These are the issues to be addressed by this Forum by
bringing together persons from both within and outside Amherst to lend their
knowledge and experience to these issues. But most important, this
is a convening of the community to discuss and develop ideas about what can be
done to make changes.
This is a collaboration of the Amherst League of Women
Voters, the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, Valley Community
Development Corporation, and the Unitarian-Universality Society of
Amherst. It is set for Wednesday,
October 25, 7 P.M. in the Social Hall of the Unitarian Universalist
Society, 121 N. Pleasant St, Amherst.
The form will be organized into three parts:
- An introduction and presentation of what the Trust and the Town are doing to address issues of both affordable housing and homelessness in the past year.
- This will be followed by a panel presentation on the development of a small, studio apartment building in Amherst to serve the needs of persons who have very low incomes or are homeless.
- The final segment will break the larger group into five smaller groups to discuss actions that could be taken to further address these problems. They are as follows:
- Studio Apartments: Continued discussion.
- Encouraging and Supporting Development: How can Amherst best leverage available resources to maximize affordable housing? What are the barriers to affordable housing: What changes are needed?
- Preventing homelessness: outreach counselors – small investment for significant returns; useful models, effective strategies
- Finding homes: recruiting landlords; caseworkers to assist individuals and families in getting housed; useful models, effective strategies
- Changing the Amherst housing market: Developing Town and University policies to assure greater access to housing.