds like you, you have not done that in the past. We do not. We, yeah, we've not done that. We've not done that at the guild. Um, but you know, have done that in the past. And I mean, and some of that also becomes based on the density within an area, um, you know, whether a town, but it has to be, it, it's an exception, you know, that we would have to submit a request for a very specific reason. And all of which is up to EOHHS, not us. Right. Those are all the questions I have. Do other members have any follow-up questions? I have one question about, um, do you get to choose the residents based on fit and the services that you do deliver when people come to you with opportunities? Or is there an obligation to accept residents that are proposed by, um, DDS? DDS, DDS sends referrals to us and we review them and determine whether or not we're going to accept them. Um, and whether or not face, you know, whether it is a fit with who the group might, you know, might be that exists, you know, in, in, um, in some cases we've had folks move into our adult programs who've come from our school program, who we know well. And so we might have two students that are turning 22 that are prioritized and referred by DDS. And then we look at what referrals come that are going to be matches, um, and accept people also based on whether or not we feel like we can meet their needs in that setting and whether or not they're going to be a match with the other individuals. Again, kind of going back to what we talked about earlier, which is, you know, these are adults living together ideally for the long term. You want to make sure that people are a good match and fit with each other. Thanks. Do you have any questions for us and you? No, I, I just appreciate the time to get to know, um, you all and for you all to get to know us a bit better. It sounds like you've gone through a pretty long and grueling process trying to make a determination about what to do. And I appreciate that you're considering, um, you know, inviting people with disabilities into your community, community in a meaningful way. Um, that gives us a lot of enthusiasm about Wayland. Um, it's just a great opportunity to get more involved in the community. Well, Amy, you're very kind to say that. Uh, we really appreciate you taking some time out of your data to chat with us because we are in a due diligence phase, trying to learn as much as we can about this industry and you, you all are experts. And so we appreciate all the information you provided. And, and, and I don't know if you've talked with the, you know, the DDS Middlesex West area office that supports, you know, that Wayland is part of. Um, but they certainly would be a very good resource in terms of, you know, advocacy. If you would like to use the property for two homes with EOHS and understanding kind of the demand in the area, because, you know, Wayland abuts Framingham, which is, you know, has many, many group homes and, you know, has some areas that are pretty saturated. And so I think that you would also get support from DDS in the area office around some of the things that you're thinking about as you're doing your, you know, kind of due diligence around this property. But all questions for DDS, not us. We, we can't, we can't guarantee what they will support. Exactly. We talked to them last week actually to see if they want to join us. And so when you're backing them, but I appreciate that suggestion. Um, so Amy and Maureen and Yvette really appreciate your time this evening and, and wish you the best of luck and your continued great work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Um, so Mr. Breitkart, are you with us? Yes. Good evening. Good evening. If you want to grab a chair and come up to that, that table and we can, we can start. I'd like, I'd like the members to, uh, uh, to invite me five minutes. Oh, yeah, that's what I was thinking. You may want to take a break. And so we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll be convened at, uh, uh, thank you very much. You're welcome. 6.50. 6.50. Hi, Kevin. How are you doing? I'm great, Brian. Nice to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's impressive. The process that you guys are all, and you're going for this.
Instead of just saying, well, we think this is what we should do. We're going to talk to as many people as we can. Yeah. I'm not a new guy. I was like a signature. So why don't we reconvene for a meeting. We left the meeting final. We're a short break. We're talking about service. 6.43. And now 6.53. Our final guest this evening is in person. Um, night. Is it Ricard or Ricard? Ricard. Ricard. Ricard, Andy Ricard. Thanks for joining us this evening. Uh, I think you have a sense as to what our committee is all about. We're going to have a chat over the phone and you're kind enough to accept your invitation to, um, chat with us and appreciate you taking a drive over to, uh, town building tonight from your home, which is not well. Yeah. To, uh, no, Acton. So it's not too far. Um, so, Andy, why don't you tell us about, um, your organization, what you do and then, um, what your experience has been? Okay. Uh, and thank you for having me. Thank you for the process that you're going through, your willingness to support this community with housing. It's, it's wonderful. Um, so I'm housing development manager for Minute Manarch in Concord. We, so a couple of years ago, we created that position. I had been talking with Gene Colesbury, the CEO there, uh, for a couple of years prior to that about housing. And they were getting so much feedback because they were doing their vision, they're probably their vision from families. And I'm worried for them was housing. So we created this position, essentially when you look at the landscape of the housing provided and, uh, just, uh, you know, you've had great resources already come in and I come at it from a little different perspective in that there's been doing this three years. Um, and I'm kind of outside of the TDS world. I mean, we all coexist, but I'm not someone who's, uh, working at a group home and knows that in and out. I'm coming at this from who are the people that are served by the current model and the current model really, uh, I apologize to if you've heard a lot of this from other people as well, but the housing that, you know, all of our kids and I have a 22 year old son who just finished, uh, counting and is waiting on a day program. He's, uh, needs assistance with mobility. He's occasionally verbal, but he's going to need support all of his life. Uh, he has an intellectual disability as well. So I'm kind of living this, but the, uh, so we work with TDS. TDS is not a housing agency. That's not what they do. Uh, but for those who are prioritized, they do provide housing. Uh, and priority typically means that you are in a situation where you're either not saved as an individual or perhaps due to your behavior, others in the home are not safe. Those are the, the people who are getting prioritized for housing. And right now there's their, uh, occasional exceptions, but really the big tool in the toolbox for DDS is the group home, which is the group home you think of. And you've heard described where someone's receiving 24 seven support. The challenge there is that when you only have that one tool in your toolbox and my personal example. So if I, if I had a heart attack, I'm going to be out of here and I could no longer take care of Henry, then it would be a matter of DDS would step in appropriately, look for the right spot for him, but it's, it's an emergency placement. And so you're looking at where's the next available bed. And he's then in that home with people he doesn't know. They don't know him. You can make it work, but if Henry was more capable, uh, but not, he was capable, but couldn't live alone, but didn't need 24 seven support, the option would still be the same, would still be going to a group home. So when the previous speakers were talking about the long wait list, well, that's because a lot of people are just devolting into that, even if they're capable more. So it's a long way of saying, sorry that I came into this position for those who are not priority one, they've not been prioritized, but they need housing. And the reason they need housing, it's because the parents recognize they never want that nightmare scenario to happen where they can't take care of that loved one and they have no control of where they're going. Um, so I'm fortunate in that there's a lot of families in that middle ground that are not prioritized and are looking at, well, what, what can we do? We, that it's why I hear parents say to me, I, I want my kid out of my house because they recognize it's the best thing for them longterm, but I don't want them out of my life. You know, how do I help them? I have other kids. They've been able to move on. How do I help my child move on? So I, when you invited me and thank you for the invitation, it was more about, uh, rather than describing the typical group home that you've heard from others, what are families telling me that they want? Uh, and again, I, because I'm outside of the typical, you know, ordinarily there wouldn't be as many opportunities for me to talk with families. If I were in the residential side of Miniman ark, because there's kind of a wall there, you know, you won't be talking to people, answering the questions and giving them hope or what, you know, creating, uh, the situation where maybe they think they're getting something before DBS has gotten involved, blah, blah, blah. I'm on this island where I can just talk to families. And so I've had the good fortune of over a hundred families having coffee or a call with them to understand as another parent, what are they looking for? What are the things that they would like to see? So I don't know if that's helpful to you, but I thought I would bring that perspective to the discussion. So the things that I might talk about are things that families are looking for, not necessarily things that DBS is wholeheartedly supporting. Yeah. And what we've heard from DBS as well is that while there will always be the need for the group home, there's always people who would need that 24 seven model. It's not something that's financially sustainable for them to keep doing it the way it is right now. Uh, when you think just, uh, my boss was at a conference last week and the average cost for each resident of a group home annually is now about $200,000. So when you think about an individual moving into coming from school, like Henry turned 22, moves right into a group home and you're covering that cost for five, six decades, it's just not hardly going to keep doing that and funding it. So I think there is an opening there for us to come up with more creative solutions. Uh, and DDS tells us that as well, that we're open to creative solutions. So with that backdrop, what families really want to see is more of a, uh, an intentional community. I hear that from so many different families and just a quick step back that you know, we had housing and it was in institutions. And so we were here, we recognize that there were some awful, horrible things happening there and it was not the best solution for everyone. So the pendulum swung and it swung all the way over here to say, we're going to move them out into the community, but we're not going to have group homes near each other because we don't want to saturate an area and recreate the institutional field. So suddenly you've got to be a mile from another group home. My hope is that in the hearing for families that we're swinging back and settling in the middle where it's more of a, an intentional community that serves multiple needs. It might have, and there are examples out there that are coming that have, uh, we're serving some who have 24, 7 needs, but on the, in the same community, we're serving others. They have more independence. And we're also providing housing for, to meet other needs that may be seniors. There's a project in rally when we're crossing, uh, it's 17 units for seniors who are 16 and over, uh, five units in a group home for those within this population, a private residence and a community center and rally. I don't know rally well, but they're lacking in community centers. So they were, the town contributed CPA funds to help them build that community. Sorry. I'm not saying that this is a site for it, but that's a four acre parcel that they're using for that purpose. So they're, that, that idea of creating community, because the, the idea of the group home and moving people out into the community was a good idea, put them in neighborhoods, but they're not necessarily integrated in the community, their house on the street, but are they part of that community? Uh, and that's where the intentional piece comes in. Uh, and that's what we hear from families. And then I don't bring it up. I said, where do you, you know, if you had to come up with a solution for Billy or for Jenny, what would it be? Well, if we could create that community where they're with peers and there's support, it's a supportive neighborhood such that, you know, if some, if I'm not around, I know that the neighbors get it and they're going to be looking out as well. Not that the parents are the first line of defense, but those parents are the second line. Um, so I don't know if that, if that makes sense, that's a, I don't know if it's the right for the site. Again, that's about my pay grade, but that's what the community is. A lot of families in the community are looking for and what they would like to see. So just by way of background on your title at Manorak is housing development manager. Yes. So, um, what is your day-to-day like? What are your objectives in your job, uh, at Manorak? So we're, uh, my role is creating, it's evolved, and we made up that title. Um, that my role is, uh, was primarily to fill that gap in the middle. You have some at this end who need 24-7 support and they're being prioritized. Some who have been able to live more independently, uh, with support still, but how do you get, you know, in addition to this 24-7 in group home, it might be 24-7 in the family home. How do you get from this end to go as far toward this end as you can? And so that's where we've been working on creating models in the middle, understanding what I talked with groups in New Hampshire. I talked with groups in Connecticut. What is working in other areas? Uh, Indiana, Cass Housing, Michigan. What's working other places, and can we bring them to Massachusetts? We don't want to create from scratch if we don't have to. So it's filling that need, but then the role has evolved as well because things happen slowly. Um, supporting families and understanding families, what they're looking for, and then potentially bashing those families up together. Because there's not, once you reach 22 and now you're finding a day program, there's no ice cream social to get the families together like there's an elementary school to try and meet the other families and create a cohort of families that might be able to work together on something. So bringing families together. And is your organization a non-profit or full-time? It's a non-profit. So Minuteman Arc is taking a step back. We serve over a thousand individuals from, uh, early interventions. Zero to three to end of life. We have nine group homes. We have individuals living in the community that we're supporting. We have, uh, Dayhab, CBDS, employment services. We cover the whole lifespan. And then we've got this little island over here that's Andy trying to create new models. But, um, John, questions for Andy? Hey, Tom. Hey, Andy. Welcome back. Hi, John. We're all still here. A little further down the road than the first time you showed up. Andy, I know I've asked you this before, but, um, what would you say to folks that are concerned about the long-term viability of the model that you're talking about versus some of the more traditional models that we've been hearing about? So, uh, just to give a quick overview that, uh, can I step back and describe the model in a little bit more detail? And the intent was not to come here and pitch that, but more to share information. But there is a model that we've been working on that John's talking about, which is in that middle space to help progress and see how independent you can be. So it's a cluster of multiple, uh, modified one bedroom apartments on the same site. The modification being that they don't have a full stove and oven for safety, but they have a community space, a full kitchen. That's a living classroom. And then there's a full one bedroom apartment. It's for a safe neighbor who provides overnight. If something comes up, I know what to do. It's a responsible adult overnight. And the, so the, the assumption is individuals have a day program, but there's someone there to welcome them. There's staff that they've all, uh, collected resources to pay that person to cover it from three to eight. That it's responsible for everyone there, get them settled, working on those independent living skills because maybe they keep moving on and they live in an apartment with a friend. And then there's also one on one support that's provided by DDS. So to your question, John, the viability, I think there's always going to be that path and the funding, when we talk about the $200,000 for each resident group home, this is much less expensive. And for DDS, they're providing roughly five to 10 hours of individual support, but we preach individual, um, with, if they qualify for it, they're eligible. And then the rest, so that that's the one-on-one, the person who's covering from three to eight, there's a mass health program called group adult foster care that allows you, if you need assistance with activities of daily living to qualify for that, that the advantage of group adult foster care is that an agency can be the care provider and you can pool money to cover that, that staffing. So it's not going to be covering every dollar, but we've been working on this model that families can afford to contribute to, but a lot of the services are coming from benefits they're already eligible for. And it's going to be a much smaller check for DDS to write. Uh, when you think of the alternative, if this wasn't there, that individual who's going to thrive in this opportunity, might've defaulted into a group home and be costing them a lot more. You good, John? Yeah. Thanks, Sandy. Bill? And is this model still pretty aspirational? Are there examples where it's working and it's been around for a couple of years and getting some traction? So we've been building upon some of the, it's a great question. The funding that I talked about for services has been going on. I think you spoke with Maine State, uh, at one of the earlier meetings? I think so. And Larry Oaks. So they have larger houses. There's a bit of a difference in that they might have a 10 or 12 bedroom house and these are going to be units within a structure. So that's where it's a little bit different, but the funding source is the same. So that's, that part of it is proven that you can use the GAFC, the group adult foster care money to support a group of people like that. And combined it with DDS funds, uh, we actually took their, their model, uh, funding and then applied it to this. So that part is not aspirational. Let's prove it. The idea of building them as individual units is new, but there's a group in situate who actually they have their open house, uh, the grand opening this weekend. So situate did something very similar. They have, there's this, the difference is that they, uh, instead of one bedrooms, they have two bedrooms. So they have four units for eight individuals and they're all on one site. They have a, again, a community kitchen. They have two apartments on site for those overnight safe neighbors. So that is, they're right now going through their, they've completed construction. They got CPA funds from the town of situate. They raised money and they're bringing in residents in January. So we're close. And then there's also an opportunity here actually in Waitland that we're working with to develop crime, but that's, we're not as far along the path as they are. And who like builds and owns that structure, which is expensive to build and probably expensive to maintain. It depends. So, uh, in situate, it's a nonprofit that owns it. Uh, in the project that we're working on, it will be an owner, a landowner that owns it, uh, and builds it and has a master lease that with our organization. And then we sign leases with each of the units. Uh, ideally the model would work really well in, in what's been done in Connecticut within our down there is, uh, hooking on to a larger building. Again, 30 unit building. They've done it where 25%. So 32 units, I think Brian, you're familiar with this as well, but they were hit done. Um, a 32 unit affordable building. And 25% is for the IDD community. And it's basically a wing of a floor.
By the way, for the record, uh, Catherine Provost had to leave at 6.53 to go to another town-related meeting. Um, Stephanie, questions on your part? Oh, I was thinking of farmsteads in New England. Do you know that? In Epping, New Hampshire? Sure. They had, um, they have the similar, it was some of the buildings on there. It's a, uh, they have, um, uh, like one or I think a bedroom and a sitting room for about several people and then a, uh, caregiver. And then it's a, a combined one kitchen, one living room. And I, I really liked that idea. So there's some private space and also some communal space. And it's wonderful that you can do something like that in Massachusetts. That's the goal. And to try to emulate what they might, uh, the environment they would have in their own apartment, uh, so that if they're capable of moving on, they can do that. The idea is not that it's up or out. So if you don't achieve those skills, then you go back where it came from, but let's create an environment where I don't, I don't know how independent my son can be, but if he had the opportunity to do that, and I'm not creating it for my son because he's years from that, but the, as an example, putting him in that environment where yeah, you're going to learn mistakes are going to be made, but those mistakes are not catastrophic because you have structure supporting you. I liken it to my daughter went off college. There was a dining hall. She wasn't going to starve. There was a structure there, but there's not a structure there for Henry. So that's the path that we're trying to create. And the idea is if we can do that within an intentional community alongside group homes, then in senior housing, it could be actants doing that with, they have, they're building a 41 unit building. Six of them are designated for DDS and the other 35 are for affordable for seniors, but all within the same building. There are more and more opportunities to create these intentional communities. And the other piece I didn't mention was that having that redundancy of staff where you might have one house that needs more support, one that needs less. Well, now you've also put the staff closer together instead of being so isolated, you've given them the opportunity for advancement or for change as well, instead of being a group home in the middle of a neighborhood. Now maybe they, it clicks better with the compact units that we're talking about versus a group home. You give them those opportunities and you give them the support of more staff around. I think it's, we're really excited about the idea of the intentional communities, whether DDS is ready. I don't know. I guess I'm confused about how this would be financed, who would own the building, who would build the building. I mean, the model sounds great and it certainly sounds as if it's going to address an unmet need. Um, but I, I'm unclear as to whether, uh, the, uh, where the operating revenue comes from for the building. So that, uh, each unit within the building pays rent and they, so they're, they're two P really two piece that they pay. There's the rent and the rent would be capped at an amount such that if they, to make it financially sustainable over the longterm, so individuals don't have much income. Right. So they're going to need a rental voucher. Right. Uh, most likely. Right. So capping the rent at a level that they can apply that voucher. Right. Uh, that's one piece of it. And then there's a service fee for each individual as well that covers more the, uh, some of the staff. It covers, uh, some compensation for that safe neighbor. It covers group meals. Um, so those are the two pieces that, uh, for the compact unit within that. So depending for that or for each of the buildings. So how do the residents come up with the money to pay both those fees? One, I take it as you say a voucher. Is that a section eight voucher? Yes. And then with respect to the, the service fee, is that private pay? Is that from social security or? It's a combination. So the, the rent voucher would require the individuals to pay 30% of their income for rent. Right. As you know, and then the, the voucher covers the rest. Right. So that leaves them in 70% of their income. So a portion of that would go toward the service fee and a portion of that would be private paid from their family. And so what we've tried to do is build a model such that, uh, if we can cap the families out of pocket at an amount of, uh, 1800 or 1500 is the number we've been given 18,000 a year that families have been saving up money so that that's something they can support going forward. And would you expect that the, uh, the residents would be, um, people who could have outside employment, could have, uh, volunteer opportunities? Uh, yeah. So, yes, yes, absolutely. These would be individuals that had enough independence. Right. Then they could have those employment opportunities, volunteer opportunities outside the home. Um, and they, they would have to have enough independence that they could spend a little bit of time alone in the evening as well. Right. Uh, but their income would not be enough to pay rent. Right. And, uh, if they needed specialized services, uh, they would arrange that on their own. I take it for specific medical needs or? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And that would already, that would be the case whether they were in a compact unit or at home. Right. And is it your sense that, uh, DSS would, uh, be receptive to the notion of having a traditional group home and one of these intentional communities within close proximity to one another? Well, I haven't spoken with them about that, but I have spoken with them about the need to be more creative and what they're willing to support. And if they can't put a, uh, house on these individuals and group homes, right? That is, they're gonna have to be, uh, willing to consider opportunities like that. Yeah. Just thinking of the fact that we have this four acre site and if there's a group home that serves five individuals, query what, what could happen with the rest of the site and to the extent that we could serve other individuals, uh, with disabilities, uh, on the same site and that were on a subdivided parcel, uh, that would be great. Yeah. I didn't. So we haven't talked to them specifically about co-locating. Yeah. But we have another opportunity in Stowe where it's a different, uh, I don't know if you talked about the structure of DDS and the regionals and some of the areas, but it's, so it's a different area because it's, uh, no sucks West. Um, they are supportive of the compact unit model within a larger 40 B development. Okay. So that tells me that there's some, some flexibility. Some willingness to get it. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. I haven't had the opportunity to make the case yet for co-locating two different models on the same site. Right. Thank you.
