Housing Greenfield meeting notes — 06/08/2026

Present: Susan Worgaftik, Nancy Hazard, Lexi Turner, Pamela Goodwin, Wisty Rorabacher, Judy Draper, Mike Mullin, Jen Hale, Edie Heinemann, Brace Rennels, Jack Redman, Kat Miller, Carol Letson

DISCUSSIONS:

Proposed Rental Registry Ordinance — Susan Worgaftik has learned that the Rental Housing Registration and Inspection ordinance is still with the City’s lawyer. We expect it will be coming before the Appointments and Ordinance Committee of the City Council in July where it is expected to pass and move on to the July City Council meeting. She will send out a reminder email for folks to send in letters or speak at these meetings in support of the ordinance. The reminder will have talking points attached.

Organizational Planning — Lexi Turner reported that coming out of the last meeting Nikki, Susan, Lexi and Mike were charged with thinking about next steps for a process to build a Housing Greenfield organization model that can remain active and resilient and not be overly reliant on one or two individuals.  The group met on June 5th to begin this planning.

They discussed the idea that came out of the last Housing Greenfield meeting discussion on May 11 of doing a survey of members, that would build off of the questions in the document that was shared and discussed.

They agreed that a survey will be useful but came around to the idea that there are some short term steps that can be taken first to organize the work we are doing now and that these may make sense before doing a survey.

Some specific ideas that emerged from our discussion are:

• Further defining the Coordinating Committee- its role (e.g, cultivator, facilitator, and steward), workload (e.g., charged with specific tasks such as agenda planning, meeting facilitation; note taking; membership; group communication; etc.) and composition (e.g., how many, how long).

• Establishing a point person on the Coordinating Committee (or a coordinating committee email address) to which suggested agenda items from the membership can be shared and planned for;

• Examine the meetings that Susan currently attends and the roles (“hats”) she plays and designate new points of accountability among the Housing Greenfield active volunteer network to distribute the workload and still keep the group aware and involved on important issues and opportunities;

• Redrafting Housing Greenfield’s mission statement to reflect the broader scope of its current work and advocacy e.g., work in the areas of homelessness, homeownership, and information sharing on city, state, and federal barriers and opportunities affecting affordable housing and homelessness in Greenfield.

The next steps are:
Revising the Housing Greenfield mission statement
Developing the survey and possibly distributing it and collating the result
Possibly creating subgroups of discussions of ideas that come up in the survey

The survey should include what people value about Housing Greenfield. Discussion in this June 8 regular meeting included:

• Visiting our relationship with the warming center and how we want to continue our relations with our unhoused neighbors;
• Ask Jack Redman and Amy Cahillane if there are specific ways that Housing Greenfield can be helpful in their work;
• Talk with direct service providers about ways we might be helpful to them;
• Are there additions or changes that we need to make to our website?

The organizational committee will continue meeting and will come back with new questions and eventually some ideas for next steps. The committee is planning to bring some ideas on the content of the mission statement to the potluck dinner on July 13th. There will not be a discussion or “meeting” but some ideas that folks can respond to.

Changes in HUD’S Anti-discrimination policies — Jack Redman reported that in addition to the changes around immigrants that were discussed at the May meeting, HUD has recently put forward possible rules that would take away rights to housing based upon gender identification and sexual orientation. These new rules would make it difficult to house people in shelters if the shelter wanted to house people according to their identities as opposed to the sexuality that they had at birth. The rules would come up against Massachusetts’ anti-discrimination rules, but shelters that have some federal funding would be required to follow federal rules.

We voted to send comments rejecting these rules to HUD via the HUD comment system. As with the last set of rule changes, it is important that we not send comments that are all the same because HUD’s system will reject them and treat them as one comment. Rather, the comments should be individualized responses to the same issues. HUD is required to read and, if requested, to respond to all the letters they receive. The hope is that this will slow the process enough for a new Congress to write laws that override these present policy change initiatives.

For more information on the policy changes and how to submit comments to HUD go to Western MA Network info.

Greenfield Tenants’ Union — Kat Miller announced that the Greenfield Tenants’ Union(GTU) is now about a month old. It was built with some assistance from the Easthampton Tenants’ Union. GTU had its first official meeting on June 6th. 12 people attended. Most lived in owner-occupied houses. At this point, the GTU is trying to get an understanding of how many rental units there are in Greenfield and who owns them. They are also trying to understand how market rate rents are established. Right now, there are several tenants’ unions in the Connecticut River Valley, and more are starting. There is a possibility that there will be a conference of Western Massachusetts tenants’ unions this fall.

The rent stabilization/rent control referendum seems to be heading to the fall election. Signatures are being collected and are due on June 11th. For more information on what is happening, contact Dionn Casanova at dionn@springfieldnooneleaves.org or 413-230-9051.

Parking and Housing — Mike Mullins is trying to understand how changes in zoning regarding parking requirements might provide the possibility for more housing being built. Right now, duplex housing can be built on 1/10th of an acre and in most parts of Greenfield (not in the Central Commercial District) 1 parking space is required for each unit. That means that approximately 10% of the 1/10th of an acre must be used for parking.

When extrapolated out to some of the larger developments in town, this concept creates parking lots that may be too large for what is needed for the people living in the building.

Mike is looking into using those parking minimums in the zoning regulations and making them the maximum parking option for those sites. That would allow the rethinking of the use of these spaces for additional housing. Present buildings and parking would be grandfathered in. If, however, there were a change of use for this land, then the parking maximum changes could be enforced as part of new plans. Other cities have done this. These kinds of changes would have to go through the Economic Development Committee of the City Council and the Planning Board. Mike is still thinking this through and doing research. If you are interested in working with Mike on this project, please contact him at mullin.michael.andrew@gmail.com

Accessible Housing — Susan Worgaftik told us that when we sent out the announcement for this meeting, Joannah Whitney wrote back that, considering the difficulties that she has had in finding an accessible apartment, it might make sense to have a discussion of accessibility issues and concerns at our next Housing Greenfield meeting. The Coordinating Group thought about this and suggested that perhaps it would make more sense to have an open discussion where developers were invited to discuss these issues. We voted to ask Joannah if she would be interested in having such a public meeting. If so, we would ask if there were a couple of people who would be willing to work with her to make it happen.

Summer Get Together  We will hold our second annual potluck get together on Monday, July 13th Green River Park, 22 Petty Plain Rd, Greenfield, MA 01301 from 5-7 pm. (This is not the swimming area, this is where the dog park and children’s play area are in the southern part of town.) We will have use of the pavilion there which has several picnic tables (we will check how many) and the grill. We are going to send more information closer to the date so you can plan. Please feel free to bring children and significant others. This is a non-meeting meeting…just food, good talk and laughter.

Next meeting: Monday, August 10th 6:30 pm via zoom