SmartTranscript of House General - 2025-01-16 - 10:15AM

[Chair ]: Thank you. Welcome, everyone. This is the House Committee on General and Housing. And today, I believe, is the sixteenth of January, Thursday. And we had a security briefing here, which was not on the video, for pretty obvious reasons. And our first witness here today is David White. Why don't we have committee members introduce themselves to you, David? And then you can introduce yourself Right. And your name, what you do for the record, and take take it from there. Right. Why don't you start? [Ashley Bartlett ]: Hi, David. Happy to see you here. [David White ]: Nice to see you. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Ashley Bartlett, Georgia. [Chair ]: Yep. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Leonor Dodge. Hi. Essex Town and City of Essex Junction. [Joe Parsons ]: Joe Parsons, the town of Newberry, Thompson, and Brock. Nice. Beautiful part of the state. [Chair ]: Well, I I would have [David White ]: your license. Beautiful parts. That is a little better. I I like I like your part of the state a lot. [Charlie ]: I'm Charlie. My beautiful part of the state is Athens. [David White ]: That's very lovely. Another beautiful part of the state indeed. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I'm Debbie Dolton. I represent at St. Johnsbury, Kirby, and Concord. [Charlie ]: Are you related to Laura Dolton? Yes. [Gail Pazzo ]: Nice. El Paso, Chittendom twenty, Colchester, the Judy Pope. [David White ]: Indeed. [Gail Pazzo ]: Colchester. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Good morning. I'm Elizabeth Burrows, and I represent Windsor one, which is Heartland, West Windsor, and Windsor. [David White ]: Okay. Great. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Good morning, Sabrina Lamont, representing Lamont Washington, Detroit, Northtown, Elmore, Wilstich, Woodbury, and a small part of the state. Nice. Any [Chair ]: member, would you like to introduce yourself, Rick Perry? [Ashley Bartlett ]: Oh, I am Mary Howard, and I represent Rutland City District six. [Chair ]: Yes. And this is Emily Brown now who's here, who will be with Terry, and I'm Mark. I represent Callas, Plainfield, and Marshfield. [David White ]: You used to live in Plainfield and Marshfield many years ago. A lot of people. Actually, I know I've met Emily. So great. That makes everybody thank you. So good morning. Thank you for having me here today. The purpose of my name is David White. I am president of Weidenberg Real Estate Advisors. We're thirty four, going on thirty five year old firm based in Burlington, and we work very much statewide. And I will say over the course of that period of time, we've been involved in well in excess of a half billion dollars worth of development work around the state of Vermont. And our range of work is involved with everything from commercial development, institutional work. The UVM Medical Center, for instance, has been our single biggest client for more than twenty years. But our major focus is very much on community development, downtown revitalization, and public private partnerships and how you make those happen. How do you attract private capital and private investors and private expertise into doing projects that meet community goals? And for myself, I started my career in community development because most of you don't know me. I'll give you a quick overview. Right here in Montpelier, I was back in nineteen eighty founding executive director of a nonprofit downtown development corporation for Montpelier and went on to become director of community development for the city of Montpelier. So deeply involved here for eight or nine years, something like that. And during that time, got a master's degree in community economic development. So it's very much the core of who I am professionally, what I've done throughout my career. I went on from that to for a few years to be vice president of Conroe Real Estate, which at the time was the largest commercial development firm in the state. And then in nineteen ninety founded my own company, which we've been involved been involved statewide ever since. And our work actually has encompassed every one of your regions at some point over the course of of our our work. One of our best known projects, not from a region any of you are involved, though, in is Saint Albans where we have been deeply involved for a dozen years in all of the downtown revitalization work there. If you know Dominic Cloud, the city manager, he now been pretty much joined at during that time. He's been the visioning person, really the leader. I do most of the number crunching on and negotiating on the deals we put together to bring developers in. But we've also been involved in Windsor where we did the strategic analysis for the community a few years ago that led to identifying where the central Maine housing project is now being built. In Windham, we're currently working in Bellas Falls on the workforce housing project in the downtown area that we hope will get underway on the community owned parking lot in St. Johnsbury. We were the the co op that it's trying to be started up. We've been very deeply involved with, almost from its beginning and have helped them including through the process of buying the current building that, the former drugstore that they are planning to convert. And We're also deeply involved with the Army Project in behalf of St. Johnsbury where the community itself is our client. Up in Burke, when the whole EB-five scandal happened, the State of Vermont was our client. They engaged us to oversee the completion of the construction of the hotel to make sure that it was done and that we would rather than sit there half done that could be completed and operational. In Bradford, we did the did all the environmental land use permitting for the Hannaford store when it took over. I've forgotten what was there before, an A and P or a TOMS or something. So at any rate, that's kinda gives you a sense. We also set up seven of the last eight TIF districts, tax increment financing districts in the state of Vermont. So, there's no doubt that my firm is the leading entity in terms of knowing how TIF works and sometimes when it fails to work, when it doesn't achieve what our goals have been. So that's my way of just giving you a sense of who I am and over the course of that [Chair ]: Can I ask you Yes, please? Can you give us a little portrait of your organization, like how many employees, what type of skill sets they are, that kind of thing. [David White ]: Happy to. So we're a very small firm, four people. The largest we ever were were eight. And to be perfectly honest, I found that I spent so much time managing and marketing and so forth that I wasn't having much fun. I like