Yeah. Andy, uh, I, uh, I, uh, the, um, the facilities in Sudbury is impressive. I mean, the, um, the, um, the main facilities in acting, uh, Concord, both in Concord and in the group columnist on 117 and, uh, Sudbury, very, very beautiful. Well done. Um, but I wonder, um, it sounds like you'd have to, um, put, uh, intensive effort into cobbling together funding for, um, for each client in each, each individual's different funding. So it seems like a big effort in it. I don't know what the longterm, you know, if, if that ever, um, becomes more or more difficult by funding sources dry up, what happens, what happens in those situations? Yeah, I think that that's, uh, my thought is that if, if these individuals in the compact units are not able to continue to live there because the funding has dried up, they're then going to become that priority one that we talked about for DDS. Uh, now EDS can make money appear out of nowhere, but we're not asking them for a significant amount. Um, as you said, it's probably five to 10 hours a week of one-on-one support, uh, that we feel like this is going to be economically feasible for them. And with less DDS involvement, does that give you more flexibility in designing programs for your clients? Yes, yes, absolutely. And so there, the way that this will work is there will be two, uh, screening processes. One that is working with the individuals to determine, are they in a spot with their individual or their independent living skills where they can take advantage of this opportunity? Uh, so are they on that path that they've been working on it? Uh, do they coexist well with others? The advantage is, Stephanie, as you mentioned, is that they each have their own space. So if they're having one of those days, I don't want to be around other people. They have their own unit as opposed to a bedroom. Uh, so can they though coexist with others? So that'll be part of the screening process. And a really important part that the, our staff that knows them best, and we're already creating some of those bonds because we have a men's group that goes out and does things together on weekends and does weekend trips. We can see how they're interacting to determine are these guys a good fit together. But then the other screening process is working with the family to make sure that, do they have the financial resources? And you alluded to John too, is the money there for this? Are they willing to enable to do that thousand dollars a month of a service fee? That's what I'm out ends up being. Are they eligible for these services? Have they gotten on the, the rental voucher waiting list? All these pieces. So there are two parallel screening processes to really hopefully give them the best chance of succeeding. We don't want families to go through this place their loved one and then get to fall apart. I mean, if the family ceases to exist and funds dry up, then they, then you go back to the DDS, the DDS model. Yeah. Yeah. But that's part of the screening process too, is have the families been doing the things that they need to do? Whether that be, there's a lot of estate planning that goes on for these families. Do they have a second to die life insurance policy and a trust that might be able to fund this ongoing? Because, and most all families do, because that's their worry is what happens when I'm not here? Yeah. So I'm confident that they will not screen out the families that haven't done that, but identify the ones that haven't done that and help them get on the right path. Get on the boat, get on board. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any questions? Well, I'm, I'm, yeah, I am struggling a little bit to understand what's a more complex model with funding coming from various sources and, and wondering, you know, but we've been talking about individuals going into these houses and then living there for 40 and 50 years. I mean, how, with this kind of funding, how do you plan for a long period of time like that? And most of these organizations seem to, DDS is the source of money and so they're hanging their hat on the continued existence of DDS. Right. From the 40 to 50 years. Um, so I guess they're reasonably confident that there's something that's going to exist and provide the stream. How are you guys figuring out that longer term for these people? Yeah, that's part of the screening, uh, that we go through to make sure these families are, are they taking the steps now? And with the enthusiasm, I, I meet, when I meet with families and we talk about this. Right. And they're like, ah, yeah, yeah. It's motivation to get their affairs in order. Okay. So are you, for example, is the group asking them to establish a trust for the child upon their demise? There's a trust formed with a income stream to arc to cover their expenses. We can't take that step. Okay. Um, because we don't really know a, that's asking them to do something. And we don't know if the model, if their loved ones can thrive in this model. We're going to give them the opportunity to do that. Uh, and we know our families pretty well to know the ones that are on top of things that aren't, but we're not going to require that. Uh, we're getting, that's part of the understanding and explaining how the model works that they need to have the ability to sustain this longterm. So I don't think we're going to be checking that they do that. Okay. Um, and again, that, that goes back to the, the folks that are living at home right now, because they don't have another option. They're just getting default into the, the DDS system. If families are of that mindset, then they're probably not good candidates for this. You know, if they haven't done playing and they're just waiting, whatever may befall them, they're not going to be the ones who seize the opportunity. Okay. Yeah. That's a good question though, because it is dependent on families. This is not a drop-off activity. Yeah. Thank you.
I have a couple of questions. Amy, you can talk about the process concerning the home in situate and the home in Sudbury. What I'm referring to is, was there an RFP that was issued that you responded to your organization or was there some other manner in which you secured an agreement to do what you did? So the situate is a, that's independent of us. That's just, uh, a nonprofit that I've met and again, trying to pull what works for other people. Okay. Um, we're working as part of a larger group to, to understand how we support each other to create more opportunities in Massachusetts. Uh, the Sudbury home was, and I think it was the previous group spoke of as well as DDS with their long waiting list coming in saying, Hey, we need some help here. And that's the thing is DDS doesn't typically create the houses, but they will fund the services and the, uh, support going forward. We knew that we had individuals within our other group homes who were aging. So that house in Sudbury was specifically designed to be one floor living so that the folks that we knew couldn't handle stairs much longer, there was a spot for them to go. And we did a similar house in Sudbury on Powers row. It wasn't ground up construction as rehab, uh, but to create, we could see what was coming for those that we serve. And then back that up with, okay, as we reconfigure to move individuals into this new home where they, they can agent place that's opening up places in other homes and comparing with DDS. Then do you have individuals who are going to fill those spots so that we can continue to collect money. When we have an open bedroom, that's on the, the, they're still going to be the same level of staff and expenses other than food, but yeah, I mean, maintenance and things. So we needed DDS to say, yeah, we will fill those spots with other people, but there is no RFP because there's all credit developed. We've seen, um, situations where for-profits are involved building to housing adults with disabilities and they're not affected as much by the state laws. Um, is that pretty rare? Uh, not so much on the, it's more common on the Cape that, uh, there are opportunities on the Cape where, uh, I know specifically one, I guess she's a corporation now, but where she is creating opportunities for, and it's all private pay. So they, she's charging a market rent for each to the units. They come, uh, so what she's doing is providing the house and, uh, some activities on weekends, but otherwise families are coming in, paying the rent and, uh, bringing their own services with them. So she's creating a community of peers. What do you think about that? I think it's great for those families that can afford to do it. Right. Uh, unfortunately most families cannot, or to make it, they might be able to do it now, but as you're alluding to, can they do it for the next 50 years? Uh, so I think it's great for those families that can do it. That was not the segment of the market that we were focused on, which is why we're traveling together. Everything that you're eligible for. Sure. Uh, do other members have questions for Andy? John? So Andy, um, just going back to a question that Bill Whitney asked, I, I understand that you're describing what you're describing is mostly around the, the operational aspect of, of serving individuals, but in terms of financing a bricks and mortar project in the model that you're describing and how that might interface with the, the property that this group is tasked with overseeing who would actually develop the, the building. Would that be something that Miniman Arc would, would be interested in doing, or would that be something that would fall on the shoulders of the families of the people that would be served in the building? No, no, it, it could be the families, but not in this case. So if families came together and built it, we would, you know, it falls right into our wheelhouse to support it. So we would certainly do that, but in this opportunity, that would not be the case. We have an opportunity in Stowe that I mentioned as well as part of a 40B. And in that case, we are working with CIL. Did you guys speak with Chris from CIL and understand their model? So it's a little bit different in the, so CIL, they will come in, they sign a long-term agreement, they build the house, they collect rent then until they've satisfied their lenders and their investors. And then they turn over title to the nonprofit. And that from a group homes perspective, that is something that really they've had a lot of experience in. We would like to, and we've been talking with Chris about applying that same thing to these compact units. So wouldn't be us that was with the outlet, the capital to construct it. It would be CIL working with their lenders and investors to create a new model. It's a, it'll take some work because again, their lenders and investors understand the group home model. And that's something that they're pretty comfortable with. They'll take some effort, but Chris is on board to, to work with us on that. Does that answer the question? I suppose so. I mean, I, I guess what I'm trying to get at is obviously we, we all understand the group model because it's been around for a while. Um, it's an established, uh, model. Um, and it, it does have a track record. I mean, it, it, you, you make a very compelling argument that it doesn't serve, uh, you know, a portion of the population that DDS serves or should serve adequately. Um, but I, I guess I'm just trying to, to get my head around who, who would, who would be responsible ultimately, um, in developing the property. And I guess you, you've answered that to some extent, but who would actually, so, so the developer would actually own the property down the road, say in 10 years, and the residents would continue to, uh, to pay rent. And, and you believe that that's a viable model. Yeah. Cause it would be that the developer would have, or the property owner would have a master lease with the agency. And so it would be on us to fill those units. So we would be taking on the risk. They would understand the project out. Okay. At this rent level, we're getting same with the group home that they have on one 17, that in a certain number of years, we will have paid back all our investors and lenders. And at that point, we're not interested in being long-term need CIOs that in it, uh, they're in it to build the homes and create the opportunities not to own a lot of property. So would CIO pay property taxes during the period that it owns the building? Uh, I'd have to check that. I'm not sure. I think that no, no, CIO is the nonprofit. Is it okay? Yeah. Yeah. So I think that they would same, same as another nonprofit would not be paying property taxes. Yes. I have a question that's a little bit out there, but you think a lot in this space. So could you ever imagine a hybrid model where a structure would be built that could serve as a group home, but then could be morphed into a more flexible model if things change in the future or DDS evolves, or you could imagine that there seems like there's so much uncertainty. If you have the opportunity to build a brand new building, like could it potentially serve both cases depending on the needs? It could be kind of a, uh, be an experiment, a group home on steroids. In the group home, you have a bedroom and you may have a bathroom that you share, but I mean, you have a bathroom. Most times you'll have your own bathroom. Each of these Tampak units would have their own bathroom and a kitchenette. So you could adjust it, you know, simply pull the appliances and put in more cabinets for storage in the kitchenette because the kitchenette is not a separate room. It's an L within a corner of the room. So if you fill that in, remove it in a library. I've never done anything like this that you know of. No. I think the challenge is to be future-proof some of these efforts, right? Because there's so much uncertainty. Yeah. So this could easily transform because it already has the community kitchen and community space, much as group homes already have. It's just the extra step is that instead of having a bedroom, you have a modified one bedroom unit. And so you can easily convert that back. If you have three bedrooms and you could make one into a split in half, make a look like you could, you could maybe design something. Anyway. Uh-huh. I don't know if you want to study the house, but. Yeah. I have a question. Um, we had a guest earlier this evening, Anne-Marie Bajwa, who you may know. Oh, yeah, yeah. And, uh, she made a comment which is very interesting to me. She says something along the lines of, um, group homes for individuals with Down syndrome used to be the model, but the state has gotten away from that. And what I infer from her question was that the state is, is really trying to address individuals with different disabilities. Is that your experience? And are there fewer homes available for, uh, individuals with, say, Down syndrome versus individuals with, um, different types of disabilities? Um, I'm not familiar with that as specific to the Down syndrome population, but, uh, in part of my other life, we run a baseball league in Acton for players of all abilities. And I've noticed the evolution of the players that we have less players with Down syndrome and physical disabilities and more players with around the autism spectrum. Um, so I think that maybe that, maybe she was referring to something like that. Okay. That I think that that as a population, a portion of the population that we serve has been explosive. I'm on the baseball field. I've seen it. I don't know if I'm cramped, but I sort of interpreted what she was saying is they need to triage that the demand is so high that the folks with the most disability have to be served because they're in the greatest need. And so even though in the old days, people would be eligible, there just isn't the capacity to support them. Yeah. Um, I, I think she also was sort of euphemistically, um, grouping people with Down syndrome into a category that historically that, that was a group that would be served traditionally in a group home setting. And the fact, the fact of the matter is today that demographic subgroup would typically be served in a supervised department setting in a, in a less restrictive setting. I think that's what she was trying to get at, which is you don't serve those people in a group home setting these days. And I think if you, we, we hear from the folks at DDS, they would replicate that and say that the real demand is finding, um, a inciting group homes for, uh, people with greater needs, people that are behaviorally challenged. But, um, part of our charge is, is, uh, to make recommendations to the select board, uh, for housing for people with, uh, uh, learning to serve, uh, uh, intellectual disabilities, but also physical disabilities. Could you imagine in the compact unit model, uh, someone with cerebral palsy, uh, or MS, uh, as well as people who might be on the autism scale or, and I suppose you have individuals with multiple challenges as well? Yeah. I, I don't know which is the, the proper, I guess it depends on the situation. There are two schools of thought there that, um, that I've heard that where one school of thought is to house people together who have the same challenges and abilities and that they're going to interact well. That's, and again, I don't know which is right, but then there's another school of thought that says, well, if we put people who have different abilities together, they're going to support each other and something you're good at and I'm not, you're going to help me out with. And so I think it really, it's going to be specific to the individuals. Uh, I know that there's some individuals that we serve that don't consider themselves to have an intellectual disability and would flat out say, I don't want to live in a house with others who have an intellectual disability. In that case, someone who has more of a physical disability, but less intellectual, they could thrive. Someone else, maybe not. There's certainly the possibility. I think as these opportunities are developed, you really need to focus on the accessibility because you just don't know. Sure. We haven't even talked about accessibility. Yeah. Other questions by members of the committee? Do you have any questions for us, Andy? No, I just wanted to say thank you again for the opportunity and for the diligence that you're attacking this with. I really appreciate it. And if there's, uh, you know, I'm fortunate that I get to talk to a lot of people. So if there's any way, any other ways I can support, I'm not an expert. You've talked to a lot of people who are smarter than I am, but I get to talk to a lot of people. So if there's any way that I can help going forward, I'm happy to do it. Well, I can assure you, you've been very helpful and, uh, we all bring different gifts to this, uh, to this challenge of housing. And you've got a lot of them. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, of course. Um, well, we're, I guess, in a unusual situation where it's a municipality with a piece of ground and we're looking to have someone create housing for people with disabilities. And, uh, DDS is certainly a big player in this. Uh, we've, we've heard that DDS prefers to go to providers or owners to say, develop some housing and, you know, find the site and so forth. Uh, do you think DDS would be amenable to, to our merry band going directly to them and saying, Hey, we've got this site. It will help us to create affordable housing. If you can demonstrate some flexibility on your 1.5 mile limit or whatever it is, or, uh, enable us to co-locate with a, uh, a group home with a compact unit. Would that make sense? Uh, how do you think they respond? Kind of hypothetical. I don't know. I can't speak for them how they would respond, but based on what they've expressed to us in meetings is that they're, they're quick to say we're not a housing agency. Right. So if they have, my assumption is that if they have the opportunity to, uh, serve those on their list without building it themselves, that they would prefer that. Um, but they still want the private challenge there is that they still maintain, I think a high level of control. Uh, and, and my sort of ulterior motive is to, you know, if we were to have some kind of understanding with DDS that would maybe help us market the site and get the housing produced more quickly, if we could say this is in place, or this is, there's receptivity to this notion. Uh, and so you should really work with us on that. Yeah. But then the goal is to create these models and then implement them as a proof of concept so that they can be replicated. Right. And we've spoken, I've spoken with Swamp from DDS about this compact, uh, unit model. And she was like, yeah, this, I could see this in every town. Yeah. But this is not something where you just build it and these five individuals are served in. Right. Good. We did it. Yeah. No, it's how do you do it in a way that's scalable. Uh, and I think when we talked earlier about the financing piece, why CIL is able to, to do group homes on a repetitive basis and other finances as well is having DDS behind it. You know, DDS says, yes, we see a need. We're going to support it. We're going to staff it. You don't have to worry about there being empty beds. So if you've got that kind of, hey, you know, for DDS, we recognize that this is a need that needs to be met. This is a model that we agree with. And someone can take that to their lender. It would be easier to get this done then. Right. Definitely. Great. Anything else? Well, again, thank you for joining us this evening. Yeah. Uh, we may reach out to some other questions. Anytime, anytime. And I will continue to follow it. So I'm excited to see how, what you come up with. Right. What you need there. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks. So before we leave, um,
