Last Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was the final one for outgoing councilors Corey Belanger, Wayne Jenness, and Paul Ratha Yem, all of whom gave farewell remarks. I’ll write about what they said in next Sunday’s newsletter.

Otherwise, the most significant thing that arose at Tuesday’s meeting was a report by Councilor Erik Gitschier as chair of the Nonprofit Subcommittee which had met the previous evening. Gitschier’s report was thorough, but some of the things he shared were disturbing, so I reviewed the LTC recording of the subcommittee meeting and will report on it here.

The subcommittee meeting was requested by Assistant City Manager/DPD Director Yovani Baez-Rose to acquaint councilors, local nonprofits and the public with new requirements governing the use of federal funds coming to the city. Specifically, the new rules apply to entitlement funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Lowell is eligible for these funds because so many residents have such low income.

Lowell receives three categories of these funds (with the amount received in the most recent year shown in parenthesis):

• Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) are funds that go to quality-of-life improvements such as small business assistance programs, open space projects, and subgrants to nonprofits. I believe eight staffers at DPD are paid by these funds ($2 million).
• Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) involve services for the homeless ($200,000).
• HOME Program provides down payment and closing cost assistance for first-time home buyers ($750,000).

For the most part, the city administers these funds through a Request For Proposals (RFP) process whereby non-governmental organizations submit applications for grants and, when they are awarded a grant, provide the promised services.

This year, the federal government has imposed new requirements on the city in the administration of these funds that will have a profound impact on the community. Any entity applying for any funds must be in compliance with these requirements, and the federal government has imposed a positive duty on the city to monitor such compliance.

Regarding the specific federal requirements, I think it best to share a transcript of this portion of Ms. Baez-Rose’s remarks which I’ve lightly edited for clarity. It’s a bit lengthy, but please read it entirely:

One [of things applicants must certify] is that they are not doing any diversity, equity and inclusion work. They are not providing any access or information related to abortion care. They are not using more than two genders in any of their language. That also means using “he/him/she/her” kind of pronouns or referencing LGBTQ+ in their documents, hiring practices, job descriptions, handbooks, all of these things. Again, they’re defining that as DEI and so it is unacceptable.

Also, organizations can’t reference or promote climate change, environmental justice, and climate resiliency.  And they cannot provide any kind of benefit to undocumented immigrants.

What that means is that organizations in grant agreements will have to sign off that they are in compliance with all of these things. We’ve had to add language into our RFP that says if you are accepting these funds, you know that you cannot be doing any of the following things.

There is also an expectation that our Community Development staff will do compliance monitoring of these organizations including organizational websites to ensure they are in compliance.

But asking organizations that serve vulnerable populations in a very diverse community like Lowell to abolish any diversity, equity, and inclusion language in their documentation and in their programming that is being funded is going to be difficult. It’s one of the reasons why we asked for this subcommittee meeting, because I think it’s really important that everybody is very clear that these are not arbitrary changes coming down from DPD. It is coming down from HUD, and we need to maintain compliance with this otherwise all of the entitlement funds that the city gets essentially would be at jeopardy.

We also want organizations to understand that this is a voluntary grant opportunity. They don’t have to apply for it. They don’t have to accept it. But we fully understand that losing a $50,000 grant for a small organization could be a pretty big deal to their operating budget.

Verification of immigration status is something that we have never had to do before. So now if you are a first-time home buyer and you’re looking to buy a house, in addition to the income verification documentation, you’re going to need to provide us with proof of your legal status. And there is a federal program online program called SAVE which the city would essentially need to put individual information into to confirm that person’s legal status. That’s documentation and information that we haven’t collected previously and that we would be required to do and that’s information that we would not only collect but we would collect and input into this federal SAVE system. That would also be true for any small business expansion loan.  And then any homeless prevention under ESG or any nonprofit organizations that are taking the grant funds and then paying for things on behalf of people. That would include rent, stipends if they were getting paid through the grant, or a childcare voucher. Anything that could be direct payments.

[Ed. Note: SAVE is an online service administered by US Citizenship and Immigrations Services (USCIS) that allows governmental entities to confirm the immigration status and US citizenship for applicants seeking federal benefits.]

We would have to collect that information and then staff would have to put that into the SAVE system that would do whatever it does in the background to confirm that and then we’d be able to move forward. I think that could make people nervous. It makes us nervous. It’s not something that we’ve had to do before and it’s important for people to understand that we’re asking for it because they’re accepting  these federal funds and that it’s not a requirement of the city of Lowell, but if you’re trying to access these funds from the city, this is something that you’re going to have to provide us – the DEI, abortion, two genders, climate change, all of these  things. It doesn’t matter the project. You have to commit to it. It has to be something that you commit to. We have to monitor compliance for any program that’s funded.