the work we do. So, as people left for various reasons, I made the choice not to replace them. So, we're four people. We are a licensed real estate brokerage firm, but that's not our major focus. It really is this consulting work. But some of the work we do because it involves transactions requires us to be licensed. And so I myself, or I said, but very focused on the number crunching and finance and deal banking. Our vice president, Ed Clark, does much of the lead work on setting up tax increment financing districts, but she's also has an MBA and is very, very good and skilled in the finance side and negotiations. Tim Burke, who's the part of White and Burke, is the lead on the brokerage side of our business and is very focused on the transactional side of things. And then Joe Wyeth, who is our senior project manager, is actually a for a dozen years, was the municipal planner for the city of South Burlington, went on for about a dozen years to be the national real estate head for Brugger's Bagels chain before I snatched him away. And he's now been with me for about a dozen years. So he brings a real mix of public side and private side knowledge in terms of how you actually make projects happen. Who who was the TIF person? Stephanie Clark. Stephanie. Stephanie Clark. And Joe is among the skills that I think Joe and Stephanie and I also have is we've is impermanent. Our major role at the UVM Medical Center, for example, is we do all of our Act two fifty and local zoning and planning when they're doing development work. So, for the Miller building and twenty years ago for the Renaissance project and the outpatient surgery center that's currently stalled, we do all that kind of permit work. So, one way to think of us is that we are equivalent to being a real estate development company and that we can do everything from feasibility assessment and assembly and managing the development team, the architects and engineers and attorneys and weapons experts, right through them. They're getting permitting, packaging, financing, putting it out to bid to contractors and overseeing construction. We're capable of doing that. But the two things. One is that most of our clients have some of that capacity already in house. And so they don't need us for everything. We kind of fill in the gaps. And the other is that the most unusual part is that unlike a developed firm, we don't own the projects we do. We do it all on a consulting basis. So does that answer your question? Yes. Thank you. Okay. So, that's why we've given a context for my, you know, involvement and background, where I'm coming from in all of this. And I've been a deep, supporter of affordable housing throughout my career. In fact, when I went from being the, outside of city hall here at Montpelier to inside city hall as director of community development, one of our projects, was the Franklin Square condominiums. That was the first limited equity condominium project done in the state of Vermont. So very early in my career and I was also very involved, was among the founding members of the Vermont Community or board members of the Vermont Community Loan Fund. So you know, my history goes back, you know, forty years involved in doing this kind of work here in Vermont. Thinking about housing specifically, which is what I'm here on today, you know, as I look at the challenges we face as a state to creation of housing, there are really two major categories. And I'm sure you're all very aware of this, so I apologize to just hit the basics. One is the financial gap and the other is the permit challenging. And I'm gonna focus mostly today on the financial gap. But when we talk about that, when we think about the finances of a project, there are two major areas that are a concern. One is the cost of infrastructure, and the other is the cost of the project itself. When we think about permitting, there are two major categories. One is just the complexity of the permit process itself and the other is really the appeals process. And I'm not gonna spend really any time on that except to say that I think Act one hundred and eighty one was a very good start. I don't think it's done everything that we need to do in terms of helping with the permit process be less of a barrier for creation of housing, but it's a good start and I'm optimistic and hopeful that it'll really help free up some housing development. Among some of the remaining issues in the permit process, one for me that's quite high on the list is symptom duplication, that there's so many levels of review that go look at the same issue. And I'll give you but one example, which is if there happen to be wetlands on a project property that where I'm going to be doing development, I actually have to get four different reviews. Right? You've got to get the local review because most local zoning now has it. I've got to get the ANR, the Department of Environmental Conservation Review. I've gotta get the Army Corps of Engineers and I go to Act two fifty. And it's just ridiculous. I mean, even in criminal law, you don't have double jeopardy and I've got quadruple jeopardy. You can say similar things about stormwater, about traffic and so forth. So I am by no means an opponent of Act two fifty. In fact, I have far more problems often at the local level than I do with Act two fifty. But I do think that there's much more duplication there than there needs to be. And then if we could simply get rid of some of those layers, it would help enormously. Only put all that aside. And I also think the appeals process should it shouldn't be as easy for just a few people to hold up a project for years. Putting all that aside though, focus today on finances. As I think about housing, the cost of housing is I'm sure you've heard multiple times, building is so huge that the value afterwards typically is not enough, doesn't equal what the cost was. And so, who's going to invest in that and who's going to lend to that? It just doesn't work. Now, I will say the high end of the housing market often works because wealthier people can afford to pay to get what they want. And the low end of the market, we don't have enough funding, nowhere near enough funding, but at least we know how to do it. I think I see Chris over here from Champlain Housing Trust. We have a well trodden path where we know how to do that, but that's because there's subsidy money available. Not enough, we could absolutely use a great deal more and should put a lot more money into the affordable housing. But at least there's a well trodden path we know how to put those deals together. What we don't know how to do is everything in between. What I'm referring to is workforce housing. I'm sure you've heard this repeatedly. And we're kind of caught in this area where on the one hand, rents are