gen item three, we're, so far as a committee, we've, we've, um, heard a lot and digested a lot of information, but I do think it'd be helpful to have some sort of a, a model or a tool that we can look at and, uh, utilize to help our discussions on, uh, our ultimate report to, to the select board. So I'm, I'm gonna try to put something together and maybe run it by a couple of members just to, and bring it as a draft to our next meeting, um, that we, and we can work on it, maybe work as a committee to finalize something that we can all be comfortable working with. So we can use that as, as, um, as a guide for our discussions on decision papers. So moving on then to item four. Can I ask one question? I didn't want to, I didn't want to ask it directly, but in the first presentation, I heard someone say, we weren't allowed to choose the provider. You remember that conversation? It was, and everyone was like, yeah, yeah, we can't choose the provider. And I was confused by what that meant. Like, we get to choose who builds what they build here, right? Um, um, first of all, this Ms. Bosch was like that? It was in the beginning. Yeah. Um, it was in the first presentation. With child driver. Yeah. Was she referring to your provider? She said, you're not going to be able to choose your provider, right? And everyone said, yeah, yeah, we can't choose our provider. And I didn't know what, I should have interrupted it then, but I didn't know what that meant. Well, I think what I heard was that, um, we can't go out and say, okay, ABC company, we want you to do the developer because we have to do an RFP because we're missing out. So I think that's what, that's what. But we don't have, we're not constrained to the lowest, like we can find, we can get a bunch of people to contribute and we can pick the best fit, right? That's correct. Yeah. As a select board. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to be clear. Um, all right. So moving on then to the minutes of our October 8th meeting, which are in our packet, and now we'll get the chain of promotions of two of those minutes. Still moved. I didn't have one comment about the minutes. Yeah. When I just, hold on a second. Sorry. Sorry. Discussion. Discussion. Sorry. When I looked at the comments from the neighbors, it was awfully short. There was a couple of comments on what people were concerned about, but there were no responses. Like, what did the people, what did people say about them? And, um, um, I don't remember it well enough to be able to type it up myself. I couldn't watch it and try to create a little narrative or something, but it's, there's like three sentences and there's no, what did the committee say? Or what did we, when, when they asked those questions? Um, I'll say that the minutes for the other sections are fairly, um, brief as well. So it's not discriminatory. Having said that, I'm happy to entertain, um, modifications to it. We can address this next meeting. Okay. You want to do that? Try to try to put together some comments. Prove everything else, but maybe work on that a little bit. Yeah, that's great. Well, no, what we'll do is we'll, we'll, um, um, I only read them half an hour before the meeting. Otherwise I would have tried to come. Why don't you, uh, why don't we withdraw, if, if, if Gene's willing to withdraw the motion and, uh, so, so withdrawing. And, uh, thank you, Gene. And we'll come back, uh, next meeting and, and address these, but in the meantime, if you can, um, take up the video and I'll watch it and I'll try to summarize a little bit. Yeah. Okay. I'll do that. Thanks. Um, we know, and then item five, um, at our last meeting, um, after meeting, one of the neighbors mentioned, um, that there might be valuable for a site visit. And I just want to get the committee's sense. And that's whether they agree with that idea. And if so, we can set that up. We need to go onto the property and look at it. I've already done it. You mean the poster. I'm a trespasser. Yeah. Yeah. You mean our, the, uh, two twirls, two twirls. Ah, okay. And, and, you know, if there's interest, fine. If not, but that's fine. Yeah. It's a good faith. I would have an interest. Yeah. Okay. You can come over for coffee afterwards if you want. Sure. And we can let neighbors know and if they want to join us and chat about property. Uh, all right. So I'll, I'll be in touch on that. And, uh, for those who want to come find it, no problem. Um, the item six on the agenda. Sorry for the future though. I would, as we get closer to refining our choices, I would love to look at buildings that sort of correlate with what we're, what we're thinking about too. It would be a different issue. In other words, go to, go to homes that exist currently. If we sort of final, if we focus on a particular type of structure, seeing what those look like and understanding what they're like, would be helpful. Okay. Um, moving on to item six. We did receive, um, some submissions to the request for information that they're in the packet. I'm happy to open up the comments by members of the committee, if we had a chance to review them. If we haven't, we can, we can, uh, have a discussion in our next meeting. Um, but any, anybody have comments on what, what they saw? What was it? The one about CLM, their review? Is that what we are reading through? Right. So, um, it was, was it CLM and one other? Well, one CIL. I was really impressed with the CLM one. I thought it was great. CIL. Yeah. It was great. Yeah. Is that the guy who spoke to us the couple of meetings ago? Yes. Yeah. He's the one that, yeah. And he goes, he works with DDS and then, yeah, but it's the same organization, right? Yeah. He was really on on the meetings, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I was impressed with them. I like CIL's, uh, timeline. They get, yeah. Other comments by people? Uh, well, and I read the one from High Spirit East too. Um, um, uh, you know, I admire the group very much, but they've never done this work before. You know, it's like they're being mentored by another group who did a project and I'm just not sure how I'd ever persuade myself, you know, to, uh, you know, comparing all these groups and looking at the track records of some of these organizations, how I would ever feel I could recommend to the town, such an inexperienced group, which makes me sad because I, they are trying to be innovative, you know, and, and as this last gentleman who's talking about trying to be innovative and how difficult it is to get, uh, the mainstream organizations that are providing funding to attempt new models. Um, well, my understanding was that the, um, uh, you know, the collaborators include, uh, Jay Wallace, who was instrumental in starting the High Spirit organization in the western part of the state. Mm-hmm. So I, I didn't get a sense that, that the county group High Spirit East were, were starting from scratch. They were, they had a model that has worked well many years and they wanted to kind of replicate it to appropriate three. Right. Without any bad smells or an animal bigger than a dog. I think, Gene, um, one way you could structure this is for the select board to issue. It's RFP receive, uh, responses and make, uh, uh, what a former employer of mine used to call a tentative designation, basically giving someone the, the right to finalize and, uh, basically come forward with, uh, a well-cooked plan, uh, but not convey the site until the financing was in place, the construction contract was there, the evidence of financing was there. Also, um, these folks, uh, make it clear that they're not building a group home, uh, under the DDS traditional model. So, if we're told that there could be a DDS group home on the site, but not a second group home on the site, is this a model that might enable you to do a second structure serving people with disabilities that doesn't run afoul of that requirement? Yeah, that had occurred to me. Yeah. So, so it is a startup, I think, um, but to Tom's point, I think they're not starting zero entirely, but I think the, uh, the arrangement can be structured so that you're, you're not committing yourself, uh, completely until they really demonstrate that they can perform. Okay. Any other comments on the, on our thoughts? I was impressed by the fact that we got two responses. We really need to market this and, uh, generate development interest, I think. Yeah. Um, moving on then item seven, some questions came up at a last meeting relative to the property and it would include, can we as a town require the property to protect clean and neat? Can we salvage different setbacks that currently exist in this Ohio and the impact of the affordable housing language within the article? So I do have a, um, email with the town council, so I suspect to the bathroom before the next meeting and I can, uh, respond to those.
Other than that, um, there were no other, there were, there were no, there were no topics not reasonably anticipated for you out in advance and if I want to change a motion to return.
Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Yes, Stephanie. Thank you. John. Aye. Aye. Brian. Aye. And Bill. You got it. And Bill. And Jane. Right. And Tom, like 7-0. So thank you all for your time this evening and, um, see you at our next meeting, which will be on June 4th. Okay. Good meeting. Thank you.
online or in person to discuss our endeavor here for best use of four acres of town-owned land at 212-Visor Road. Individuals that will join us this evening may include Henry Bajwa, President, CEO, CEO, possibly another person from the Charles River Center, Elise Souza, CEO, Nando Maureen, Estelle Oche, and the others of the building for human services, and Nandu Reichardt, highly of the developer manager of the Menman ark. Consider minutes of our last meeting on October 8th. We'll discuss the community's interest in doing a site tour, discuss responses to town's question information regarding the property, and we'll follow up on legal questions raised at our last meeting in October 8th. And then we'll adjourn. So at this time, I invite anyone in the room. I'd like to give public comments. Anybody? Welcome, Catherine. Thank you. Catherine, probably with us, 503. And anybody online reaching in public comments? No, I see no online. Okay. So we'll move on to the main event, item three of our agenda. With us is Emory. And how do you pronounce your last name, Emory? Bajwa, you said it right. Thank you. So I understand you're the president, CEO of Charles River Center, correct? Yes. Well, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us this evening. Sure. You and I have chatted over the phone, and I think you have a sense as to what our committee is about, and however, we're here to answer your questions. But why don't we begin by you telling us about who you are, what you do, and your organization's efforts to assist individual adults with disabilities? Sure. So thank you for having me tonight. So the Charles River Center is in Needham. We've been, we're celebrating our 70th anniversary next year. So we've been in existence for 70 years. Fun fact, I'm the fourth CEO in 70 years. So the organization has a lot of stability and a lot of institutional knowledge, which I'm very proud of. That's, that's really a tremendous feat. So we are a nonprofit. We serve adults and children with developmental and intellectual disabilities, including autism and acquired brain injury. And our mission is to provide high quality services to promote as much independence as possible. Our organization serves, has four divisions. One deals with the kids and their families. So while they're still going to public schools or private schools, we support the families and keeping them at home. So we send staff in based on the family need, whether it's for a couple hours or after school or whatever. We keep, we help keep the fan, you know, the family intact for as long as possible. Even as they get older, we can still do some of that work. We also have a navigation service for the families, how to get benefits to make sure they have good doctors and all of that sort of thing. So we call that division, our family support division, our wings for autism program, which is a national program. Dow started with us about 14 years ago, that was born out of a family's desire to have the trap, the family travel as a unit travel together, and not to keep their loved one with autism home, because they couldn't handle the airport experience. So if you haven't checked out our website, that's a, that's a really very, uh, unique program that we offer. We also have a large, um, residential service. Uh, we have currently 33 residential group homes, uh, in and around the metro region, the Southeast region, and we have one in Wayland on Boston Post road, uh, 93 Boston Post road, I believe it is. It's been mistaken for a bank in the past. Somebody actually walked in and said, I thought this was a bank. So we've changed our house design since that experience. Part of the problem too, is we had lines in the driveway where staff is supposed to be parking because they were parking wonky. And you know, so that was part of the problem. We got rid of those lines too. So that's funny. Um, so 33 programs, we're expanding our residential program to include at least two more in the next fiscal year, which starts in July. So we've purchased a property development is happening. Um, our newer service entity in the residential world is acquired brain injury. We're down in Brockton and Easton and Stoughton, uh, serving people with acquired brain injury who were previously living in nursing homes because there was no community supports for them. We also offer day services. So where do they go? Great. We have a group home. Where do they go during the day? Well, we have a couple of different options. One is a medical therapeutic day program that they can attend where they get their nursing, their occupational therapy, their speech therapy, their physical therapy all under one roof five days a week. Or they go into our pre-work, pre-vocational or vocational programs. So if they have the skill sets to, you know, work on, uh, getting jobs, then that's the program for them. And we place them in jobs. We're in Olin College. We're at Newton Wellesley Hospital. We're at all kinds of places, um, working. So that is our day service. So, um, what am I forgetting? So that, so it's day residential family support. And what am I forgetting? I think that's, oh, family support. We talked about that. So in a nutshell, that is quickly what we do. And, um, yes, we are in Wayland. We've been there since, is it 2016 maybe? I can't quite recall. I should have looked it up, but I'm pretty sure. I'm Boston Post Road there. So if you have any questions I'm happy to respond to them at this point. I'm sure we do like open up, uh, building questions. Uh, first, uh, thank you for joining us this evening. Um, given that we are, uh, looking to provide housing for, uh, you know, potentially a wide range of people with disabilities, whether physical disabilities or intellectual or learning disabilities, what advice would you give to us as to how best to proceed to, uh, uh, I guess, uh, sort through the, uh, the kind of menu of choices as to the population that, uh, uh, should be served. So, so I think, you know, you could go after, I think you have by the other people that you invited to this, the guild and myself and one other organization. So I think that the community, your community and most communities are okay with serving folks, uh, with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I think what I hear a lot of times from the communities that we move into is, um, do they have mental illness? Do they have drug addiction? You know, we heard it from your community when we moved in too. There was, we did a town meeting. I don't know if any of you were there when we, when we first went into Wayland, I was there. We did a town meeting and people were very afraid because it was the first group home, I think for Wayland and they were very afraid and they have a lot of questions and they, they would question whether or not we're going to do a bait and switch. Yeah. Move in the cute little old ladies at first and then switch them out for folks that are worse intent. So I think that, you know, it's public education. It's, it's, it's public education. That's so much of our mission is it's not a really, it's not only just to, you know, give our folks an opportunity to live in the community, not in institutions, not nursing homes and to access community resources, but it's also to be seen by the community as valuable contributors to the community through volunteerism, through accessing your grocery stores, your, your libraries and, and things like that. It's really inclusionary. I don't know if you have other group homes there now. Um, I, do you have others in Wayland? No. So it's a very limited exposure to your community. So that's the first thing I would say is it's really an education and exposure to the value of having folks with disabilities as part of your community. Um, we did have a tough time to be honest with you in the beginning. Uh, the church that the guys went to, uh, didn't, they put us in the basement, um, because we were making coughing noises that were disruptive. Um, so we left that church and went to, I think it's a UU church. I'm not sure, but we went to a more open-minded church and talked to the pastor there, but yeah, people weren't happy with us. Um, when we first got there, so it really was a tough beginning. Um, so that's, that's, I don't know how you'd get exposure, um, other than increasing the offerings. And, you know, we looked at, when we look at properties, we look at a couple of different things. Maybe that would be helpful for you is one is a part of a neighborhood. Now Boston Post Road is not actually a neighborhood. It's the house right next to that theater. That's us. Looks like a bank. Um, but it's not really a neighborhood. So we've changed that since because that could be as isolating as an institution or a nursing home, when you have to hop in a van to get to any place. So since then, there's a couple of things we've done since that year. One, it has to be in a neighborhood with sidewalks. It has to be set back from the road a little bit so that it's safe for our folks. If they were to, you know, go out to get the mailbox, it's, it's a little bit set back. Um, we like to have neighbors. We like to have neighborhood meetings. We like to have cookouts. We like to have open houses. Um, we do this in almost every community we go to. We have an open house and I think we even did it here. It wasn't well attended, but there were some people who did attend. Um, so we have an open house so they can see how, how great the folks are that live there. And there's nothing to be afraid of. Um, so, so those are the kinds of things we look at. We now build forever homes, we call them. And that is a five bedroom ranch home that takes about an acre of land. Um, so we don't do two stories. We don't, when we buy land, we'll tear down what's ever there if we have to. Um, that's Charles River. That's not all providers. This is what we've learned. Because right now I'm facing like, we have the first group home. We set up the first group home in Massachusetts and it's right here on my campus. And it's a nine person group home because they allowed you to do that back then. Now it's five or less. Can't do more than five, uh, people living in one residence. So, um, I'm faced with the issue now that they can't go up and down stairs. Where am I going to put them? So I have to, they've lived there, two residents have lived there for 40 years and now I have to move them because they can't do up and down stairs. So that's devastating. So we do forever homes. So we do five bedroom ranch style homes that, um, our extra wide corridor, you know, hallways, extra wide doorways. So that if God forbid they need wheelchairs in the future, they could still live there. There's overhead lift systems and so forth. So that that's when we're looking at parcels of land, that's what we look for. The guild might tell you something else. They have different experiences and your other providers might tell you something else. Stephanie, any questions on your part? Oh, let's see. Yes. My son attends, uh, the day program at Charles River and Natick and, and absolutely. He's getting into the community all the time with those groups. That's awesome. Can't wait till he can get back. He's dealing with some medical things right now. Mike, I was curious about, um, thinking there would be different people at different times in the residence. And then the idea of aging in place could, is, is there a need for flexibility in terms of how many people are having room there for, for, for sleep, uh, for, um, caregivers to live there, uh, or, or to be able to have more or less percentage of caregivers, depending on the needs of the individuals. And that's a great question. Very good question. I I'm sorry. I don't know your son. Is it Steven? Jason Silverman, JJ. Oh, JJ. Okay. Yeah. So I don't know him very well, but, um, so I can't speak to that, but what I would say is the way that groups homes, group homes are now configured, this has changed over the years, is that the state DDS does an assessment of the people who are going to live there. DDS, sorry, uh, the Department of Developmental Services. That's our primary funder. We also have Medicaid funding, but that's our primary funder. So they determine the level of staff support that each person needs. Okay. We do our own assessment as well. And that determines the level of staffing for the entire home. And oftentimes it is leveled by their safety skills. Primarily their survival cooking skills, be able to recognize danger and get out of the house and a fire on their own. And that sort of stuff. Mostly it's health and safety related or physical related meeting total support need. I need to be, you know, showered, changed, dressed that, that kind of thing. So that really determines the level of staff in a house and they try and we all try to have people live in the house with the same needs. So if JJ, you know, it doesn't need that much staff support, he will likely, if he ever gets to a group home, uh, is he living in a group home now, Stephanie? No, he's, he's, uh, with me and he has a lot of needs. He's AFC level two. So it's like hands on 24 seven. All right. So that's what he'll be. If he ever gets into a group home, he will live with like similar people with similar needs. So there'd probably be up with five residents, always three staff presence, except for the overnight, that kind of thing. So it's always, and it's always reevaluated. So as the needs of the house change, so do the ratios of staff to residents change. That's, that's very helpful. Thanks. So, uh, I do want to go back to one thing about the land for a group home. You know, a lot of time, the, the complaints we hear from our neighbors, we try to mitigate those, the common complaint by the selection of the land. That's why just not any land will work for us. Now, this is again, just Charles river. I'm not speaking for any other organization. When you, when we talk about a house that's set back, there's a couple of reasons for that too, is that's because this parking. So let's take, you know, Stephanie's son's example. So if there's five people in a home, always three staff present and the house has two vans assigned to it. The state authorizes two wheelchair vans or two minivans per group home. So right there, three staff. So that's five SUVs and minivans and wheelchair vans just every day, every shift all the time. So no driveway can accommodate that and allow people to get out without having the whole group move out while I move my car out. So we end up putting in mini parking lots on the properties. And that's not an attractive site for a lot of neighborhoods. So that's the other reason why we like a lot of land. Sometimes we'll put it off to the side of the house or the back of the house. But that's the only way we can accommodate because then if a nurse is also working there, that's a six car. Everybody has SUVs these days, right, too. Then parents are visiting. That's another car. That's seven big cars. And we don't want to park on the street. Neighbors hate that. Parking on the street all the time in front of my mailbox. That's another reason why the land has to be set back from others. We also hear if the houses are too close, they can hear some behavioral episodes going on, and it's disturbing. So here in Needham, the houses are 30 feet apart from each other. That's not a problem in Wayland per se. I can tell you that, which is good. But in Needham, some of our first houses are right on top of their neighbors, and that's not a good situation at all. Because staff also change every eight hours throughout the day, eight to ten hours. So you'll see headlights coming in at 11 p.m. You'll see 7 a.m. more headlights leaving, right? So that's the other complaint, which is why we like to be separate, a little bit separate from our neighbors. So I did want to address that. So if you're wanting to invite group homes into Wayland, you should really, first of all, look at what are the offerings for land. It can't just be any piece of land. You know, it's in the neighborhood. The neighbors have been spoken to. Whatever. I don't know. It's set back a little bit. It's an acre. That kind of thing. So, Anne-Marie, this committee is charged to advise the select board on the best use of four acres of land in particular at 212 Cajigwood Road. And I'm not sure if you've had a chance to look at that land on Google Maps or anything. But that's our focus. Is it going to be subdivided? Can it be subdivided? It might be. Depends what the select board decides. But it can be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No questions. I guess I had two questions. So I represent the neighbors. And so one thing I'd like to hear from you is how you move from that phase of people being worried and concerned to something that I think we've been described to us as very accepting and positive on Post Road in particular. Yes. So, so I am, again, this is just Childs River in particular. Not every agency does it this way. So we, so when we start, when we first buy a piece of land, we send a letter to all the abutters and then some people that would be affected by our vehicle traffic. We send letters out introducing ourselves. We invite them to come here for a coffee as a group or personally to come meet us, come see what we do. We show them our website and everything else. Um, then we go to the town hall and we do a town meeting, not a town meeting. Uh, I don't know what to call it. It was like a meet and greet, but it was at the town hall, um, where they could see our design plans for the house. They wanted to know where on the lot, it was going to be situated. Will it be fencing all that other stuff? Um, so we, we had those meetings. Uh, and I remember somebody objected because that meeting was being held on private school vacation week, and that wasn't fair to them. And I'm like, well, I don't know private school vacation week. So that was some of the stuff early on. But, and then once we move in, we send a letter again to the abutters and say, please come to an open house, come meet us. I would have, you know, hors d'oeuvres or whatever, and open house and the families would be there of the people there. And then it's really about being good neighbors, right? It's about, you know, when somebody calls to complain that, you know, you're, you're, you leave your trash out by the street three days after the pickup date, you know, that's a complaint or your head, your headlights are shining in my, uh, bedroom at 11 o'clock at night. Is there anything you can do? We'll put up, you know, Arborviti trees to try to block that or a fence or whatever. So we try to be responsive when complaints come in. Um, but it is, you know, there are eight hour shifts rotating through. So it, you know, it is a disruption sometimes to people and we try to keep that to a minimum.
