9/29/2016 HOUSING AUTHORITY Minutes

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The changes requested, and discussed with Attorney Grace, were; 1) Allowing the Tribe's Housing department to be able to issue a letter (government to government) as sole proof of emergency. Attorney Grace is not comfortable with this at all. She suggested, if we wanted to , that we could request a waiver for a special priority of over-crowdedness and allow the Tribe to verify, by home visit, the situation as being overcrowded. 2) Limit the amount of time we go back when considering CORI reports. Attorney Grace was not in agreement with this. We can change our internal process on how we look at CORI reports (history repeating, length of time since last arrest, incarcerations, severity of crime, etc.). Attorney Grace stated that the applicant still must answer the question truthfully and confirmed that if the applicant did not answer the question truthfully, the applicant should be denied. 3) Make a special preference for Tribal members above all other preferences (i.e. Tribal members would go ahead of other Mashpee residents). Attorney Grace didn't have a problem requesting DHCD to approve a waiver on this if the board chooses to do so. Mrs. Botsford reminded members that we are required to apply regulations per State Law and in order to defer from that, a waiver would need to be granted by DHCD. In order to request a waiver, the board would need to approve that. A discussion ensued and Ms. Phillips recused herself, as an employee of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. Members decided to discuss each of the three requests individually. With regard to #1, Mr. Halpern stated that he felt that all applicants should be treated the same and allowing Tribe members to have a special opportunity for emergency verification would not be fair to other applicants. Mr. Shackett stated that it could be opening us up to more changes and different requests down the road. A motion was made by Kevin Shackett and seconded by Richard Halpern to not request a waiver of DHCD for a change in determining and verifying emergency status for Mashpee Tribal Members. Ms. Phillips abstained from vote.The motion was adopted. With regard to #2, Mr. Halpern again stated he felt that all applicants should be treated equally. It is important that the housing authority be able to consider all criminal history, regardless of how long ago it took place. Mrs. Botsford stated that someone could not have a criminal history for the past twenty years, but that could be because they were incarcerated for rape or murder. That CORI should still be considered, as we need to take into consideration the safety and security of our other residents. Mr. Halpern stated that the executive director should be able to handle the consideration of CORI reports internally with staff. A motion was made by Richard Halpern and seconded by Kevin Shackett to not request a waiver of DHCD for a change in the housing authority's CORI policy and procedure. Ms. Phillips abstained from vote. The motion was adopted. With regards to #3, Mr. Halpern again stated that he felt that all applicants should be treated equally and that by giving special treatment to Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal members, other Mashpee residents would be treated unfairly. A motion was made by Richard Halpern and seconded by Kevin Shackett to not request a waiver of DHCD to add another preference for Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal members. Ms. Phillips abstained from vote. The motion was adopted. Mrs. Botsford pointed out that the requested changes were meant for all applications. The changes for Housing Assistance Program would require everything to go through the Community Preservation Committee, as the Program Guidelines and application documents were presented to them for approval. It may also require selectmen approval and possibly town vote because it would change things significantly. It was agreed that the HAP guidelines would remain as is— no changes. Page 3 of 6