higher than are affordable for most people in that median income range and yet not high enough to justify the investment required to build the housing. And so, on the one hand, I think we would all love to see Vermont's median incomes rise so that hopefully we can afford to pay some of those rents that are enough. But at the same time, some of those costs will add to the cost of development. So it's a it's a complex picture, but it's that trap between where we are on salaries and development costs that really get in the way. And, what I wanna do spend most of the rest of my time here, talking about is some ideas that I've been gathering. I've been talking with a lot of housing advocates and various other people interested, and I don't have anything that's fully baked. I'm working with it. I'm I'm involved with the Let's Build Homes Coalition that has just been announced, And I'm talking with the administration and others. And I just want to quickly run through kind of a shopping list of concepts, no more, but to introduce you to them so that when they come back, because some of these will, they may not all, you will have at least heard of heard about them before. So in no particular order, let me start though with tax increment financing. I am absolutely unequivocally a huge supporter of tax increment financing. I believe sincerely it is the single most powerful community development, economic development tool we have in the state of Vermont. [Chair ]: Yes. Yes, Bharat. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Thank you. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Do you think that it should be paid for through the education fund? [David White ]: It's not paid for through the education fund. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Well, it it comes out of the education fund. [David White ]: This the basic con that's that's where the the great misunderstanding is. The vast majority of these projects I won't say every one of them, but the vast majority of these projects simply would not happen but for TIF, if we didn't have the TIF funding to help go into it. So, it's money that doesn't already exist. It's not money you're taking out of the education fund. It's money that isn't going into the education fund and won't if you don't have a TIF available. And a TIF alone doesn't do it. All these projects have complex capital stacks where there are multiple sources. But TIF is typically the key piece. And I can say unequivocally, take me saying all those as an example, there's not one of those projects that would have happened, not one if we had not used TIF. And so, what happens is that the education fund at least is getting the twenty in St. Alban's case, it's because it's an older TIF, twenty five percent. Today, it would be thirty percent if it's a new TIF of the new tax it's generating. So, it's actually getting more money than it got before, not less. And at the end of the twenty year retention period, it gets this windfall. Burlington's Waterfront TIF District is ending at the end of this year and the education fund is gonna get another two million dollars plus annually as a result of that long term view and long term investment. And I will say and I don't wanna spend the whole time here on TIF because there are a lot of other things I wanna talk about. But I will say that as I think about the education fund, there are, as far as I'm concerned, three major crises in the state that are very closely tied together, other major crises, but three in particular I want to focus on. One is the education fund and I absolutely acknowledge the crisis and challenge we have there. Second one is a housing one. The third one is the workforce one and the struggle that our employers have to gain to bring in new employees. And I think those three are all very tightly tied together. As I think about the education fund, all the work that the legislature is doing today, which is very important, I am not undervaluing it, thinking about the formula and how it will be aligned, that's the critical short term piece, but it is short term because it's shuffling dollars on the table because we're working off the same tax base. The only way I believe we're going to ultimately solve the education fund crisis is by growing our tax base and that means more housing. And so, as I think about TIF and the other tools I want to talk about, they are an investment and ultimately solving the education fund crisis. [Chair ]: One of the things you should keep in mind and I wonder how we work it, I'm really interested in your list. We and some of this stuff like TIFF, we know a lot. But if you could be as specific as possible, we're we have a little extra time this afternoon, you know, this morning. We so I would say you have another seven or eight minutes. [David White ]: K. [Chair ]: And one of the things that you might I'm sorry. We started late. I apologize. Think about how you communicate that list to us. I mean, it may be that you should send it to us as a list. Okay. And then we'll either meet with you as in on an individual level or bring you back [David White ]: I'm happy to come back. Elaborate on [Chair ]: the list. But I want you to make sure that in the next ten minutes, you just run through the list. [David White ]: Let me do that then. Thank you. So with the tip, let me just say that there's a list of things that I'd like to see to improve the program. And I won't go through that list right now, but that I think it is so powerful and so critical. Then there's been the concept that's been floated for a number of years that hasn't gone anywhere, project based TIFs. And one of the one of the challenges of TIFs the way they're set up today is that they are in that complicated. And most of the small communities in the state really would not be able to take advantage of for a whole range of reasons, part of which is the management administration part of it, part of which is the limited amount of development potential. So project based SIFs are something that can be much simpler and much easier for a small community because you're not talking about a whole district. You're talking about a project. And it could be something that small towns I think about, I don't know where there's a project in Fairhaven, for example, that really needs some infrastructure. And it's one project, but they need the infrastructure and the project can't support it. So, project based TIFs are a concept that I think its day has come and should move forward. A third concept which is related is what I'm tentatively calling the Community Housing Infrastructure Program or CHIP, which is focused very much unlike project based tips that could be any kind of development that meets the community's vision of where they want to go. It could be