So my other question is you've obviously been in business for a long time, but in your executive role, like what do you see as the biggest threats to financial stability and keeping a group house enterprise in business? And as we look to groups that might do this, like what should we be thinking about or asking when we wonder, you know, will they be able to be in existence in 10 or 20 or 40 years from now? So I, what I would say to that, and of course I'm no expert, but what I would say the biggest threat to us is Medicaid cuts. Of course, we just heard a plan for the next three years to have various Medicaid cuts. But what I would say is group homes are such a safety net for this population and their families. That's not going to be cut. That won't be cut. The biggest risk to the sustainability of the group home system is lack of staff and lack of staff is a result of low administered, uh, legislative appropriations. So it's really advocacy. So we're funded by legislative appropriations. Any services after the age of 22 is not an entitlement. It is, you have to be deemed eligible and the money has to be there through the legislature, special ed schools. That's an entitlement. You're guaranteed education. This is not an entitlement. Okay. That's a very important thing. So we're highly dependent on legislative appropriations. Highly dependent on, are we getting enough money to pay our staff a living wage? That's going to be the biggest threat. What I see coming down, honestly, not for, not for five, maybe 10 years is they're going to change the group home model once again. So it went from nine person group homes, like I said, 20 years ago, uh, uh, 50 years ago, 70 years ago, nine person group homes was okay in a campus setting here. Cause campuses were okay back then in 2014, the federal government, I don't know if you can hear me. I got some guy cutting my grass behind me. So in 2015, 14, the federal government said, all you campus settings have to shut down. We don't believe in campus anymore. You have to live in the community and one group had a, at a time. So now I'm seeing the pendulum swing back to, wait a minute, maybe campus settings are going to be okay. Melmark just put in a campus setting or they're about to, uh, Melmark. So, and the federal government said, okay. So I think it's going to swing back to, we can't afford these one-off group homes. Let's talk about how to save money by more people living in one setting. We are the best, safest bet for towns, affordable housing units. We're great dependable, uh, uh, tenants, if you will, for affordable housing, you know, that, right? So I don't know what your threshold is and whatever, but every bedroom is considered an affordable unit. It's not the whole house is one. So, and we're reliable, you know, yeah, they might come with some complaints, but you know, the, the funding is secure for now as much as it's going to be. Um, you know, we buy this land, we can sell this land later, I suppose, if something occurs, but, um, yeah, I think we're, we're a good safe bet for towns, quite frankly, but we have to feel it'll only work if we feel part of the community, in my opinion.
Debbie, you had a question?
Just, uh, just a, sorry, just a quick question. Um, because one of the things we were covering was the question of whether there could be, would be any preferential, um, preference for, for people from the town who grow up in Wayland to, to live there. How do you handle that kind of thing? It's a great question. Yeah, I hear that a lot. It's a great question. I would say, so, so again, the Department of Developmental Services funds us. So all the referrals come through them. Okay. Um, so we would say to them, have you looked at JJ? He's from Wayland. Does he fit this model? So JJ can't be plugged into a house that he's not going to be supported, right? But yes, there would be a discussion and there is an interest from both DDS's perspective and our perspective that whenever possible, families should be kept together in the same town. No guarantees because they have to be eligible. They have to fit the model of that house. That house might be, uh, only have one staff or five people. They're so skilled. Now you don't want JJ there. His needs won't be met. So those conditions, uh, matter, but yes, we do like to keep families in the same town. That's good. Do you want any questions on your part? Um, thank you, Ann Marie. I, I just wanted to, um, uh, thank you again for joining us and for your presentation and just full disclosure. One of my first jobs out of college was working as an employment specialist at Charles River. Ah, so that, that was a long time before I started working at ArcMass with Leo and John, John Grugan was one of my star hitters when we had to go to the state house to talk about workforce development. So I have some history with Charles River and just in terms of, um, just putting a pitch in, in terms of the question about, uh, the longevity of Charles River, you guys have been around since the fifties. Yeah. So I, I don't think you can really overstate that legacy and the fact that, I mean, if we're talking about group homes or whatever residential model, um, Charles River has been around probably longer than most other providers in Massachusetts. I just wanted to sort of throw that. Yeah. And honestly, John, four CEOs, give me a break. So that's like 30 years, you know, John Grugan was here for a number of years, Paul Mara before him and, and I'm before, so that you can't beat that legacy. So for stability and institutional knowledge, it's, it's tremendous. Yeah. So one, one of the things I wanted to ask Anne Marie, and this is sort of a question that we've been grappling with as a group, as you, as you can imagine, um, just based on your experience, I'm assuming it's a little unusual for a municipal, municipal group like this to actually sort of be proactively doing what we're doing. It's usually the other way around, usually probably more the norm, the experience that you went through with a group home on, on Boston Post Road, where either DDS or a provider agency is doing the proactive, uh, outreach to the community, not the other way around. So one of the things that I think we're sort of, uh, contending with is where, where do we begin? I mean, it, it, I, I keep going back to, you know, we, we don't want to put the cart before the horse, but we don't even really know for sure, given that we're kind of trailblazing a little bit here. Uh, what, what is the cart? I mean, we, we, some of the people in this meeting actually invited, uh, some folks from, uh, DDS central office, uh, for, for multiple discussions. And I think they were even kind of at a loss to, to understand how to sort of help guide us. They, I, I think they were feeling, uh, a little bit torn because they didn't want to dictate to the town what it ought to be doing with this property. But by the same token, they were trying to, uh, help us understand how to, how to proceed. And I think the, the water frankly got a little muddy. Um, I'm, I'm hopeful and I'm, I'm actually looking forward to, uh, getting some additional feedback from Deb Johnson at the area office level and, uh, in, in helping us to understand, you know, it's one thing to have providers such as yourself come in and sort of give us an explanation and a little descriptive history of, um, your organization and what it is that you do. But again, uh, to Stephanie's point, some of the, the, the questions that are, are sort of first and foremost on a lot of our minds are, can we, uh, request a local preference? How does that work? How do we proceed? How does this group proceed with the, the, the, the potential funder, whether it be DDS or DMH or, uh, you know, another, uh, entity? Um, so I guess, and this is maybe an impossible question to, to throw at you, but I'm going to throw, throw it at you. Um, how would you suggest that we proceed? We, we have a parcel of land. There is a, a strong sentiment in town to see it, uh, be developed for this particular purpose. Um, given that mandate as, as Tom outlined, um, is the mandate of this committee. How, if you, if you were sitting, uh, with us, how, how would you proceed? So, so I'm going to be very honest with you, is the land going to be donated or purchased because four acres and Wayland would be prohibitive for any organization. So the first thing is is we're going to sell it for a discount or it's going to be a donation to a non-profit serving people with IDD. We have to be able to, to sustain a DDS does not fund the purchasing of property. They don't, they only purchase the staffing service essentially. So, so that's one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of providers go into wealthier towns. Just quite honestly, the math doesn't work. And so that's the first thing you have to consider. Um, that's how you could get somebody to at least discuss it with you is to say, look, we understand the value of this loan is $5 million. We're going to sell it for whatever, whatever, or we'll donate half of it or whatever. I don't know. So that's the first thing to start the discussion. Then, you know, you couldn't really talk to DDS directly and say, you know, um, we want a Wayland preference. It's not typical that towns work with DDS directly is where the conduit, right? So you have to get us to partner with the town. You know, I don't, a lot of organizations don't partner with the towns. I think that's a missed opportunity. Meet with the fire, meet with the police, tell them who we are, all this stuff. They were invited to the town meeting, by the way, Wayland. Uh, I think it was police. Um, so I think that's, that's a missed opportunity. And if you should find a provider and I don't think you can pick it, you can't pick the provider that you want. Right. Um, yeah, you are asking. It is, it is a little strange, but it's going to be, I think the first thing to do is to attract providers based on your offering. Then people might get interested because we, um, I don't actually know if they're still doing it, but DDS was paying. I think they still are for new houses. They were paying a, um, uh, a bonus to the providers to try to get people to open up programs. So many people are so scared right now to expand their agencies because of the looming, uh, Medicaid cuts that could affect residential to a certain extent. I don't want to get into a whole big thing, but residential services on the back end is funded by Medicaid to the state of Massachusetts. So if Medicaid cuts were to come, it could affect it. I personally don't think so. I think it's such a safety net that there would be a huge outcry. Day services is one other thing. Residential, I don't think so. So a lot of organizations are not growing and they haven't been growing for the last couple of years. We continue to grow a craziness, I suppose, but also commitment to my families. Some of the families I made a commitment to grow. So it's a tough one, John, but you would say that the consideration would be to
for, for, uh, the, the town when it was looking to, um, to in, in terms of what, what this property is going to ultimately be developed for, who, who would be developing it, that cost would be one of the first things that we ought to think about. Yes. Yes. I know Medfield, I think it's Medfield was looking to donate land to a provider and, um, it did attract providers. Um, so, so that is the first thing is either donate land or a serious reduction or whatever. Right now I will tell you that it takes, so I'm trying to build a group home within 30 minutes drive of Needham. So wealthy towns around here, I cannot find anything that I consider sustainably affordable this close to the organization. And that's why we went into Easton and Brockton because it basically, um, the houses and the land was about 1.6 billion. That's about, that's my cap. I can't go over that all in because I can't sustain it moving forward. I don't know other providers what they're thinking, but that's, and, and we own much of our, if you look at our financials, we own all of our assets, very few are, our mortgage. So that's another portion, you know, consideration for us. About 1.6 all in John, that's not, would a, would a, a nominal, uh, lease, would that be something that would be attractive as well? So we don't lease anything. Lots of organizations do lease. Yes. That could be an enticement to some. Yes. Okay. We don't lease anything. Yeah. But yes, that could be absolutely.
So the lease is offset in our residential contracts with DDS. Right. Right. Um,
so that could be an afford, uh, a way to attract people. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Um, Brian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, um, we're looking at a number of agencies and a lot of them have specific clients that they work with that meet specific needs. So do we put this out and just see what comes in, what's viable and roll the dice and see what kind of a population we'll be working with? Yes. Cause you won't actually be working with them. So it's really, uh, if I were you, I would look first at the agency and their reputation. Uh, it doesn't, you know, it's the actual clientele. So we, we spoke about earlier that we only serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism, required brain injury. And I will also say that the people that are getting funded for residential services through the department of developmental services are more medically complex and behaviorally complex. So gone are the days, John, when we serve down syndrome guys who just melt into the community, that that is not who DDS is prioritizing for funding quite honestly. Right. So, so it's, so it's, you know, I think that if I were you, I'd look at the reputation of the organization. How stable are they? What population did they serve? Neighborhoods get nervous if it's the department of mental health services. So, so you have to address that because they think it's a methadone clinic. Actually, I came up at the town meeting. It's a frequent thing. We just broke ground in Stoughton and I got a call from somebody on the street and says, are you putting up a methadone clinic? I can't believe she said that, but no. So come meet us, come have a cup of coffee with me. Let's, let's figure this out. So you don't really have a say on the clientele, but you do a, you might want to call up certain providers that have a solid reputation that are well-respected in their communities, that kind of thing. I mean, autism is a particularly difficult group to, to, to manage sometimes, especially the folks that are being funded, but again, providers should be able to manage them. Good advice. Yep. Catherine. Anne-Marie, thank you so much for this presentation. It's been incredibly informative. I really appreciate your insight on the process. Um, my question goes back to the campus setting that was just recently approved. I wanted to look it up and I couldn't hear where it had been approved. Is that in Massachusetts? Yeah. Uh, I think it's Andover. It's Melmark. Melmark and Andover? Yeah. I want to say it's in Andover, North Andover, something like that. It's three and a half acres of a development and there's group homes and a community center being put into that three and a half acres. Um, you don't want that in Wayland. No, we don't want that. Uh, I can't imagine I I'm not in a butter, but I can imagine pushback, but I, at the same time would, I mean, I can see for economies of scale and lots of other reasons why it would be excellent to serve seven to nine residents as opposed to five, especially with the success of the Boston post road development. But, um, so I was curious about that. Thank you. Yeah, I did. The approval is not there right now to have one group home have more than five. I can see it coming in the future. In fact, when we buy property, we make sure that the septic is good for at least six for that very reason. I'm envisioning converting the garage into a bedroom when DDS says you can have six now. DDS is a very fickle partner. I'm sorry. They just are. They change their mind all the time. So yeah. Oh, I'm glad you found it helpful. I, I, I, yeah. May I ask why, um, you want to serve folks with disabilities on this property? Is there a reason? The, the, the town, uh, came to own the property through tax title and the select board, you know, discussed different, uh, ideas for its use. We decided that this idea would be worth for something. So we presented the town, town meeting, town meeting, gave approvals. Oh, well, that's good. I would add that Brian and I both work at Wayland Housing Authority and we have lots of, um, adults with disabilities in public housing and, um, for many, it works well, but for many, it doesn't. And there's a lot of isolation and we'd like to see more community services, uh, provided, um, you know, common, common area for cooking or movie watching or whatever, just to make it more of a community like setting. So, uh, we've been pushing for this for a long time too. Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know if you looked at our website, but we're developing three and a half acres in Needham for, um, folks who can live on their own with wraparound support services. So it's a little bit step up from, um, housing authorities because they don't offer the job support, the socialization, the community integration. So it's a brand new thing that we're getting funded by the executive office of housing and livable communities to put up 86 affordable units, um, right here across the street from my office. So it's pretty cool. If you should look at it on our website, it's called Charles river Heights. Um, and yeah, for that very reason, we also heard that there's a huge need because the elderly parents still have somebody living with them that's quite capable, but haven't been pushed out of the nest yet. That's right. Yeah. That's what we see all the time, all the time. So that's why this is not going to be group home living. This is going to be those people with wraparound drop in staff supports, no overnight supports, just drop in staff supports. Thank you for being with us this evening and and, uh, no question from me. You've already been very generous with your time. Oh, great. Great. Thank you. John, did you have something else you wanted to say when I just wanted to throw in, uh, in response to your question, Ann Marie, and also I like to remind everybody here. Uh, it's, it's stated in the town's housing production plan that there, there needs to be more housing to serve the population that we're looking at. So yeah, just, just for the record. Right. So we have got a few questions and, um, like others, I really appreciate you joining us. Um, so we have four acres at this, uh, that we're looking at, are you saying that under the rules, it's not an option to have, uh, say offer an RFP to one or more developers to have two different homes, um, housing, say three to five per home. Are you saying that that is or is not possible? Yes. John, uh, so, so, uh, that is actually a great question that I forgot to cover. So DDS has what they call, um, site limitations. So no two group homes can be within, I think it's two miles, three miles of each other period, end of discussion. So if I were to say, I want to build a house on Constituate Road, I have to go to DDS, give the address. They pull out some map and they say, sorry, a BAMZ is only a mile away. You can't do it. Or Delta projects is only a two miles away. You can't do it. So that is true. You cannot subdivide this property and have two group homes even run by the same provider in one location. Unless they give the waiver, correct? Makes me crazy. Unless they get no, they won't give a waiver. No, not a citing waiver. There's no way. Why would that be if they're trying to encourage communities to have, um, homes to house adults with disabilities? The reason is they said that we don't want to saturate a neighborhood and, and therefore jeopardize their integration in that neighborhood. Oh, it's that campus, you know, kind of a thing. We don't want to saturate a neighborhood. So there's a sighting. Now it was 10 miles and five miles and four miles. I don't even know what it is now. I think it's two or three apart, but that's what they said is we do not want to take over and saturate a neighborhood because that is not integration. I'm just going to ask, um, so how far away is our site from your other home? About one and a half miles. 1.2, 1.3. So 1.2, 1.3. So in that instance, I think it's good that you reached out to Deb Johnson because she's the one, she's one of the ones that would make the exception. I've had them say, oh, it's in a completely different neighborhood, even though it's under the, our allowable distance, you know, it's in a, it feels like a different neighborhood, but they won't. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Deb Johnson is a very straight shooter. She, she actually follows the rules. Actually, I just want to interject. Deb Johnson was, was on a call with Chris Flaskin and a number of other people from DDS central office. They were aware of the sighting of your other group home on Boston Post Road, Ann Marie. Yeah. They, they said for the record that that would not pose a problem. Oh, good. I mean, I'm just, I'm just repeating what they said. I'm not, uh, advocating one way or the other. I'm just getting what they said. Yeah. Very good. So yes. Unfortunately, you can't put them side by side though. So this question, Ann Marie is what percentage of residents are private pay, uh, the challenge of a deal. So of the 150 residents, uh, uh, only three are private pay. And here's the reason. The reason is now we have people who private pay because they are, they were not deemed eligible for DDS services. Uh, we have people who private pay. Um, yeah, it's primary, that primary that they didn't get, they weren't deemed eligible for residential services. They're either too high functioning or I don't know what, but they, they didn't. So we accepted private pay for those people. And then as they, and, and, and when you do a private pay, uh, the way it should be done is it should keep up with the funding of the state. So let's say it's $140,000 a year to serve JJ right now. That's what the state pays for all the other people in the house. Stephanie, if you're private paying, you should keep up with the rate of increase of the other people. We're not allowed to basically give away services at a lesser rate per our contract, if that makes sense. So, but the truth is who can afford that? Not a lot of people. So what happens is let's, I'll use JJ as the example. Now he's older, he needs more support. You, you know, you want DDS to reevaluate him. DDS says, why would I look at him? You've private paid him all these years. He's your problem, Charles River. You accepted him as a private pay. He doesn't get to jump the line. So I limit the private pay to just one or two exceptions. John Grugan did those private pays. I've not done a single one because we're in that situation where one person is private paying $30,000 a year for residential services because, and that didn't keep up with the other rates. So I don't like to do private pay. John Grugan did those private pay. But you elaborate a bit on this entity called Malmark, I believe you mentioned. It's another provider just like us. John Grugan. You're not monitoring.