These new requirements have many implications for the city. Some are practical. The reality is that many in our community are undocumented. If you imagine a Venn Diagram with one circle being the undocumented and another being those in need of these federally funded services, there would be at least some overlap. Will the children of the undocumented now be ineligible for childcare vouchers? For rental assistance? Won’t that drive up the number of homeless people in our community?  Although not mentioned at this meeting, will the Lowell Public Schools which depend on significant amounts of federal funds, face similar requirements? Even for those here legally, will there be a chilling effect on their willingness to apply for assistance? For anyone not native-born and white, it’s not unreasonable to worry that having one’s name entered in a federal immigration database might lead to being snatched off the street by masked agents.

Then there are the moral implications. Many sincerely believe that DEI, LGBTQ+ rights, confronting climate change, and other banned concepts are positive goods. But is the sincerity of those beliefs so tenuous that any mention of them can be purged from an organization’s documented identity overnight? On the other hand, if the federal funds are irreplaceable and doing without would cause more suffering, is it acceptable to redact statements of an organization’s values to keep receiving that money?

As I said, the moral and ethical dilemma posed here is profound and is deserving of a broader community conversation. DPD did its part by prompting the subcommittee meeting to alert people to this situation, and the subcommittee did its part by holding a meeting and conveying the information to the entire council. But it was disappointing that the council as a body simply accepted the subcommittee report without comment and moved on to the next item on the agenda. Residents should know where councilors stand on this, and why the city is making the choices that it is. I’m not saying the city’s response is wrong, necessarily. But I am saying that the repercussions of these policies, their anticipated impact, and the rational for the city’s response should be fully discussed in public.

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As mentioned above, the city’s HOME program, which provides down payment and closing cost assistance for first-time home buyers is covered by these requirements. The city in turn uses the Merrimack Valley Housing Partnership (MVHP) to manage the program. Coincidentally, on Tuesday, Cathy Mercado, the Executive Director of MVHP, appeared before the council to speak in support of a motion by Councilor Corey Belanger.

The motion requested the city manager to “facilitate a workforce housing development program to assist residents onto a path to home ownership focused on first time home ownership opportunities as well as down payment assistance and rent-to-own initiatives.” Belanger explained that he saw home ownership as a path to wealth creation for many in Lowell which has made him a strong advocate of first-time home ownership programs. Although this will be his final motion as a city councilor (for now), he hoped that by filing this motion at this time it might create some momentum going forward.

I concur with Belanger’s sentiments on first-time home buyer programs and can add a real-world example of the importance of the work done by MVHP. As most of you know, I spent 30 years as the Middlesex North Register of Deeds. In that position, I had a front row seat to the collapse of the housing market in Lowell (and globally) in 2008.

In the years preceding the collapse, loose regulations and the quest for obscene profits led unscrupulous lenders and brokers to extend onerous mortgages to aspiring homeowners. For many of the thousands of mortgages recorded during the expansion of the housing bubble, it was obvious on the day the mortgage was recorded that it would end in foreclosure. But everyone involved was getting paid up front and quickly passed along the right to repayment to unwitting pension administrators or mutual funds managers who suffered the loss on behalf of their clients. By the time the mortgage crisis ended, more than a thousand Lowell residents had lost their homes to foreclosure.

The financial crisis had a devastating effect on Lowell’s neighborhoods that transcended just the foreclosed properties. I spent considerable time digging into the records to understand what had happened and why. One thing stood out: almost none of the many people who had obtained their homes through the first-time home buyer program administered by the Merrimack Valley Housing Partnership faced foreclosure. It was compelling evidence of the value and effectiveness of the MVHP program.

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On one of the coldest days of the season this year, our mail carrier delivered political flyers from Rodney Elliott and Vanna Howard, both candidates for the state senate seat vacated upon the death of incumbent Ed Kennedy earlier this year.

It seemed strange to get a political mailing the week before Christmas, but it was a reminder that the special primary election in that race is just a few weeks away on Tuesday, February 3, 2026. The special state election will be a month later, on Tuesday, March 3, 2026.

The deadline to submit nomination papers to local election officials is not until December 23, 2025, so the field of candidates is not yet set. However, whoever wins will have to run again for the same office in the state primary on September 1, 2026, and in the state election on November 3, 2026.

If either Howard or Elliott win the senate seat, the state representative seat the winner now holds will be left vacant until the fall election since there won’t be time for another special election.

In person early voting will not be available for the special election primary or the special election, however, voting by mail will be offered. To apply for a vote-by-mail ballot for all 2026 state elections, visit the Secretary of State’s website.

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Back in 2012, I recruited 56 people from Lowell to each recite on camera a line from the classic story, “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (a/k/a The Night before Christmas). Some who appear in the video have passed away, or moved away, but many are still around. Please enjoy the video which resides on my YouTube channel.