industrial, it could be commercial, whatever. Chip would be very focused on housing. It could be mixed use because particularly if it's downtown, you might want to have the first four be commercial. But it'd be focused on housing and there are a couple of variations here. One, it would work very much like a project based TIF where you just take a percentage of the incremental new taxes to pay the debt on infrastructure that the community would put in to support that project. But the second one that grew out of a retreat that the Vermont Economic Progress Council approves the TIFs and manages TIFs for the states is a concept in which the community, rather than building the infrastructure and managing the process, would actually contract with the developer for the developer to do that and for the community to rebate back a portion of the taxes equivalent to what might have been available through had more of a TIF structure been used for the developer to pay a portion of the debt service that's attributed to the infrastructure. And this is a structure that's been used very successfully elsewhere in the country and other states, but hasn't been done in Vermont. Leave it there, but a potential tool that makes it easier for smaller communities to be able to manage projects. Moving on, one of the concepts that some housing folks have been talking about is when you think about housing, one of the challenges that you have is that particularly if the value is not going to be enough when you're done to pay for it, You know, the, a lender, if you look the bank looks at it, they're going to look at what's the stabilized value of that property. And the higher your costs, your operational costs, the lower the value because the value on a commercial property is based on is done on an income basis. And so higher cost, the lower the nets available, thus the lower the value. And this concept is to simply allow for housing projects and which could again be mixed use potentially, but to allow a tax stabilization for a long enough period of time. And Act one hundred and eighty one currently has a three year tax stabilization not for the whole state but for most of the state. But that is great for cash flow in the early years which can be a challenge but doesn't solve the value problem because a lender is going to look at year four when it's no longer there and base their value because that's what the security is gonna be long term on year four. So it doesn't help figure out how do you get the financing piece in. If you do a longer tax stabilization and the term I've heard floated is fifteen years, the lender would then look at the value based on that because it's a long enough period of time. [Chair ]: By stabilization, you mean less some sort of reduction? [David White ]: Basically, in what the taxes would be. So it lowers their costs. Right. And thus raises the value and gives the lender more secure. More more net income. More net income and more ability to be able to. So it's a simple mechanism that doesn't One of the benefits of it doesn't have a lot of administration involved in it. But let me move on from there. Another concept that I've heard floated is on housing projects to waive the sales tax on the materials. The typical housing project, materials are about fifty percent of the development costs roughly speaking with labor being the other half. And so, if you've got half your costs, let's say you've got a twenty percent gap between the cost and the post development value, you need to close somehow. And if half of that cost is in materials and you're saving six percent off materials because you waive the sales tax just the way we do on food, We waived it on the materials. That's three percent of your gap that you've just closed. If it's a twenty percent gap, three percent which is quite material to that that you've closed. So again, a simple mechanism to reduce the cost and help fill the gap. And, again, presumably, these are projects that wouldn't otherwise happen and so you're not giving up something you would have because the project isn't viable. Without it, it's not viable. I will say that the VHIP program is one of the single most powerful program for the creation of housing, and I do think you should put more funding into VHIP. It is just it's been so successful. And finally, one of the other concepts that I want to introduce is the idea of you've probably heard that there have been a number of businesses, University of Vermont and University of Bonham Medical Center among them, that have done master leases with developers on projects. That's a critical piece because it enables a developer to go to a lender and say, there's no market risk here. You've got your guarantee. Well, I'd like to see that extended so that even smaller employers could say, well, I can't take the whole building, but I'm going to take two units and I'm willing to risk on two units. And somebody else, I'm going to risk on four units. And in some projects, there may be an eight unit project. If you prelease two units, that's pretty substantial. So the concept that I've heard is that you could do a tax credit for a developer who comes in and says I'm going to do and let's need to figure out the time period, but I'm going to commit to a ten year master lease on x number of units in your building that the developer could get excuse me, the business that commits to that could get ten percent of value of what they've committed to. Their investment in that lease, they could get as a tax credit against their other earnings. And often what will happen here is that they will actually lose money on that lease because they're going to end up having to lease it to presumably their employees for less than what they're paying because they've gotta pay enough to make to justify the development, but that's probably higher than what the current market rents are. And so that ten percent helps give them the incentive. So that's my quick shopping list. There's a lot of details on every one of them that would need to be talked through. [Chair ]: Well, we're we're interested. Any detail you can provide because eventually the question is, what can we do or what can we urge ways and means to do if it's a tax matter? Yes. We're very interested in financial stimulus. So thank you very much for your first what I imagine is just your first appearance. [David White ]: It is. It is. So thank you for having me, and I'm very happy to come back again. And I will be working on writing up more details. Right now, this is just a been outlined. [Chair ]: Great. Can I ask a quick question? Go ahead. [Ashley Bartlett ]: And I can connect with you offline, Damon. But the states that use the rebate [Joe Parsons ]: Yes. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Would you send that to the committee as well? Or do you know off the top of your head? [David White ]: I don't know off the top of my head. I'd have to get in touch with the there were two national speakers who came to the the Pepsi retreat, and I'd have to ask them because they told us, and I just don't remember. [Ashley Bartlett ]: You wouldn't mind? That would be very helpful. [David White ]: We'll take a note. We don't do that. [Chair ]: Thank you, David. Okay. And, Lavelle, do we have a Alex, who cares what you like in front at one time? You know, why don't we [Alex Farrell ]: just keep one and we can swap it? [Chair ]: Well, there are I think we got We [Ashley Bartlett ]: can get other ships. [Chair ]: We can get we have two. I think it'd be good for us anyway. We have two, and Magali will get another. And so eventually, they'll We [Alex Farrell ]: can make two at a time. [Chair ]: Okay. Alright. Work. We're gonna split it eventually. Nice. Not so soon. Nice to see you. I've [David White ]: I haven't spent most of the days of the national. Yeah. And I'm sorry. I need to go. Actually, I'm gonna leave the secretary currently right now. So I need to Hey. [Alex Farrell ]: Can you help me with your agency? Yeah. [David White ]: I guess. Yeah. Otherwise, I'd love to say it and period. [Alex Farrell ]: Alright. See you then. [Chair ]: So we're members of the committee here and members of the public. We're gonna be hearing from the the housing community development. There are four people who are going to testify and I the order. Like, all we did know is there a pre any pre scripted order? [Ashley Bartlett ]: Oh, I don't think so, but I'd like to do some [Gail Pazzo ]: commission's barrel and then [Chair ]: So it's up to you how to handle it. And you originally had from ten thirty to eleven thirty, but we are not going to take another witness after you before lunch at noon. Okay. So we do have a little time. [Alex Farrell ]: I'll still try to wrap up. [Chair ]: What I'm gonna do is ask the committee to introduce itself to you and your fellow, and then we'll take it from there. [Emily ]: Alright. And sorry. I had to step out. The capital police called. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I don't know what they are. [Chair ]: Yeah. I don't [Emily ]: I've got nervous. I am Emily, and I represent South Burlington Chittenden nine. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Nadia Lamont, Lamont Washington District. Hi. [Chair ]: Hi. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: I'm Elizabeth Burrows, and I represent Windsor one, Heartland, West Windsor, and Windsor. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I'm Mary Howard, and I represent Rutland District six. [Gail Pazzo ]: I'm Gail Pazzo, and I represent Chittendly Twiney, Colchester. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Okay. I'm Debbie Dolgen. I represent Saint Johnsbury, Kirby, and Concert. [Charlie ]: Yeah. Tom Trawland, Athens Chester Grafton, London. [Joe Parsons ]: Hi. Joe Parsons represent the beautiful towns of Newberry, Thompson, and Groton. [Alex Farrell ]: Let's see you again. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Hey, Nora Dodge. I represent Essex Town and City of Essex Junction. Ashley Bartley, Essex, Georgia. Feel a little silly introducing myself to you. [Alex Farrell ]: Fair to meet [Chair ]: you. And I'm Mark Mahoney, and I represent Callas Mayfield. And Marchfield, welcome, please. What's your name and mission for the record? Let's [Alex Farrell ]: Can you play my deputy commissioner for that? Still pinching on. Thank you, mister chair. [Chair ]: I've been here. [Alex Farrell ]: I'm gonna I will insult my staff throughout this [Ashley Bartlett ]: because they like [Alex Farrell ]: Thank you, mister chair. I'm Alex, federal commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development. What we're gonna do today is a brief introduction. But before we, get into that, why don't I just let my friends here raise their hand? As I say their names, they'll introduce themselves as they come up. But we've got Nate Forbulari, deputy commissioner over here. Got Chris Cochran, director of the community planning and revitalization division. Sean Gilpin, Director of the Housing Division. So Nate over here is going to pull up our a quick presentation and I believe I assume yeah it looks like Magali got you all copies of this and it's, it's you. So what we're going to talk about today is just a few of our programs. This is not an exhaustive list of what we do. We have a lot going on but wanted to give you a flavor of what we do. So what you see right now is the org chart for the agency and you can see where we fit in one of three departments in the agency of commerce and then looking at the department structure you can see we've got four divisions. The division you're going to interact with the most in here is going to be Sean's, the housing division, but you're of course at times going to hear from Chris, the community planning revitalization division. We do have historic preservation that falls within us that is project review for historic preservation, but it's also certain historic preservation grants. And you can see we also oversee the state owned historic sites and museums, really exciting sites. We'll talk more about those in a little bit. And we have the Vermont Community Development Program. So I passed around a handout. If you've heard folks talk about CDBG, community development block grants, that's what that division, administers here in Vermont. So, a few of these slides are just gonna be for your information so that you can hang up one of these you know who's who but the leadership team at DHCD is of course myself, Nate, Sean and Chris that are here. Our two other division directors are going to be Laura Trieschman, she oversees historic preservation, Anne Kroll who oversees the VCDP program that's the handout you got, and then Max Krieger our general counsel you'll see him in here on occasion. So we're going to flash up our our mission but what we want to communicate with our mission is that of course you're going to hear a lot about housing, improving the quality and access to housing, but it's also about reinvesting in our communities, making sure that they're vibrant and safe. There There's going to be a slide that you're going to see in here about buzzwords. I'm not going to walk through these buzzwords this is for you so that you can have it when you hear these words you know to think of us, okay? If you hear folks talking about community development that's us so don't just think housing, people tell you about mobile home parks again that's us so you can refer to this and you can come and call my phone anytime you want. So we're going to show you an image here and this is really intended to