Sorry. Welcome Ms. Costello Shea. You feel free to watch our meeting, of course, and we'll be with you in a few minutes. So, Anne-Marie, is Malmark a developer or not really? No, it's a school. It's a school. It's like a Charles River Center. So Malmark is a school. I think they're in Andover, but they also provide turning 20 services to people who are over the age of 22. So why are they permitted to have a campus setting versus other people? So when I questioned that, I don't know if you heard this. When I questioned that, they said, oh, they're making sure there's a robust community center in the campus. So the community is coming to us. Yeah, I can't make heads or tails of it, honestly. That's what I say when DDS is a fickle partner. Sometimes you just can't. There's Maureen. Sometimes you just can't figure it out why they make those decisions.
And my next question is, just to be clear, your organization does build homes to achieve your ends, right? You don't necessarily only buy homes that might exist. You also build them from the ground up. I prefer to build them, yes. Because you can control the design. And then it's a forever home. Yes, I can control the design. And finally, it was mentioned earlier about the day program in Natick. Can you elaborate on that day program in Natick and who does it serve? How many individuals and from what community is today? So they come from the metro region, which the metro west region, which is, you know,
Wayland and all the community, Natick and and all those communities around that area, the South Bridge and whatever else. So what that is, is called the community based day services. And we've kept it small intentionally. And it's about maybe 40 people who we serve out of that program. And it just turns out the majority of folks that are served out of the program have autism. That was not a design, it was just the way it worked out by when we set it up, maybe what, maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And they are community based day program, which means they go out in the community all the time, they do structured volunteerism, they do social recreational activities. They also do pre vocational skills, money management, they get people jobs as well with job coaching. And they operate Monday through Friday. It's in an industrial park. So it's an industrial setting. And it's like eight to four Monday through Friday. So it's a really nice, small, very active. Individuals love it. And the families love it. It's very active. They go out all the time and do some really great stuff. They have a group doing CrossFit training. I think that's original. So again, they give and they've done sailing and golfing. So they do some really crazy, great stuff. All right. Does any other member have a question for Anne-Marie? I see none. Anne-Marie, do you have any questions for us before you move on with your evening? No, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. Well, we're very fortunate to have you join us, Anne-Marie. You're a wealth of knowledge and wealth of experience. And we really appreciate you being here. I do see Stephanie has her hand raised. Stephanie, you have a question? I was just trying to unmute and say, thank you so much for joining us. It's been very informative. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye. And now, welcome to Amy Souza and Maureen Costello-Shea. Good to have you both with us. You're from the Guild for Human Services. Spoken with you, Amy. I think Maureen as well, and told you a little bit about what our committee is about. And just to be clear, we're charged to advise the select board here in Wayland on best use of four acres of land here, and not far from where we're eating here at the town building on Petituit Road. And our charge includes making recommendations for possible use of that land for adults with disabilities. And you're in that world. And I'd like to have you introduce yourselves and tell us about your organization and your experiences, if you like. Amy, do you want to start? Sure. I can start briefly. I am window dressing here as the CEO of the organization. Maureen Costello-Shea runs our adult programs as our chief program officer. So Maureen, oh, we are reversed. Our names got switched somehow. That's fun. I'm Amy. I'm not Maureen. So I'm the CEO. Maureen is in charge of programs, our adult programs. And so Maureen's going to speak to you a bit about that. And we're also expecting our chief financial officer, Yvette Rodriguez, in the event that you have questions about costs and building and all the financing. In the event that Yvette can't join us, I'm happy to cover that portion of the presentation. But I'll let Maureen start us off with a bit about the Guild and our programming. Maureen Costello-Shea and I'm the chief program officer at the Guild. So the Guild was founded in 1952 when our headquarters were in Concord. And our mission is really to educate, encourage, and empower individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to achieve their full potential and to achieve quality of life and really participate meaningfully in their community.
The Guild supports individuals in two programs, the adult residential program, which I'm going to share a little bit more about with you, and the Guild School. The Guild School is located in Concord, and the students that attend the school who are residential live in Billerica, Bedford, Watertown, and Waltham. The Guild's adult residential program spans eastern Massachusetts. We have kind of our farthest north home is in Billerica, down to Foxborough, Norfolk area. We do have a cluster of homes that are in the metro west region. So the folks from our homes you might see in Wayland live in Framingham, fairly close to the Wayland line in Sudbury and in Maynard, in a kind of out and about and actively engaged in those communities. Our homes are really meant to be homes for life. Our goal is that we really make a lifelong commitment to the individuals we support. The kind of individuals that are supported by the Guild in our adult residential programs, all have the common feature of having intellectual and developmental disabilities, but also have a very large percentage of folks have autism, along with behavior and mental health challenges, as well as folks with medical needs. And two of our homes are very accessible, but other homes have accessibility features kind of based on the current or future needs of the individuals we support. Our adult homes are funded by Department of Developmental Services, and we provide 24-7 staffing for folks. So we, you know, operate homes where really folks need staff support around the clock. We do not operate homes where folks live independently in the home and only, you know, receive a few hours a week of support. Really one thing that is common among the folks across the Guild's adult program, though they span a wide range of abilities and needs, is that everyone really requires staffing when they are in their home around the clock. The individuals we support do have a wide range of day and work programs. Programs, you know, folks attend, in fact, we have folks who attend the program that Marie talked about in Natick who live in our home in Framingham. We also have folks who are employed at Market Basket and Whole Foods, and then we have folks who attend what's called day habilitation programs where the focus of their program is more on requiring, you know, having OT, speech services, physical therapy, you know, and need kind of a different kind of programming. So really across a wide range. In addition to the direct service staff that provide support in the homes, our homes have clinical and nursing staff assigned to them that provide training and consultation and support to both the staff and the individuals. A vet can talk a little bit about how DDS funds homes, because given kind of your mission, that might be helpful for you to understand. Thank you. So as Maureen mentioned, the program provides service delivery and so DDS provides funding for both service delivery and then for occupancy costs, which includes acquisition of new properties. So the service delivery model is based on the house type. So that funding will fund all of the direct care staff that Maureen talked about. And when we think about our houses, and when we develop, we often do them in cohorts, because it provides an economy of scale. They don't necessarily cover the full cost of say an RN. So doing a couple of houses or grouping them together allows us to then bring on a full time staff person to provide all those necessary services to them. Occupancy is another thing that they fund. And that includes things like acquisition, but it does not include the cost of the land of the land. So if we purchase a house, we can contract with them to have them help, you know, cover the cost of a mortgage per se, but they will then back out the cost of the land. So they're not fully funding the cost of that house. And because they cap the amounts, you can't find yourself in a position where with our high housing costs in the state and interest rates, where providers are then required to make up some of that difference. The occupancy contracts generally will run over the span of a mortgage. So if you're purchasing a property, you contract with the bank for 30 years, the occupancy rate that has been set by the state would go on for about 27 and a half years, and then they would drop it and only cover the cost of maintaining that property. So utilities, they include food and as part of that occupancy contract, and then any other repairs that might that might be necessary. So those are the two vehicles. And then they also expect for uh, so what we call charges for care, which comes from the residents themselves. And then that gets backed out of that maximum obligation that the state has for occupancy.
So there were two, two current streets. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Can I ask the three of you to right click your screen and put in your proper name? And this is the reason this will be on. This is a tape meeting and people want to know who you are. And the person who does the minutes will want to know who's speaking. So if I could ask you to take a moment and just put in your proper name on the box, that would be great. Awesome. Thank you very much.
Amy, did you want to take from here? We're back to charming. So I wanted to share some current strategic plan initiatives that we have that, you know, are aligned with some of your discussions around this property as well as really aligned with our focus of community inclusion and really providing, you know, a high quality of life as part of local communities for our individuals. So the first area that really is a priority for us right now is to address the critical shortage of residential options for adults with intellectual disabilities and complex mental health needs by developing additional specialized group homes. And, you know, I know you've talked to other providers and you've talked to Amy, um, a bit, but I can tell you a little bit what that would look like at the guild. And that really is, um, for the majority of our homes right now, five person standalone homes. Um, but really looking at duplexes or homes that are located fairly near each other, you know, similar to our homes in, um, Sudbury and Maynard that are just a couple of miles apart from each other. So that really, you know, as Yvette talked about nursing and clinicians that are shared across homes that we're really maximizing those resources. Um, you know, up until now, the homes that we have purchased have been existing properties where we've done renovations, additions, um, those sorts of things, but in understanding the aging and really home for life, you know, one of our goals is also to look at potentially building based on the property, you know, to the needs of the individuals we, um, support. The second major, um, initiative Yvette is going to talk a little bit about, which is really looking to launch a community cafe business. Yeah. So Maureen talked about our school, um, as part of our school program, we have a vocational contingency there. And so what we have is an in-house, uh, cafe right now where staff can pull upstairs and order coffee and bake goods and the students staff the cafe, uh, prepare the coffee and the, and bring the food down to, um, to our staff offices. And so we're looking on expanding upon that model, um, and opening a cafe in a community. So we're really looking for that community experience. We're, we're looking to be able to bring people to into the, into the, the cafe and get to know the guild and the folks that we serve. Um, we have a restaurateur who is a partner, um, and they are helping us look at what is development for this look like? You know, how do we scout the appropriate locations? And then they're also going to be, um, a partner and the sense of providing the food that will be, you know, the product that we sell at the cafe. Um, but our expectation would be that our residents would be the staff working at the cafe, um, along with their support staff that, um, that we would provide. Um, and then this restaurateur would really help us build that out. And so we're excited about it. It's, it's a really different, uh, opportunity for us. And I think that one of the things that we're really, um, we're feeling really lucky about is having someone with such a good experience, uh, be a partner in this, this venture with us. I think it's worth noting and, um, Tom, you and I talked about this briefly, but our real estate partner in that is Graffito, um, which may be an organization familiar to all of you. Can you elaborate on that organization? So, um, our restaurant partner is Revival Kitchen and Cafe. Um, they are the, the organization with which we've been working for the last eight years. Um, our individuals, our residents and students have been really working closely, um, at Revival. And then, um, one of our, our community partners, um, has been Graffito and we have asked that they help us to scout locations, um, for our new cafe. So do they develop, do they look for land or homes for, uh, any good services or just, just the cafe? No, they're, as far as I understand commercial and we are, we are looking to them for that, that commercial partnership. Um, but among the organizations that we work with, we're, we're very careful to make sure that we have community-based partners, that everything that's done at the Guild is done in connection with community, that we tend not to have, you know, isolated homes and then not engage in community. We don't have campuses. That's not how we operate. We operate in separate group homes, um, that look just like a home that you or I would live in. And then we work in, in community-based businesses. This is the first business that we will be developing a partnership with another, rather than working in collaboration and having our, our residents working at another person's business that we will actually own and operate this one with the support of, of these community partners, including, uh, Revival, the cafe partner, and then Graffito, the real estate partner, who's again, helping us scout those locations. Well, why don't we turn it over to the committee and let them answer some questions. Although, unless you have a few more comments on your end. I think the one other thing I would add is, you know, Amy talked about our homes really being integrated within communities. Um, you know, one of the stories that I feel like really speaks to how well integrated our homes are is that, you know, probably three years ago, I received a phone call from someone who was buying a home next door to one of our group homes. And she said that, um, you know, she was calling to talk to us because they were buying a fairly expensive piece of property and, you know, going to be knocking it down and building a new home and making a big investment. And that she had gone around and knocked on doors of all the neighbors to find out what their experience had been with our group home. And most of the neighbors didn't even realize that it was a group home, um, which speaks to, you know, to really how well integrated, um, both the home was in terms of it's looking just like the neighbors and being well cared for and maintained, but also the fact that, you know, these five young men had been living in the community with supportive staff for at that point, seven years and neighbors really didn't even realize it was a group home and had no concerns. So I think that speaks to what our ultimate goal is, is really for our folks to be included in the community and be viewed no differently by their neighbors than any other, you know, um, next door neighbor. Great. Thank you. Jean, any questions? Sure. Could you tell us a little bit about the kind of characteristics you look for in the communities where you place your homes? You have lots of choices, but how do you pick?
So I would say one of the first things we look at is, um, access to activities in the community. So, you know, is there a YMCA or a health club nearby? What's the proximity to grocery stores and libraries and kind of all those things that we might look at what's, you know, a nearby hospital. Um, in many cases, if folks are already living in the community, we look at where do they work and where do they go to day program? Often we look at where do their families live? So they'll be nearby or their social connections. Um, in many cases, you know, what really is, where are they, where are they connected with? And then, you know, we also look at not wanting a home to be isolated and not be in a neighborhood where, you know, they ideally, um, you know, there were going to be other homes fairly nearby or where they can easily go to parks and walking trails and those kinds of things. I think it's worth noting that all of our homes are five bedrooms. And so a community that can support a home of substantial size is, is an important factor as well. And in some cases, you know, consistent with that, you know, neighborhood neighbors that are all septic and where the homes may only have three bedroom septics become a difficult place for us to move because we'd be looking at then adding a five bedroom septic, obviously, you know, kind of proximity to all the things any of us look for when we're going to be living in terms of, um, services and interest and supports and being able to, you know, get to a grocery store in 20 minutes or, you know, a nearby movie theater and those kinds of things. And also not wanting to be in a space where our house, especially if you're going to be building is going to stick out and not blend with the neighborhood. You know, one of our focuses is really that, you know, we are part of the neighborhood and, and aren't viewed as kind of some institutional type of, of setting or home within their neighborhood.
That's okay. Thank you. John, any questions on your end? You're muted. I'm not sure you say
you're muted, John. Yeah, sorry about that. No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. Um, a quick question on residency preference. I, I'm not sure there can be, um, an actual preference for members of the Wayland community. Uh, but if DDS is, it sounds like DDS is doing the placement of the five residents, right? And have, has the guild had much success in encouraging DDS to, um, really consider family located within the same town and, um, you know, have they been receptive to that and successful? Absolutely. In terms of, you know, some folks within a home and I'll give an example, you know, we have homes in Walpole and Norfolk and we really worked with the Newton South Norfolk area office and, you know, um, many of the individuals that live in those homes, family either live in that town or in a connecting town and are fairly nearby. Um, you know, often it may end up being a couple of people are because one of the big things that we really try to focus on is making sure that it's the right group of people living together because, you know, as an adult, if you're going to be living in community with other folks, you want to, you know, I always say folks should live with folks that they would want to live with if, you know, as much as somebody who's non-disabled does. And, you know, I've, I've been in this business for a very long time and I've had times where families have come to me because the families are all friends and neighbors and say, we would like this group to live together in a group home. And when you look at the needs of the individuals, you say like, these are five people who would, or four people who would never choose to live together. So we really try and look at, you know, both proximity, but also kind of what's the right mix of people and DDS, um, because their system first starts area-based. So Wayland is part of an area that includes Framingham and Natick and Sudbury. Um, you know, they start off by first looking at who do they have from that area. And then who do they have from areas that are close by that would be, you know, that are going to be a match. Um, but it kind of begins at the area level and then moves to the, you know, regional level in terms of finding match. Perfect. Thank you. Ryan. I just had a quick question, um, about serving, um, clients with intellectual disabilities and mixing them with, uh, clients who have autism, you know, how, how does that mix work? So the, the majority of the folks that we support, except for a very small number, have an intellectual disability and autism. Um, in fact, you know, DDS and the state really does only fund on an exception basis services for people who just have autism. And so the folks that we support that have autism also have intellectual disabilities. Um, and you know, their needs are the, as folks are grouped together, they're really grouped by folks who, you know, have similar needs in terms of the kind of staffing and support that they need and the things that they're interested in doing in the community and, and those kind of things. So you guys, and also the previous speaker talked a lot about isolation and that not being something you want to seek out. And I don't know if you've driven by this piece of land, but it is a semi rural sizable piece of land surrounded by two acre zone housing. Um, I can drive here though, to this meeting in three minutes from being a neighbor of that place. So do you consider that an isolated and there's great walkability on sidewalks and also sort of rail trail type stuff? Is that considered an isolated place or not an isolated place? Not at all isolated. I mean, I'm very familiar with the property because I drive by it on the way to our house in Framingham, actually going down Contituate Road. And there's lots of, um, it actually is very similar to where many of our houses are located. You know, when I say isolated, I say, you know, kind of a home that stands along out, um, you know, in central master in certain areas where there are no other homes, where there are not sidewalks, where it's a 45 minute ride to a grocery store kind of thing. Um, one thing Wayland has is lots of great opportunities for folks that honestly are folks in Sudbury and Framingham access pretty regularly in terms of grocery stores and restaurants and those kinds of things. And for the cafe idea, it wouldn't be in the home where people live. It would be like downtown or something like that, right? Be a business like any other. Yeah, that's a, it's, it's a, yeah, it would be exactly a business. We're looking for a place that has some foot traffic, um, you know, that, that, that would encourage customers, uh, because we'd like to be able to, to pay for it. Right. So we, we really want that business. Um, I think that one of the things that we are looking at is just making sure we would hope that it would be the type of place that could encourage that community activity, because we really want it integrated in there.
