2022-06-16-EDAC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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4. Small Business Support: We had $700M from State / Federal funds to support small businesses locally. This was directed at women owned, minority owned and businesses in gateway cities. Now as we look at how we recovered, we are focused on growth. 5. Solving the Housing Crisis. This was something that has been a generation in the making. It was before the pandemic. Rent is too high and unaffordable and leading drivers of homelessness and impact on our seniors. The housing crisis hurts our competitiveness as a state. State mandate for multi-zone housing through the MBTA guidance. The Secretary then opened the floor to questions and comments. The departure of Raytheon move to Washington, DC was not a surprise considering their leadership was mainly there already. We need to focus on increasing the housing stock. The Chair asked about how the State is focused on helping support communities in attracting new development and how can Lexington better engage the leaders in the Commonwealth to capitalize on opportunities including addressing transportation challenges. The Secretary noted that we in a dynamic development time. The local government and community needs to be EASY to work with – the State or community that is easiest to work with is winning the opportunity from companies at this time. Its our role in the office to steer projects to options and navigate the process at the State level. Carol Kowalski raised question about the number of single family homes being purchased by LLCs and seeing investors buying up housing stock and outcompeting people who need places to actually ‘live’ as ‘shelter.’ But she stressed the State look into this area and the Secretary will take that back. Charles Hornig, Planning Board raised that housing remains a priority too but that the State guidance has been slow in action on housing or in the new Building Code. The Secretary commented that this was a huge stakeholder engagement effort around the MBTA housing mandate and plan to get. More of all types of housing everyone. Mr. Sandeen asked about what local actions can be taken locally to enable that approach when we added 41 units of affordable housing and lost the same amount in the last 10 years. The Secretary stressed it is also “housing you can afford” AND “affordable housing.” We have requested more funding in state legislation for affordable housing. If all towns got to 10% affordable housing – it would still not be enough to close the gap. As a Town, focus on the Affordable Housing – We need to see more density in downtown and make it easier to get those projects done in Lexington. We are the global leader in life sciences with more lab space and while there could be concern of being overbuilt in Massachusetts, we are watching it. Sandya Iyer stressed her thanks to Secretary Kennealy for supporting ARPA funding that helped small businesses and some cultural businesses as well. Our vacancy rate is now only 1.8% in Lexington Center. We are losing MBTA services to Lexington Center and Hartwell Avenue where we are focusing our life science development work. She also stressed need to attract incubator space in the Lexington area. Secretary stressed that the Worcester incubator was locally conceived, and the State funded as it grew and if Lexington organically identifies incubator idea he will be excited to hear the proposal. Charlie Minassian asked about workforce housing for more of the service industry. So much of the service jobs in Lexington are not being filled. Adding ease of immigration to the state will be a lot helpful. We are looking at a long transition in the workforce and its impacting all of the service sectors.