to give you a sense of what community development and reinvestment can look like. So you're looking at Bristol right here, and you're looking at Bristol in Chris, what? The eighties? Eighties. In the eighties, and then Bristol around twenty ten, twenty fifteen? [David White ]: It's later [Chair ]: in the end. Eighteen. [Alex Farrell ]: Twenty eighteen. Okay. Okay. And this is a story of how a community, if they're really focused and dedicated and avail themselves of the tools that our team is bringing and trying to to to to bring to bear, you can really turn a community around. It's not easy and it takes a long time. Part of the reason I brought up the dates is because it does take a long time, but we do try to make sure that communities have the resources they they need to get there. This next slide again this is for your reference. This is so you know who we work with. So from USDA Rural Development to the homeownership centers that you hear from, like Downstreet, Vermont State Housing Authority, Chris Donnelly, and and, the folks at, CHT, VHFA. These are all the folks that we're constantly in coordination with and making sure on an operational and policy basis we're all aligned. So again that's for your reference. This next slide is just where we show up. What committees were testifying in were frequently in here, but then there's a handful of others that have to do with the land use side of what we do, the natural resourcing, committees where we end up a lot as well. So when you think of our jurisdiction and where some of our policy overlap it's [Chair ]: going to be I just really something we are super [Alex Farrell ]: most oh oh this is mine okay good thing I didn't leave it. So now I'm going to start swapping out some of my colleagues here so we can look at our programs and again I just want to highlight this is not going to be an exhaustive list. Chris is going to come up first and he's going to talk about some programs under his division, but this is by far not all the programs that his team oversees, but these are some that are pertinent to you. So, Chris. [Chair ]: Good morning. You? Good morning. Good morning. [Chris Cochran ]: Yeah. Almost Friday. My name is Chris Cochran. I'm the director of community planning and revitalization, and, I have, represented Mahali as my rep, and we got to know each other working on a project, restoring an old village store in East Calais. And interestingly, he used a lot of the programs that I had to talk about. Yeah, but quickly, I have a great team. It's kind of an interdisciplinary team. We've got like landscape architects, historic preservation folks, community development people, economic development people. We all work kind of intersectionally across, state government. I look at our team as kind of the connective tissue between B TRANs and ANR and even the tax department trying to align our policies to support vibrant, strong downtowns and village centers. It's not easy work. It's very challenging. Well, you know, your, was it your sister-in-law? Works for us for a while. But it's very exciting work and it's very, I wanna say it's, we, it sometimes takes us ten years or so to kind of get where we want to be, but we chip away at it. Some of the things that you probably have heard about that we had a big hand in is the HOME Act, which was done two years ago. And then just more recently, it was Act one hundred and eighty one, which I think will be coming back next week to tell you more about that. We do a lot of table setting, across this, our sister agencies and among our partners. Our partners range from everybody from BRC to the Chamber of Commerce. So while we are a small team, I think we hit well above our weight because we have such great connections in this building and in communities. Quickly I'm going to talk about a few programs that we run and I've brought additional propaganda as parting gifts. Like I said, we did work on why Act one hundred and eighty one and we just released yesterday or submitted a report on tools and incentives to ensure we have more affordable housing in our downtowns and built centers. There's a broader context around that. There's a very short report intentionally because we want you to read it. So, but that should be on your website. If not, it will be on it soon. So thank you. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Everyone has a copy. Right. [Chris Cochran ]: And I think, I suspect we'll come back to talk more about that. But one of our key programs is the downtown and village center or otherwise known as the state designation programs where we designate certain geographies of communities, usually just the commercial core communities for certain benefits. I will pass out after I'm done an annual report on that program. The designations are all across the state. Every, every county, so many communities have multiple designations. And one of the primary benefits of, these designations is the downtown and village center tax credits. Our good friends in ways and means typically don't like revenue spending, but they do love this downtown and village center tax program because it works. The Joint Fiscal Office reviewed the program a couple of years ago and found it as far exceeding its goals, and really helping our small towns, especially the ones struggling with, declining grandmas, to really improve their buildings, improve the vitality of the community, making sure that there's a a there there in smaller towns. I have a summary of that and I will share that with you, after I get up and pass the mic. Another program that we run is called the Downtown Transportation Fund. A lot of our downtowns, [Chair ]: and I'm [Chris Cochran ]: not gonna fall B TRANs, but a lot of our towns have very large roads that run through them. It kind of hurts the vitality of our community and it makes it difficult for the people who live there to walk around or ride their bike and feel safe. So the Downtown Transportation Fund primarily goes to downtowns but also to village centers who have met certain requirements and it helps them improve kind of bicycle and pedestrian access and amenities, build amenities in the downtown areas. So they're nice places to walk and visit. So instead of blitzing through that village center, there's you see there's something going on and we encourage people to stop and check it out. The last program I wanted to tell you about, is a program called Home Sprawl. Last year we did a brief overview in this committee about this initiative. It's a really exciting project. I'll try not to get into the weeds too much, but what we like about our downtowns and village centers, how they were built, how they were organized, predates zoning, you know, they're beautiful. We love them. But in the, like, fifties and sixties and