Can I ask one more question? What does it take to build a house that meets the needs of these types of, um, adults? Like, is that a tricky thing or are there out of the box solutions or how do you approach building a five bedroom house that meets the needs of these guys? So we have some other examples. Yeah. Have you done it with other projects? We have, so we have not completely built yet. Um, we have basically bought regular houses like you or I would go out into the community and buy for our families and then retrofitted those. There are some requirements from DDS already. So they required things like two, um, two spaces that for community spaces, and we need five individual bedrooms and they all need to meet a certain size. Um, and so that's really the beginning of it for us. And then we consider the, you know, the folks that are going to live there and what maybe additional modifications we might need. We have purchased, uh, raised ranches with, uh, with attached garages that we then have converted the garages into bedrooms, um, or converted the, the lower level. Um, and then even have looked at houses have, who have already come with five bedrooms. So the houses are not necessarily that special, if you will. I, you know, they're a house like any one of us would buy five bedrooms needs to have two spaces for community. Um, we look at like making sure that there's a good space in the backyard for them to access, um, and those sorts of things. If it were multi-level, then we need to consider what the safety, uh, requirements would be. But in a nutshell, uh, they, they don't have any remarkable requirements. Yeah. And, and, and you know, though, while I've been at the guild, we have not built, I've been involved over my career in building many, many houses. And, you know, there are design build plans that have been developed because of agencies building and, and have worked both with housing authorities, building, building homes on property that they were developing, like in the entranceway into a senior, um, a senior community or, um, building duplexes or accessible ranches. Um, and, and truly kind of the specs specifications that are required by DDS have been very consistent for a long time. So it's really taking those plans and just adjusting them so that if, for instance, you know, two of the people are in wheelchairs or three of the people were blind, that there are additional modifications you would make when you build, you know, in many ways, um, it's easier to build from scratch. Um, sometimes if you have that land because you're not spending a lot of time, you know, retrofitting or changing what's been existing to try and make it, make it work. Um, but, but because we have, you know, when we started our adult services, we were serving younger people who are primarily mobile and active and really wanted them to be, um, in the communities that had been identified by their families in DCF. We were really fortunate enough, um, you know, based on how the housing market was at different points in times to find those homes. Um, because often five bedroom homes might be attractive to us, but, you know, today there are not many families with the number of children that are looking at five bedroom homes. So that for us, you know, finding them, we weren't necessarily competing so much with, with others wanting as many bedrooms, but those who might want to, you know, way bigger common spaces or many more bathrooms, you know, or great rooms of those kinds of things. So, you know, we've been fortunate to find existing, um, but building really is, you know, if you have the right land and the right, um, and the right utilities and services available really is in some ways less complicated. Um, as we've learned with a couple of the houses where we have done, um, you know, needed to do additions and kind of work with things that were approved or code years ago where the code may have changed. Thank you. Um, uh, thank you again for joining us. Um, uh, I take it that, uh, or I infer that, uh, there may be an interest on the part of the guild to, to do a new construction poem. Is that a correct assumption? Yes, we are looking into it in several locations at this point. And would the, the guild, uh, be the, uh, the contracting party, the, the owner, or would you, uh, work with, uh, uh, a developer or a real estate consultant? We would certainly work with partners, but we would be the owners. Um, we tend not to lease properties from others. Um, we like to have control over the quality and maintenance of the home. And when we lease, we can't guarantee that. What about a ground lease where the, the building would be owned by, uh, you know, the, in this case, the guild, uh, subject to a ground lease, uh, with the town? That's a possibility. Yeah. It's what we're really concerned about is making sure that we can maintain the quality of, of the home, which is why we tend to own rather than lease. That means we can make repairs instantly and we can make them to our liking rather than a landlord's liking. Yeah. And the process generally is that you would, uh, go, or the, uh, the proponent would go to the state and say, Hey, we've got a line on this piece of property. Uh, and would you then enter into some kind of grant agreement with them to provide, uh, the, uh, uh, the capital that you need to, uh, operate the building and pay for the, uh, the debt service? Yvette, you want to start with that? Yeah. Yeah. So usually, um, what we'll do is when we're looking to expand, we do reach out to DDS and begin that conversation. Um, and Maureen and I, um, once there's a wait list, there's always a wait list. And so, you know, generally they're not turning us away. There's oftentimes where they turn to us and say, would you guys be interested in doing a house? Um, so once we've made a decision that we are looking to, to, uh, to expand Maureen and I begin our, our, our weekend trips to open houses, um, and start thinking about locations and that sort of thing, if we find a house that we think, um, is viable and we're interested in, then Maureen would reach out to, to DDS and get approval for the address, um, um, to whichever region, uh, is responsible for that area. And then once we've got clearance for that, then we move forward and we begin with, with the process of purchasing the property. Uh, what we have done historically is that we will pay for the property, um, in cash and then figure out what modifications it would need, um, and then what additional, uh, financing we would need after the fact, um, we have relationships with our banks. And so, you know, we know what our debt capacity is and what the options are available to us. Um, so those conversations are happening in conjunction with our conversations with DDS. And then once we've determined how much work the house needs, we will support, um, send those plans over to DDS to get approval. And as I mentioned, with their occupancy contracts, they have their max obs. And so we're running those numbers in house too, and kind of figuring out what is that budget that's going to be allowed for that and making our internal decisions. But, but DDS does not begin paying us for the actual cost of the occupancy until the first person moves into the home. And so, um, you know, they may give us startup money, for furniture or appliances or those kinds of things, you know, or to hire staffing in advance of the home opening, but the actual cost of, you know, whether it would be, you know, in the case of building, acquiring the land and building the home would be, you know, absorbed by the guild until the first month the house is open and they begin paying occupancy on the house. We know going into it, that they're, that they're going to fund the pro that they're going to fund the house and they're going to, uh, send referrals to us. And we've gotten all of those approvals in place. Um, and then we start looking and just get approval for the address and the additional work that it might require, but as we mentioned, but as we mentioned kind of the critical need, you know, we're approached on, uh, probably weekly basis by DDS being asked if we will open new homes, because there is so many people waiting for services. Um, so that the issue really is never them having people to move in. It's really, you know, for us as an agency, it's really the cost of, of acquiring the home and the renovate, you know, either building or renovations. That's the upfront cost. We have to absorb until they start paying, which just as you're interviewing or, you know, talking with a variety of providers, it's something to consider that the provider needs to be able to put down a large amount of money upfront in order to either, you know, purchase and renovate a house or to, to build from scratch. Most of that, you know, the leverage, the leverage comes from that organization for the borrowing power or for the cash. Um, so any of the expenses that you're asking for, you can't depend on DDS to front that money. It's always going to be the provider who starts. And so any public private partnerships that help to reduce that cost, whether it's the land that's never covered, it's the down payment, it's the initial construction costs, all of those prevent providers from being able to open new houses, which then causes that backlog in, in housing. Um, and as the interest, uh, you know, the mortgage interest rates rise, it becomes very challenging for providers to continue to leverage what they have in order to support new houses. And so it slows down again. But at the, uh, at the end of the day, I take it, you've got permanent financing that would, uh, would enable you to pay your debt service, uh, and operating costs, uh, but for the, uh, the investment of the land. So the, the equity that you ultimately end up investing is, is the land cost, I gather.
Yes. And then the down payment, which we eventually get back 27 years later. And so there's an upfront cost to that, um, just in terms of outright cash, the down payment being, I think if you're going to buy a home, um, or if you're going to construct a property, you have to put money down upfront. And so then you're 20% down for your mortgage comes out of our pockets. And then over 27 years, we recoup it. So there is, so there is an equity investment. Um, there is, yeah, there is. Okay.
Stephanie, any questions in your part? No, I think, um, I don't think so at this time. Thank you. So to some of the Whitney's questions a moment ago, do you set up separate mini corporations under your umbrella for each property or not? No, absolutely not. It's all under one. And you're a nonprofit, correct? Yes. So you don't pay taxes to the municipalities where you have the towns, correct? Correct. So when we are in, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Once the house is in service, uh, we, we file annual reports with, uh, with the specific towns and we don't pay for the property tax. Is your understanding that for-profit entities that do what you do, they do have an obligation to pay taxes to municipalities. Do you have an understanding either way? We are not a for-profit, so we can't answer for others. What we can answer for is as a nonprofit, we do not. And in the communities where you have homes, do those communities enjoy affordable housing credits for some or all of the units, to your knowledge? You know what I mean by that question? So are you asking if our houses count towards their affordable housing credits? Yes. Um, I don't know that. Okay. I believe they do, um, having, having done this and having kind of worked with a lot of the towns that they're very cognizant of, of, of, you know, how many group homes they have and, and knowing that the individuals who live in a, in a, um, group home, you know, are covered under the Medicaid waiver and, and do, you know, the, it does count as affordable housing. And, and some of it is often why- Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Say it again. That, that, that, you know, they do count as affordable housing. And I think it varies from municipality to municipality, how closely they track the number of group homes. But I do know, you know, many do and, um, and, and include that in, within their, their town statistics and, and requirements. Hold on, John. I just thought the previous speaker said that each room counts as one unit. Each bedroom. Yeah. I mean, that's, and, and for the couple of towns where we've worked with, with section eight, they've indicated each bedroom counts as a unit because it's one disabled adult. Just keep in mind, we're talking about five people, right? So we're not going to, if you're looking for us to put a, you know, a big dent in that number, we won't put a dent in that number more than five. Oh, you understand. For a town like Maryland, five is a dent. Fair enough. Okay. I just wanted to clarify just for the record that, that it's not on the provider. It's the, the onus is not on the provider to demonstrate that a, that a bedroom, a unit is affordable. That is a communication that occurs between the, the funding agency, whether it be DDS or DMH and, uh, the, the state housing authority. So let me ask, thank you, John. Let me ask you a question I asked, um, Anne Marie. Um, we have four acres here. Is your understanding that the state would not permit two homes, both dedicated to, to adults with disabilities next to each other, one on two acres, one on the other two acres, for example. So we can't answer on behalf of the state, but we can say in our experience, it hasn't happened before, but things are changing. And so I can't, you know, we can't talk about all the exceptions that have happened. I know that you spoke about Melmark briefly, briefly, but those are the exception to the rule. So it really would be, um, dependent on, on EOHHS to give you that determination, not us. Yeah. It sounds like you, you have not done that in the past. We do not. We, yeah, we've not done that. We've not done that at the guild. Um, but you know, have done that in the past. And I mean, and some of that also becomes based on the density within an area, um, you know, whether a town, but it has to be, it, it's an exception, you know, that we would have to submit a request for a very specific reason. And all of which is up to EOHHS, not us. Right. Those are all the questions I have. Do other members have any follow-up questions? I have one question about, um, do you get to choose the residents based on fit and the services that you do deliver when people come to you with opportunities? Or is there an obligation to accept residents that are proposed by, um, DDS? DDS, DDS sends referrals to us and we review them and determine whether or not we're going to accept them. Um, and whether or not face, you know, whether it is a fit with who the group might, you know, might be that exists, you know, in, in, um, in some cases we've had folks move into our adult programs who've come from our school program, who we know well. And so we might have two students that are turning 22 that are prioritized and referred by DDS. And then we look at what referrals come that are going to be matches, um, and accept people also based on whether or not we feel like we can meet their needs in that setting and whether or not they're going to be a match with the other individuals. Again, kind of going back to what we talked about earlier, which is, you know, these are adults living together ideally for the long term. You want to make sure that people are a good match and fit with each other. Thanks. Do you have any questions for us and you? No, I, I just appreciate the time to get to know, um, you all and for you all to get to know us a bit better. It sounds like you've gone through a pretty long and grueling process trying to make a determination about what to do. And I appreciate that you're considering, um, you know, inviting people with disabilities into your community, community in a meaningful way. Um, that gives us a lot of enthusiasm about Wayland. Um, it's just a great opportunity to get more involved in the community. Well, Amy, you're very kind to say that. Uh, we really appreciate you taking some time out of your data to chat with us because we are in a due diligence phase, trying to learn as much as we can about this industry and you, you all are experts. And so we appreciate all the information you provided. And, and, and I don't know if you've talked with the, you know, the DDS Middlesex West area office that supports, you know, that Wayland is part of. Um, but they certainly would be a very good resource in terms of, you know, advocacy. If you would like to use the property for two homes with EOHS and understanding kind of the demand in the area, because, you know, Wayland abuts Framingham, which is, you know, has many, many group homes and, you know, has some areas that are pretty saturated. And so I think that you would also get support from DDS in the area office around some of the things that you're thinking about as you're doing your, you know, kind of due diligence around this property. But all questions for DDS, not us. We, we can't, we can't guarantee what they will support. Exactly. We talked to them last week actually to see if they want to join us. And so when you're backing them, but I appreciate that suggestion. Um, so Amy and Maureen and Yvette really appreciate your time this evening and, and wish you the best of luck and your continued great work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Um, so Mr. Breitkart, are you with us? Yes. Good evening. Good evening. If you want to grab a chair and come up to that, that table and we can, we can start. I'd like, I'd like the members to, uh, uh, to invite me five minutes. Oh, yeah, that's what I was thinking. You may want to take a break. And so we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll be convened at, uh, uh, thank you very much. You're welcome. 6.50. 6.50. Hi, Kevin. How are you doing? I'm great, Brian. Nice to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's impressive. The process that you guys are all, and you're going for this.
Instead of just saying, well, we think this is what we should do. We're going to talk to as many people as we can. Yeah. I'm not a new guy. I was like a signature. So why don't we reconvene for a meeting. We left the meeting final. We're a short break. We're talking about service. 6.43. And now 6.53. Our final guest this evening is in person. Um, night. Is it Ricard or Ricard? Ricard. Ricard. Ricard, Andy Ricard. Thanks for joining us this evening. Uh, I think you have a sense as to what our committee is all about. We're going to have a chat over the phone and you're kind enough to accept your invitation to, um, chat with us and appreciate you taking a drive over to, uh, town building tonight from your home, which is not well. Yeah. To, uh, no, Acton. So it's not too far. Um, so, Andy, why don't you tell us about, um, your organization, what you do and then, um, what your experience has been? Okay. Uh, and thank you for having me. Thank you for the process that you're going through, your willingness to support this community with housing. It's, it's wonderful. Um, so I'm housing development manager for Minute Manarch in Concord. We, so a couple of years ago, we created that position. I had been talking with Gene Colesbury, the CEO there, uh, for a couple of years prior to that about housing. And they were getting so much feedback because they were doing their vision, they're probably their vision from families. And I'm worried for them was housing. So we created this position, essentially when you look at the landscape of the housing provided and, uh, just, uh, you know, you've had great resources already come in and I come at it from a little different perspective in that there's been doing this three years. Um, and I'm kind of outside of the TDS world. I mean, we all coexist, but I'm not someone who's, uh, working at a group home and knows that in and out. I'm coming at this from who are the people that are served by the current model and the current model really, uh, I apologize to if you've heard a lot of this from other people as well, but the housing that, you know, all of our kids and I have a 22 year old son who just finished, uh, counting and is waiting on a day program. He's, uh, needs assistance with mobility. He's occasionally verbal, but he's going to need support all of his life. Uh, he has an intellectual disability as well. So I'm kind of living this, but the, uh, so we work with TDS. TDS is not a housing agency. That's not what they do. Uh, but for those who are prioritized, they do provide housing. Uh, and priority typically means that you are in a situation where you're either not saved as an individual or perhaps due to your behavior, others in the home are not safe. Those are the, the people who are getting prioritized for housing. And right now there's their, uh, occasional exceptions, but really the big tool in the toolbox for DDS is the group home, which is the group home you think of. And you've heard described where someone's receiving 24 seven support. The challenge there is that when you only have that one tool in your toolbox and my personal example. So if I, if I had a heart attack, I'm going to be out of here and I could no longer take care of Henry, then it would be a matter of DDS would step in appropriately, look for the right spot for him, but it's, it's an emergency placement. And so you're looking at where's the next available bed. And he's then in that home with people he doesn't know. They don't know him. You can make it work, but if Henry was more capable, uh, but not, he was capable, but couldn't live alone, but didn't need 24 seven support, the option would still be the same, would still be going to a group home. So when the previous speakers were talking about the long wait list, well, that's because a lot of people are just devolting into that, even if they're capable more. So it's a long way of saying, sorry that I came into this position for those who are not priority one, they've not been prioritized, but they need housing. And the reason they need housing, it's because the parents recognize they never want that nightmare scenario to happen where they can't take care of that loved one and they have no control of where they're going. Um, so I'm fortunate in that there's a lot of families in that middle ground that are not prioritized and are looking at, well, what, what can we do? We, that it's why I hear parents say to me, I, I want my kid out of my house because they recognize it's the best thing for them longterm, but I don't want them out of my life. You know, how do I help them? I have other kids. They've been able to move on. How do I help my child move on? So I, when you invited me and thank you for the invitation, it was more about, uh, rather than describing the typical group home that you've heard from others, what are families telling me that they want? Uh, and again, I, because I'm outside of the typical, you know, ordinarily there wouldn't be as many opportunities for me to talk with families. If I were in the residential side of Miniman ark, because there's kind of a wall there, you know, you won't be talking to people, answering the questions and giving them hope or what, you know, creating, uh, the situation where maybe they think they're getting something before DBS has gotten involved, blah, blah, blah. I'm on this island where I can just talk to families. And so I've had the good fortune of over a hundred families having coffee or a call with them to understand as another parent, what are they looking for? What are the things that they would like to see? So I don't know if that's helpful to you, but I thought I would bring that perspective to the discussion. So the things that I might talk about are things that families are looking for, not necessarily things that DBS is wholeheartedly supporting. Yeah. And what we've heard from DBS as well is that while there will always be the need for the group home, there's always people who would need that 24 seven model. It's not something that's financially sustainable for them to keep doing it the way it is right now. Uh, when you think just, uh, my boss was at a conference last week and the average cost for each resident of a group home annually is now about $200,000. So when you think about an individual moving into coming from school, like Henry turned 22, moves right into a group home and you're covering that cost for five, six decades, it's just not hardly going to keep doing that and funding it. So I think there is an opening there for us to come up with more creative solutions. Uh, and DDS tells us that as well, that we're open to creative solutions. So with that backdrop, what families really want to see is more of a, uh, an intentional community. I hear that from so many different families and just a quick step back that you know, we had housing and it was in institutions. And so we were here, we recognize that there were some awful, horrible things happening there and it was not the best solution for everyone. So the pendulum swung and it swung all the way over here to say, we're going to move them out into the community, but we're not going to have group homes near each other because we don't want to saturate an area and recreate the institutional field. So suddenly you've got to be a mile from another group home. My hope is that in the hearing for families that we're swinging back and settling in the middle where it's more of a, an intentional community that serves multiple needs. It might have, and there are examples out there that are coming that have, uh, we're serving some who have 24, 7 needs, but on the, in the same community, we're serving others. They have more independence. And we're also providing housing for, to meet other needs that may be seniors. There's a project in rally when we're crossing, uh, it's 17 units for seniors who are 16 and over, uh, five units in a group home for those within this population, a private residence and a community center and rally. I don't know rally well, but they're lacking in community centers. So they were, the town contributed CPA funds to help them build that community. Sorry. I'm not saying that this is a site for it, but that's a four acre parcel that they're using for that purpose. So they're, that, that idea of creating community, because the, the idea of the group home and moving people out into the community was a good idea, put them in neighborhoods, but they're not necessarily integrated in the community, their house on the street, but are they part of that community? Uh, and that's where the intentional piece comes in. Uh, and that's what we hear from families. And then I don't bring it up. I said, where do you, you know, if you had to come up with a solution for Billy or for Jenny, what would it be? Well, if we could create that community where they're with peers and there's support, it's a supportive neighborhood such that, you know, if some, if I'm not around, I know that the neighbors get it and they're going to be looking out as well. Not that the parents are the first line of defense, but those parents are the second line. Um, so I don't know if that, if that makes sense, that's a, I don't know if it's the right for the site. Again, that's about my pay grade, but that's what the community is. A lot of families in the community are looking for and what they would like to see. So just by way of background on your title at Manorak is housing development manager. Yes. So, um, what is your day-to-day like? What are your objectives in your job, uh, at Manorak? So we're, uh, my role is creating, it's evolved, and we made up that title. Um, that my role is, uh, was primarily to fill that gap in the middle. You have some at this end who need 24-7 support and they're being prioritized. Some who have been able to live more independently, uh, with support still, but how do you get, you know, in addition to this 24-7 in group home, it might be 24-7 in the family home. How do you get from this end to go as far toward this end as you can? And so that's where we've been working on creating models in the middle, understanding what I talked with groups in New Hampshire. I talked with groups in Connecticut. What is working in other areas? Uh, Indiana, Cass Housing, Michigan. What's working other places, and can we bring them to Massachusetts? We don't want to create from scratch if we don't have to. So it's filling that need, but then the role has evolved as well because things happen slowly. Um, supporting families and understanding families, what they're looking for, and then potentially bashing those families up together. Because there's not, once you reach 22 and now you're finding a day program, there's no ice cream social to get the families together like there's an elementary school to try and meet the other families and create a cohort of families that might be able to work together on something. So bringing families together. And is your organization a non-profit or full-time? It's a non-profit. So Minuteman Arc is taking a step back. We serve over a thousand individuals from, uh, early interventions. Zero to three to end of life. We have nine group homes. We have individuals living in the community that we're supporting. We have, uh, Dayhab, CBDS, employment services. We cover the whole lifespan. And then we've got this little island over here that's Andy trying to create new models. But, um, John, questions for Andy? Hey, Tom. Hey, Andy. Welcome back. Hi, John. We're all still here. A little further down the road than the first time you showed up. Andy, I know I've asked you this before, but, um, what would you say to folks that are concerned about the long-term viability of the model that you're talking about versus some of the more traditional models that we've been hearing about? So, uh, just to give a quick overview that, uh, can I step back and describe the model in a little bit more detail? And the intent was not to come here and pitch that, but more to share information. But there is a model that we've been working on that John's talking about, which is in that middle space to help progress and see how independent you can be. So it's a cluster of multiple, uh, modified one bedroom apartments on the same site. The modification being that they don't have a full stove and oven for safety, but they have a community space, a full kitchen. That's a living classroom. And then there's a full one bedroom apartment. It's for a safe neighbor who provides overnight. If something comes up, I know what to do. It's a responsible adult overnight. And the, so the, the assumption is individuals have a day program, but there's someone there to welcome them. There's staff that they've all, uh, collected resources to pay that person to cover it from three to eight. That it's responsible for everyone there, get them settled, working on those independent living skills because maybe they keep moving on and they live in an apartment with a friend. And then there's also one on one support that's provided by DDS. So to your question, John, the viability, I think there's always going to be that path and the funding, when we talk about the $200,000 for each resident group home, this is much less expensive. And for DDS, they're providing roughly five to 10 hours of individual support, but we preach individual, um, with, if they qualify for it, they're eligible. And then the rest, so that that's the one-on-one, the person who's covering from three to eight, there's a mass health program called group adult foster care that allows you, if you need assistance with activities of daily living to qualify for that, that the advantage of group adult foster care is that an agency can be the care provider and you can pool money to cover that, that staffing. So it's not going to be covering every dollar, but we've been working on this model that families can afford to contribute to, but a lot of the services are coming from benefits they're already eligible for. And it's going to be a much smaller check for DDS to write. Uh, when you think of the alternative, if this wasn't there, that individual who's going to thrive in this opportunity, might've defaulted into a group home and be costing them a lot more. You good, John? Yeah. Thanks, Sandy. Bill? And is this model still pretty aspirational? Are there examples where it's working and it's been around for a couple of years and getting some traction? So we've been building upon some of the, it's a great question. The funding that I talked about for services has been going on. I think you spoke with Maine State, uh, at one of the earlier meetings? I think so. And Larry Oaks. So they have larger houses. There's a bit of a difference in that they might have a 10 or 12 bedroom house and these are going to be units within a structure. So that's where it's a little bit different, but the funding source is the same. So that's, that part of it is proven that you can use the GAFC, the group adult foster care money to support a group of people like that. And combined it with DDS funds, uh, we actually took their, their model, uh, funding and then applied it to this. So that part is not aspirational. Let's prove it. The idea of building them as individual units is new, but there's a group in situate who actually they have their open house, uh, the grand opening this weekend. So situate did something very similar. They have, there's this, the difference is that they, uh, instead of one bedrooms, they have two bedrooms. So they have four units for eight individuals and they're all on one site. They have a, again, a community kitchen. They have two apartments on site for those overnight safe neighbors. So that is, they're right now going through their, they've completed construction. They got CPA funds from the town of situate. They raised money and they're bringing in residents in January. So we're close. And then there's also an opportunity here actually in Waitland that we're working with to develop crime, but that's, we're not as far along the path as they are. And who like builds and owns that structure, which is expensive to build and probably expensive to maintain. It depends. So, uh, in situate, it's a nonprofit that owns it. Uh, in the project that we're working on, it will be an owner, a landowner that owns it, uh, and builds it and has a master lease that with our organization. And then we sign leases with each of the units. Uh, ideally the model would work really well in, in what's been done in Connecticut within our down there is, uh, hooking on to a larger building. Again, 30 unit building. They've done it where 25%. So 32 units, I think Brian, you're familiar with this as well, but they were hit done. Um, a 32 unit affordable building. And 25% is for the IDD community. And it's basically a wing of a floor.
By the way, for the record, uh, Catherine Provost had to leave at 6.53 to go to another town-related meeting. Um, Stephanie, questions on your part? Oh, I was thinking of farmsteads in New England. Do you know that? In Epping, New Hampshire? Sure. They had, um, they have the similar, it was some of the buildings on there. It's a, uh, they have, um, uh, like one or I think a bedroom and a sitting room for about several people and then a, uh, caregiver. And then it's a, a combined one kitchen, one living room. And I, I really liked that idea. So there's some private space and also some communal space. And it's wonderful that you can do something like that in Massachusetts. That's the goal. And to try to emulate what they might, uh, the environment they would have in their own apartment, uh, so that if they're capable of moving on, they can do that. The idea is not that it's up or out. So if you don't achieve those skills, then you go back where it came from, but let's create an environment where I don't, I don't know how independent my son can be, but if he had the opportunity to do that, and I'm not creating it for my son because he's years from that, but the, as an example, putting him in that environment where yeah, you're going to learn mistakes are going to be made, but those mistakes are not catastrophic because you have structure supporting you. I liken it to my daughter went off college. There was a dining hall. She wasn't going to starve. There was a structure there, but there's not a structure there for Henry. So that's the path that we're trying to create. And the idea is if we can do that within an intentional community alongside group homes, then in senior housing, it could be actants doing that with, they have, they're building a 41 unit building. Six of them are designated for DDS and the other 35 are for affordable for seniors, but all within the same building. There are more and more opportunities to create these intentional communities. And the other piece I didn't mention was that having that redundancy of staff where you might have one house that needs more support, one that needs less. Well, now you've also put the staff closer together instead of being so isolated, you've given them the opportunity for advancement or for change as well, instead of being a group home in the middle of a neighborhood. Now maybe they, it clicks better with the compact units that we're talking about versus a group home. You give them those opportunities and you give them the support of more staff around. I think it's, we're really excited about the idea of the intentional communities, whether DDS is ready. I don't know. I guess I'm confused about how this would be financed, who would own the building, who would build the building. I mean, the model sounds great and it certainly sounds as if it's going to address an unmet need. Um, but I, I'm unclear as to whether, uh, the, uh, where the operating revenue comes from for the building. So that, uh, each unit within the building pays rent and they, so they're, they're two P really two piece that they pay. There's the rent and the rent would be capped at an amount such that if they, to make it financially sustainable over the longterm, so individuals don't have much income. Right. So they're going to need a rental voucher. Right. Uh, most likely. Right. So capping the rent at a level that they can apply that voucher. Right. Uh, that's one piece of it. And then there's a service fee for each individual as well that covers more the, uh, some of the staff. It covers, uh, some compensation for that safe neighbor. It covers group meals. Um, so those are the two pieces that, uh, for the compact unit within that. So depending for that or for each of the buildings. So how do the residents come up with the money to pay both those fees? One, I take it as you say a voucher. Is that a section eight voucher? Yes. And then with respect to the, the service fee, is that private pay? Is that from social security or? It's a combination. So the, the rent voucher would require the individuals to pay 30% of their income for rent. Right. As you know, and then the, the voucher covers the rest. Right. So that leaves them in 70% of their income. So a portion of that would go toward the service fee and a portion of that would be private paid from their family. And so what we've tried to do is build a model such that, uh, if we can cap the families out of pocket at an amount of, uh, 1800 or 1500 is the number we've been given 18,000 a year that families have been saving up money so that that's something they can support going forward. And would you expect that the, uh, the residents would be, um, people who could have outside employment, could have, uh, volunteer opportunities? Uh, yeah. So, yes, yes, absolutely. These would be individuals that had enough independence. Right. Then they could have those employment opportunities, volunteer opportunities outside the home. Um, and they, they would have to have enough independence that they could spend a little bit of time alone in the evening as well. Right. Uh, but their income would not be enough to pay rent. Right. And, uh, if they needed specialized services, uh, they would arrange that on their own. I take it for specific medical needs or? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And that would already, that would be the case whether they were in a compact unit or at home. Right. And is it your sense that, uh, DSS would, uh, be receptive to the notion of having a traditional group home and one of these intentional communities within close proximity to one another? Well, I haven't spoken with them about that, but I have spoken with them about the need to be more creative and what they're willing to support. And if they can't put a, uh, house on these individuals and group homes, right? That is, they're gonna have to be, uh, willing to consider opportunities like that. Yeah. Just thinking of the fact that we have this four acre site and if there's a group home that serves five individuals, query what, what could happen with the rest of the site and to the extent that we could serve other individuals, uh, with disabilities, uh, on the same site and that were on a subdivided parcel, uh, that would be great. Yeah. I didn't. So we haven't talked to them specifically about co-locating. Yeah. But we have another opportunity in Stowe where it's a different, uh, I don't know if you talked about the structure of DDS and the regionals and some of the areas, but it's, so it's a different area because it's, uh, no sucks West. Um, they are supportive of the compact unit model within a larger 40 B development. Okay. So that tells me that there's some, some flexibility. Some willingness to get it. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. I haven't had the opportunity to make the case yet for co-locating two different models on the same site. Right. Thank you.
Yeah. Andy, uh, I, uh, I, uh, the, um, the facilities in Sudbury is impressive. I mean, the, um, the, um, the main facilities in acting, uh, Concord, both in Concord and in the group columnist on 117 and, uh, Sudbury, very, very beautiful. Well done. Um, but I wonder, um, it sounds like you'd have to, um, put, uh, intensive effort into cobbling together funding for, um, for each client in each, each individual's different funding. So it seems like a big effort in it. I don't know what the longterm, you know, if, if that ever, um, becomes more or more difficult by funding sources dry up, what happens, what happens in those situations? Yeah, I think that that's, uh, my thought is that if, if these individuals in the compact units are not able to continue to live there because the funding has dried up, they're then going to become that priority one that we talked about for DDS. Uh, now EDS can make money appear out of nowhere, but we're not asking them for a significant amount. Um, as you said, it's probably five to 10 hours a week of one-on-one support, uh, that we feel like this is going to be economically feasible for them. And with less DDS involvement, does that give you more flexibility in designing programs for your clients? Yes, yes, absolutely. And so there, the way that this will work is there will be two, uh, screening processes. One that is working with the individuals to determine, are they in a spot with their individual or their independent living skills where they can take advantage of this opportunity? Uh, so are they on that path that they've been working on it? Uh, do they coexist well with others? The advantage is, Stephanie, as you mentioned, is that they each have their own space. So if they're having one of those days, I don't want to be around other people. They have their own unit as opposed to a bedroom. Uh, so can they though coexist with others? So that'll be part of the screening process. And a really important part that the, our staff that knows them best, and we're already creating some of those bonds because we have a men's group that goes out and does things together on weekends and does weekend trips. We can see how they're interacting to determine are these guys a good fit together. But then the other screening process is working with the family to make sure that, do they have the financial resources? And you alluded to John too, is the money there for this? Are they willing to enable to do that thousand dollars a month of a service fee? That's what I'm out ends up being. Are they eligible for these services? Have they gotten on the, the rental voucher waiting list? All these pieces. So there are two parallel screening processes to really hopefully give them the best chance of succeeding. We don't want families to go through this place their loved one and then get to fall apart. I mean, if the family ceases to exist and funds dry up, then they, then you go back to the DDS, the DDS model. Yeah. Yeah. But that's part of the screening process too, is have the families been doing the things that they need to do? Whether that be, there's a lot of estate planning that goes on for these families. Do they have a second to die life insurance policy and a trust that might be able to fund this ongoing? Because, and most all families do, because that's their worry is what happens when I'm not here? Yeah. So I'm confident that they will not screen out the families that haven't done that, but identify the ones that haven't done that and help them get on the right path. Get on the boat, get on board. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any questions? Well, I'm, I'm, yeah, I am struggling a little bit to understand what's a more complex model with funding coming from various sources and, and wondering, you know, but we've been talking about individuals going into these houses and then living there for 40 and 50 years. I mean, how, with this kind of funding, how do you plan for a long period of time like that? And most of these organizations seem to, DDS is the source of money and so they're hanging their hat on the continued existence of DDS. Right. From the 40 to 50 years. Um, so I guess they're reasonably confident that there's something that's going to exist and provide the stream. How are you guys figuring out that longer term for these people? Yeah, that's part of the screening, uh, that we go through to make sure these families are, are they taking the steps now? And with the enthusiasm, I, I meet, when I meet with families and we talk about this. Right. And they're like, ah, yeah, yeah. It's motivation to get their affairs in order. Okay. So are you, for example, is the group asking them to establish a trust for the child upon their demise? There's a trust formed with a income stream to arc to cover their expenses. We can't take that step. Okay. Um, because we don't really know a, that's asking them to do something. And we don't know if the model, if their loved ones can thrive in this model. We're going to give them the opportunity to do that. Uh, and we know our families pretty well to know the ones that are on top of things that aren't, but we're not going to require that. Uh, we're getting, that's part of the understanding and explaining how the model works that they need to have the ability to sustain this longterm. So I don't think we're going to be checking that they do that. Okay. Um, and again, that, that goes back to the, the folks that are living at home right now, because they don't have another option. They're just getting default into the, the DDS system. If families are of that mindset, then they're probably not good candidates for this. You know, if they haven't done playing and they're just waiting, whatever may befall them, they're not going to be the ones who seize the opportunity. Okay. Yeah. That's a good question though, because it is dependent on families. This is not a drop-off activity. Yeah. Thank you.