seventies, we zone them and we tended to put kind of a glass over them and say, a bell jar of them. So you can't change anything. So it's stifled a lot of growth. It's stifled our housing. You know, many of our neighborhoods that we like so much, you can't build in them, because the zoning doesn't allow it. So how do we restart this? How do we build so this was an interesting project that we kicked off. There's a multiple phase project. We just completed phase one, which was this, workbook. We convened a bunch of folks in Barrie last year. It was a sold out room. Part of the things that we're trying to solve is Chittenden County has developers. Some other parts of the state has developers, but how do we get our small towns to get developers to build the houses we need? And the key there is it has to be local. So how do we train our local people to work in their backyards and build the houses we need? [Chair ]: Melissa, that's you have a question? [Ashley Bartlett ]: I just Mary, [Elizabeth Burrows ]: is that a copy of [Chair ]: the Yes. I've got [Chris Cochran ]: a I have a few copies. I didn't bring enough for the whole committee. I apologize because I hurt my back. They're pretty heavy. Right. But I will leave you with three. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: I I actually have presented your your toolkit That's great. To two select boards since because they're and they're very excited about it. But one of them, was really inexplicably consistent that they get a copy of the because I only had a copy that I borrowed from the room. [Chris Cochran ]: And Only for you. [Chair ]: I asked you to arrange that piece of that, get some of the labor to Magali so they can be distributed. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: I mean, this is really not not to be a walking advertisement, but this is a really outstanding product, and it was it was very easy to present it. So thank you for [Chair ]: Oh, absolutely. You cannot accept gifts of more than twenty five [Ashley Bartlett ]: dollars. Lovely [Chris Cochran ]: for you, sprinting that only is twenty four ninety cents. But Representative Howard, you participated in the early initial stages of this great excitement in Rutland. Just how do we use these vacant lots? How do we infill them with houses that people like? So phase one was this workbook. Big splash. Everybody loved it. Phase two is actually creating a cohort of people with skills and interest in becoming developers and actually upskilling them so they can build in their own backyard. There has been some great models in other states about how to do this, so we wanna launch that in Vermont. The final phase, and this is kinda going back in time, but in the twenties and thirties, Sears and Roebuck Awards had catalogs of books where you can just pick out this is the house I want and it would show up in a railroad car and oftentimes the homeowner would build it themselves. We're not envisioning that but we're inspired by that. We're gonna do probably we're gonna work in five or six communities with them and just kind of go through kind of an analysis of kind of the types of homes that would fit into their neighborhoods. And the goal there is coming up with, you know, five or six designs in each communities, creating a big catalog of pre approved community designs that, you know, ideally the municipality, if it sees it, you get an administrative permit and go ahead and get to work to get to work. We've worked with many of our partners to ensure there's going to be a decent amount of subsidies because as you heard from David White, it's still expensive to build. So but we want to make sure that every community has somebody in their own backyard who can build the homes we need. So this is an exciting project. More to come on this, but, I think I'll stop. I've taken up enough time already. I have two more of these. I will leave them with you or you can fight over them and we will make arrangements. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: I'll have other handouts too. Right? [Chris Cochran ]: Even more. Yeah. Yeah. And I will I'm just gonna give you a link to Miguel and she can pass them out afterward. We'll email these as well, so we'll get on your website too, but thank you for your time. [Alex Farrell ]: Mister, may I invite Sean up to Please. [Chair ]: Why don't you repeat your Of course. For the record and and also for viewers who are watching. [Joe Parsons ]: Certainly. Good morning, everyone. My name is Sean Gilpin. I am the director of the housing division at the Department of Housing and Community Development. Pleasure to see some familiar faces and, hello to, the new folks. I'm sure we'll get to know each other over the next couple months. So I've been with, the division for actually eleven years now. Shocking to say out loud. Happy to, report that I'm actually truly a, division director of a team of folks these days, which is great. A, a group of, six swashbuckling do gooders, who are spread geographically across the state actually, although we all meet regularly. But historically the housing division was actually composed, you know, prior to COVID, was composed of myself and one other gentleman, Arthur Hamlin, who is our preeminent expert on all things manufactured housing in the state of Vermont. And we will actually be bidding him a due at the end of next week. His final day in the office is the twenty fourth and he's retiring after nearly twenty eight years of service with us. So, that will be some big shoes to fill. But, as I was getting to historically, Arthur and I did an awful lot of, sort of what Commissioner Farrell was talking about at the beginning of the presentation, a lot of coordinating with stakeholders. That was pretty much ninety percent of my job, was sort of trying to work with, you know, many of the people who, you regularly see in these rooms, the folks who are, getting calloused hands and boots dirty, out in the field. But it was really a, you know, working obviously with the legislature, with the governor's office, but it was much much a, an information focused, endeavor. Now, however, you know, in light of, increasing concern about our housing needs, we've and, you know, due to, you know, a windfall of federal dollars, we were able to create a number of, really interesting programs that are now kind of our flagship programs. And most of our time is, most of our staff time is spent administering those. And they're actually bringing units online, and keeping people, who are precariously housed, bring them that bring that housing back into into stock. So two of the programs that I'm going to talk about, that I was pleased to hear mentioned earlier in earlier testimony, the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, affectionately