I have a couple of questions. Amy, you can talk about the process concerning the home in situate and the home in Sudbury. What I'm referring to is, was there an RFP that was issued that you responded to your organization or was there some other manner in which you secured an agreement to do what you did? So the situate is a, that's independent of us. That's just, uh, a nonprofit that I've met and again, trying to pull what works for other people. Okay. Um, we're working as part of a larger group to, to understand how we support each other to create more opportunities in Massachusetts. Uh, the Sudbury home was, and I think it was the previous group spoke of as well as DDS with their long waiting list coming in saying, Hey, we need some help here. And that's the thing is DDS doesn't typically create the houses, but they will fund the services and the, uh, support going forward. We knew that we had individuals within our other group homes who were aging. So that house in Sudbury was specifically designed to be one floor living so that the folks that we knew couldn't handle stairs much longer, there was a spot for them to go. And we did a similar house in Sudbury on Powers row. It wasn't ground up construction as rehab, uh, but to create, we could see what was coming for those that we serve. And then back that up with, okay, as we reconfigure to move individuals into this new home where they, they can agent place that's opening up places in other homes and comparing with DDS. Then do you have individuals who are going to fill those spots so that we can continue to collect money. When we have an open bedroom, that's on the, the, they're still going to be the same level of staff and expenses other than food, but yeah, I mean, maintenance and things. So we needed DDS to say, yeah, we will fill those spots with other people, but there is no RFP because there's all credit developed. We've seen, um, situations where for-profits are involved building to housing adults with disabilities and they're not affected as much by the state laws. Um, is that pretty rare? Uh, not so much on the, it's more common on the Cape that, uh, there are opportunities on the Cape where, uh, I know specifically one, I guess she's a corporation now, but where she is creating opportunities for, and it's all private pay. So they, she's charging a market rent for each to the units. They come, uh, so what she's doing is providing the house and, uh, some activities on weekends, but otherwise families are coming in, paying the rent and, uh, bringing their own services with them. So she's creating a community of peers. What do you think about that? I think it's great for those families that can afford to do it. Right. Uh, unfortunately most families cannot, or to make it, they might be able to do it now, but as you're alluding to, can they do it for the next 50 years? Uh, so I think it's great for those families that can do it. That was not the segment of the market that we were focused on, which is why we're traveling together. Everything that you're eligible for. Sure. Uh, do other members have questions for Andy? John? So Andy, um, just going back to a question that Bill Whitney asked, I, I understand that you're describing what you're describing is mostly around the, the operational aspect of, of serving individuals, but in terms of financing a bricks and mortar project in the model that you're describing and how that might interface with the, the property that this group is tasked with overseeing who would actually develop the, the building. Would that be something that Miniman Arc would, would be interested in doing, or would that be something that would fall on the shoulders of the families of the people that would be served in the building? No, no, it, it could be the families, but not in this case. So if families came together and built it, we would, you know, it falls right into our wheelhouse to support it. So we would certainly do that, but in this opportunity, that would not be the case. We have an opportunity in Stowe that I mentioned as well as part of a 40B. And in that case, we are working with CIL. Did you guys speak with Chris from CIL and understand their model? So it's a little bit different in the, so CIL, they will come in, they sign a long-term agreement, they build the house, they collect rent then until they've satisfied their lenders and their investors. And then they turn over title to the nonprofit. And that from a group homes perspective, that is something that really they've had a lot of experience in. We would like to, and we've been talking with Chris about applying that same thing to these compact units. So wouldn't be us that was with the outlet, the capital to construct it. It would be CIL working with their lenders and investors to create a new model. It's a, it'll take some work because again, their lenders and investors understand the group home model. And that's something that they're pretty comfortable with. They'll take some effort, but Chris is on board to, to work with us on that. Does that answer the question? I suppose so. I mean, I, I guess what I'm trying to get at is obviously we, we all understand the group model because it's been around for a while. Um, it's an established, uh, model. Um, and it, it does have a track record. I mean, it, it, you, you make a very compelling argument that it doesn't serve, uh, you know, a portion of the population that DDS serves or should serve adequately. Um, but I, I guess I'm just trying to, to get my head around who, who would, who would be responsible ultimately, um, in developing the property. And I guess you, you've answered that to some extent, but who would actually, so, so the developer would actually own the property down the road, say in 10 years, and the residents would continue to, uh, to pay rent. And, and you believe that that's a viable model. Yeah. Cause it would be that the developer would have, or the property owner would have a master lease with the agency. And so it would be on us to fill those units. So we would be taking on the risk. They would understand the project out. Okay. At this rent level, we're getting same with the group home that they have on one 17, that in a certain number of years, we will have paid back all our investors and lenders. And at that point, we're not interested in being long-term need CIOs that in it, uh, they're in it to build the homes and create the opportunities not to own a lot of property. So would CIO pay property taxes during the period that it owns the building? Uh, I'd have to check that. I'm not sure. I think that no, no, CIO is the nonprofit. Is it okay? Yeah. Yeah. So I think that they would same, same as another nonprofit would not be paying property taxes. Yes. I have a question that's a little bit out there, but you think a lot in this space. So could you ever imagine a hybrid model where a structure would be built that could serve as a group home, but then could be morphed into a more flexible model if things change in the future or DDS evolves, or you could imagine that there seems like there's so much uncertainty. If you have the opportunity to build a brand new building, like could it potentially serve both cases depending on the needs? It could be kind of a, uh, be an experiment, a group home on steroids. In the group home, you have a bedroom and you may have a bathroom that you share, but I mean, you have a bathroom. Most times you'll have your own bathroom. Each of these Tampak units would have their own bathroom and a kitchenette. So you could adjust it, you know, simply pull the appliances and put in more cabinets for storage in the kitchenette because the kitchenette is not a separate room. It's an L within a corner of the room. So if you fill that in, remove it in a library. I've never done anything like this that you know of. No. I think the challenge is to be future-proof some of these efforts, right? Because there's so much uncertainty. Yeah. So this could easily transform because it already has the community kitchen and community space, much as group homes already have. It's just the extra step is that instead of having a bedroom, you have a modified one bedroom unit. And so you can easily convert that back. If you have three bedrooms and you could make one into a split in half, make a look like you could, you could maybe design something. Anyway. Uh-huh. I don't know if you want to study the house, but. Yeah. I have a question. Um, we had a guest earlier this evening, Anne-Marie Bajwa, who you may know. Oh, yeah, yeah. And, uh, she made a comment which is very interesting to me. She says something along the lines of, um, group homes for individuals with Down syndrome used to be the model, but the state has gotten away from that. And what I infer from her question was that the state is, is really trying to address individuals with different disabilities. Is that your experience? And are there fewer homes available for, uh, individuals with, say, Down syndrome versus individuals with, um, different types of disabilities? Um, I'm not familiar with that as specific to the Down syndrome population, but, uh, in part of my other life, we run a baseball league in Acton for players of all abilities. And I've noticed the evolution of the players that we have less players with Down syndrome and physical disabilities and more players with around the autism spectrum. Um, so I think that maybe that, maybe she was referring to something like that. Okay. That I think that that as a population, a portion of the population that we serve has been explosive. I'm on the baseball field. I've seen it. I don't know if I'm cramped, but I sort of interpreted what she was saying is they need to triage that the demand is so high that the folks with the most disability have to be served because they're in the greatest need. And so even though in the old days, people would be eligible, there just isn't the capacity to support them. Yeah. Um, I, I think she also was sort of euphemistically, um, grouping people with Down syndrome into a category that historically that, that was a group that would be served traditionally in a group home setting. And the fact, the fact of the matter is today that demographic subgroup would typically be served in a supervised department setting in a, in a less restrictive setting. I think that's what she was trying to get at, which is you don't serve those people in a group home setting these days. And I think if you, we, we hear from the folks at DDS, they would replicate that and say that the real demand is finding, um, a inciting group homes for, uh, people with greater needs, people that are behaviorally challenged. But, um, part of our charge is, is, uh, to make recommendations to the select board, uh, for housing for people with, uh, uh, learning to serve, uh, uh, intellectual disabilities, but also physical disabilities. Could you imagine in the compact unit model, uh, someone with cerebral palsy, uh, or MS, uh, as well as people who might be on the autism scale or, and I suppose you have individuals with multiple challenges as well? Yeah. I, I don't know which is the, the proper, I guess it depends on the situation. There are two schools of thought there that, um, that I've heard that where one school of thought is to house people together who have the same challenges and abilities and that they're going to interact well. That's, and again, I don't know which is right, but then there's another school of thought that says, well, if we put people who have different abilities together, they're going to support each other and something you're good at and I'm not, you're going to help me out with. And so I think it really, it's going to be specific to the individuals. Uh, I know that there's some individuals that we serve that don't consider themselves to have an intellectual disability and would flat out say, I don't want to live in a house with others who have an intellectual disability. In that case, someone who has more of a physical disability, but less intellectual, they could thrive. Someone else, maybe not. There's certainly the possibility. I think as these opportunities are developed, you really need to focus on the accessibility because you just don't know. Sure. We haven't even talked about accessibility. Yeah. Other questions by members of the committee? Do you have any questions for us, Andy? No, I just wanted to say thank you again for the opportunity and for the diligence that you're attacking this with. I really appreciate it. And if there's, uh, you know, I'm fortunate that I get to talk to a lot of people. So if there's any way, any other ways I can support, I'm not an expert. You've talked to a lot of people who are smarter than I am, but I get to talk to a lot of people. So if there's any way that I can help going forward, I'm happy to do it. Well, I can assure you, you've been very helpful and, uh, we all bring different gifts to this, uh, to this challenge of housing. And you've got a lot of them. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, of course. Um, well, we're, I guess, in a unusual situation where it's a municipality with a piece of ground and we're looking to have someone create housing for people with disabilities. And, uh, DDS is certainly a big player in this. Uh, we've, we've heard that DDS prefers to go to providers or owners to say, develop some housing and, you know, find the site and so forth. Uh, do you think DDS would be amenable to, to our merry band going directly to them and saying, Hey, we've got this site. It will help us to create affordable housing. If you can demonstrate some flexibility on your 1.5 mile limit or whatever it is, or, uh, enable us to co-locate with a, uh, a group home with a compact unit. Would that make sense? Uh, how do you think they respond? Kind of hypothetical. I don't know. I can't speak for them how they would respond, but based on what they've expressed to us in meetings is that they're, they're quick to say we're not a housing agency. Right. So if they have, my assumption is that if they have the opportunity to, uh, serve those on their list without building it themselves, that they would prefer that. Um, but they still want the private challenge there is that they still maintain, I think a high level of control. Uh, and, and my sort of ulterior motive is to, you know, if we were to have some kind of understanding with DDS that would maybe help us market the site and get the housing produced more quickly, if we could say this is in place, or this is, there's receptivity to this notion. Uh, and so you should really work with us on that. Yeah. But then the goal is to create these models and then implement them as a proof of concept so that they can be replicated. Right. And we've spoken, I've spoken with Swamp from DDS about this compact, uh, unit model. And she was like, yeah, this, I could see this in every town. Yeah. But this is not something where you just build it and these five individuals are served in. Right. Good. We did it. Yeah. No, it's how do you do it in a way that's scalable. Uh, and I think when we talked earlier about the financing piece, why CIL is able to, to do group homes on a repetitive basis and other finances as well is having DDS behind it. You know, DDS says, yes, we see a need. We're going to support it. We're going to staff it. You don't have to worry about there being empty beds. So if you've got that kind of, hey, you know, for DDS, we recognize that this is a need that needs to be met. This is a model that we agree with. And someone can take that to their lender. It would be easier to get this done then. Right. Definitely. Great. Anything else? Well, again, thank you for joining us this evening. Yeah. Uh, we may reach out to some other questions. Anytime, anytime. And I will continue to follow it. So I'm excited to see how, what you come up with. Right. What you need there. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks. So before we leave, um,
gen item three, we're, so far as a committee, we've, we've, um, heard a lot and digested a lot of information, but I do think it'd be helpful to have some sort of a, a model or a tool that we can look at and, uh, utilize to help our discussions on, uh, our ultimate report to, to the select board. So I'm, I'm gonna try to put something together and maybe run it by a couple of members just to, and bring it as a draft to our next meeting, um, that we, and we can work on it, maybe work as a committee to finalize something that we can all be comfortable working with. So we can use that as, as, um, as a guide for our discussions on decision papers. So moving on then to item four. Can I ask one question? I didn't want to, I didn't want to ask it directly, but in the first presentation, I heard someone say, we weren't allowed to choose the provider. You remember that conversation? It was, and everyone was like, yeah, yeah, we can't choose the provider. And I was confused by what that meant. Like, we get to choose who builds what they build here, right? Um, um, first of all, this Ms. Bosch was like that? It was in the beginning. Yeah. Um, it was in the first presentation. With child driver. Yeah. Was she referring to your provider? She said, you're not going to be able to choose your provider, right? And everyone said, yeah, yeah, we can't choose our provider. And I didn't know what, I should have interrupted it then, but I didn't know what that meant. Well, I think what I heard was that, um, we can't go out and say, okay, ABC company, we want you to do the developer because we have to do an RFP because we're missing out. So I think that's what, that's what. But we don't have, we're not constrained to the lowest, like we can find, we can get a bunch of people to contribute and we can pick the best fit, right? That's correct. Yeah. As a select board. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to be clear. Um, all right. So moving on then to the minutes of our October 8th meeting, which are in our packet, and now we'll get the chain of promotions of two of those minutes. Still moved. I didn't have one comment about the minutes. Yeah. When I just, hold on a second. Sorry. Sorry. Discussion. Discussion. Sorry. When I looked at the comments from the neighbors, it was awfully short. There was a couple of comments on what people were concerned about, but there were no responses. Like, what did the people, what did people say about them? And, um, um, I don't remember it well enough to be able to type it up myself. I couldn't watch it and try to create a little narrative or something, but it's, there's like three sentences and there's no, what did the committee say? Or what did we, when, when they asked those questions? Um, I'll say that the minutes for the other sections are fairly, um, brief as well. So it's not discriminatory. Having said that, I'm happy to entertain, um, modifications to it. We can address this next meeting. Okay. You want to do that? Try to try to put together some comments. Prove everything else, but maybe work on that a little bit. Yeah, that's great. Well, no, what we'll do is we'll, we'll, um, um, I only read them half an hour before the meeting. Otherwise I would have tried to come. Why don't you, uh, why don't we withdraw, if, if, if Gene's willing to withdraw the motion and, uh, so, so withdrawing. And, uh, thank you, Gene. And we'll come back, uh, next meeting and, and address these, but in the meantime, if you can, um, take up the video and I'll watch it and I'll try to summarize a little bit. Yeah. Okay. I'll do that. Thanks. Um, we know, and then item five, um, at our last meeting, um, after meeting, one of the neighbors mentioned, um, that there might be valuable for a site visit. And I just want to get the committee's sense. And that's whether they agree with that idea. And if so, we can set that up. We need to go onto the property and look at it. I've already done it. You mean the poster. I'm a trespasser. Yeah. Yeah. You mean our, the, uh, two twirls, two twirls. Ah, okay. And, and, you know, if there's interest, fine. If not, but that's fine. Yeah. It's a good faith. I would have an interest. Yeah. Okay. You can come over for coffee afterwards if you want. Sure. And we can let neighbors know and if they want to join us and chat about property. Uh, all right. So I'll, I'll be in touch on that. And, uh, for those who want to come find it, no problem. Um, the item six on the agenda. Sorry for the future though. I would, as we get closer to refining our choices, I would love to look at buildings that sort of correlate with what we're, what we're thinking about too. It would be a different issue. In other words, go to, go to homes that exist currently. If we sort of final, if we focus on a particular type of structure, seeing what those look like and understanding what they're like, would be helpful. Okay. Um, moving on to item six. We did receive, um, some submissions to the request for information that they're in the packet. I'm happy to open up the comments by members of the committee, if we had a chance to review them. If we haven't, we can, we can, uh, have a discussion in our next meeting. Um, but any, anybody have comments on what, what they saw? What was it? The one about CLM, their review? Is that what we are reading through? Right. So, um, it was, was it CLM and one other? Well, one CIL. I was really impressed with the CLM one. I thought it was great. CIL. Yeah. It was great. Yeah. Is that the guy who spoke to us the couple of meetings ago? Yes. Yeah. He's the one that, yeah. And he goes, he works with DDS and then, yeah, but it's the same organization, right? Yeah. He was really on on the meetings, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I was impressed with them. I like CIL's, uh, timeline. They get, yeah. Other comments by people? Uh, well, and I read the one from High Spirit East too. Um, um, uh, you know, I admire the group very much, but they've never done this work before. You know, it's like they're being mentored by another group who did a project and I'm just not sure how I'd ever persuade myself, you know, to, uh, you know, comparing all these groups and looking at the track records of some of these organizations, how I would ever feel I could recommend to the town, such an inexperienced group, which makes me sad because I, they are trying to be innovative, you know, and, and as this last gentleman who's talking about trying to be innovative and how difficult it is to get, uh, the mainstream organizations that are providing funding to attempt new models. Um, well, my understanding was that the, um, uh, you know, the collaborators include, uh, Jay Wallace, who was instrumental in starting the High Spirit organization in the western part of the state. Mm-hmm. So I, I didn't get a sense that, that the county group High Spirit East were, were starting from scratch. They were, they had a model that has worked well many years and they wanted to kind of replicate it to appropriate three. Right. Without any bad smells or an animal bigger than a dog. I think, Gene, um, one way you could structure this is for the select board to issue. It's RFP receive, uh, responses and make, uh, uh, what a former employer of mine used to call a tentative designation, basically giving someone the, the right to finalize and, uh, basically come forward with, uh, a well-cooked plan, uh, but not convey the site until the financing was in place, the construction contract was there, the evidence of financing was there. Also, um, these folks, uh, make it clear that they're not building a group home, uh, under the DDS traditional model. So, if we're told that there could be a DDS group home on the site, but not a second group home on the site, is this a model that might enable you to do a second structure serving people with disabilities that doesn't run afoul of that requirement? Yeah, that had occurred to me. Yeah. So, so it is a startup, I think, um, but to Tom's point, I think they're not starting zero entirely, but I think the, uh, the arrangement can be structured so that you're, you're not committing yourself, uh, completely until they really demonstrate that they can perform. Okay. Any other comments on the, on our thoughts? I was impressed by the fact that we got two responses. We really need to market this and, uh, generate development interest, I think. Yeah. Um, moving on then item seven, some questions came up at a last meeting relative to the property and it would include, can we as a town require the property to protect clean and neat? Can we salvage different setbacks that currently exist in this Ohio and the impact of the affordable housing language within the article? So I do have a, um, email with the town council, so I suspect to the bathroom before the next meeting and I can, uh, respond to those.
Other than that, um, there were no other, there were, there were no, there were no topics not reasonably anticipated for you out in advance and if I want to change a motion to return.
Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Yes, Stephanie. Thank you. John. Aye. Aye. Brian. Aye. And Bill. You got it. And Bill. And Jane. Right. And Tom, like 7-0. So thank you all for your time this evening and, um, see you at our next meeting, which will be on June 4th. Okay. Good meeting. Thank you.