known as VHIP. Please don't use that acronym for anything else. I'm trying to keep on. So, we, the VHIP program, is, you know, an innovative one. It's actually something that, was originally considered many years ago. And we've, we've tried to introduce it a couple of times. Unfortunately, we're able to sort of pilot it, in twenty twenty one. The program works by identifying well, we work with the five homeownership centers throughout the state. So there are, these groups cover every, every region. The they consist of, Rural Edge is the homeownership center up in the kingdom. Champlain Housing Trust works in the northwest. NeighborWorks of Western Vermont has sort of our our, West Coast, if you will. Windham Windsor Housing Trust is pretty appropriately named. And then Downstreet does our does our central. So we work with those five entities and they actually identify private property owners who have properties that are underutilized. So these might be buildings that have fallen out of code, they've been abandoned, They might not be marketable because their size or configuration just doesn't doesn't work for residential housing. It could be commercial uses. So we provide, relatively small grants to, these private property owners. There's a match requirement. There's a twenty percent minimum match requirement. And those units are supposed to be brought online within eighteen months. I can go over more statistics if that's desired, but, and brought up to code and into habitable use, and then they must be rented. There are two options, for a property owner. There's sort of the the higher touch, I would say, option, which is five years of affordable rents, and one must rent to somebody exiting homelessness or, a resettled refugee family. That's a five year commitment. Option two is ten years of affordability as there's no limitation on who, who enters that that apartment. So it's just an affordable rental unit for ten years. After that commitment, the units are, you know, just open to to the market. We have intentionally designed the program, to address relatively modest, you know, habitability issues. This is not, you know, big, house flipping renovations. This is very much addressing code non compliance issue. So the hope, is that we'll see those units continue to be sort of naturally occurring affordable housing. We don't know yet how that's going to, sugar off. We had our first units come online in, twenty twenty one. And so probably at the end of this year, beginning of next year, we'll start seeing those units fulfill have fulfilled their commitment. And we intend to do some surveys and figure out sort of what happens to those going forward. So there's that VHIP unit and, no follow-up. Yeah. Why don't I just go ahead and talk some, statistics about that. So, over the time question. [Chair ]: Go ahead, please. [Emily ]: So it's my understanding that, they have to program, there's an end date for when they have to continue doing [Joe Parsons ]: Right. So that's the five year or the ten year commitment. So it depends on when the unit comes online, and then the clock starts when a lease is signed and somebody moves in, and then it starts ticking. And so depending on the population, you know, what option they chose, it's either a five year commitment or a ten year [Emily ]: commitment. And then and then what happens? [Joe Parsons ]: And they're they're free to, rent as as, as the market dictates. [Chair ]: So [Ashley Bartlett ]: sorry. I'm just regaining my thoughts. But so you have these agencies that kind of highlight different units that should be that could be eligible. If somebody doesn't have the match, is there any sort of programming to help them get the match? [Joe Parsons ]: Sure. So we, most people the way it typically works, it's usually folks who have the properties that reach out to the home ownership center. So it's not it's not really marketed that that way. But when people reach out, you know, the match, the twenty percent match, so these are grants of up to fifty thousand dollars currently. There's some work happening right now to expand that to a seventy thousand dollars limit for specifically for accessibility, elements. But right now we're, we're issuing grants of up to fifty thousand dollars and that depends on, the size of the unit, how many bedrooms there are, whether it's a brand new unit. So say, something that's being converted from commercial use, to a new use or to a residential use or, in a lot of cases we've had, you know, big Victorian homes, an eight bedroom home that, like, is not really very easily marketable for rent and breaking that out into maybe a triplex. That would be a little bit more. And so, so the fifty thousand dollars is the maximum. So a match for that is is ten thousand. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Mhmm. [Joe Parsons ]: And so what we've seen, typically, so, as you'll see on the screen and on the slides here, our average grant has actually been about thirty seven thousand dollars per unit. And right now, as you know, you all hear, the cost of developing brand new units is, you know, in the hundreds of thousands right now. I want to be really clear, this is not an either or proposition. This is very much a tool in the toolbox. What we are putting together is not the same as what a BHCB or a CHTSO world are doing. They're building units that are much more robust. They have a lot more amenities to them, and a lot of things that that we've decided publicly that we want to have in our in our housing. These are very much, you know, rapid. Let's let's get units online as quickly as we possibly can utilizing existing structures. [Chair ]: Question. Go ahead. Oh, sorry. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I just wanted to follow-up. And so I see in your on your fur and I think majority of us at this table understand that that this is a very highly subscribed to program. And I know last year, our people stopped with a full funding request, and it didn't we didn't receive that. And there was this prediction that in January twenty twenty five, the hip would run out of money. Where are [Elizabeth Burrows ]: we at with that? [Joe Parsons ]: We are fully subscribed. Money is still going out right now. I think all five homeownership centers have some sort of waiting list. It's been oversubscribed in every county. We actually have now we've we made it up to the kingdom. We got in Essex and Caledonia and rest. We have units, VHIP units have been in been created in all fourteen counties. Five hundred are online as we speak. I guess it's technically four ninety nine, although we're getting new numbers tomorrow, so we might get that one. And then there's, you know, another another almost four fifty that are that are in the pipeline. And like I said, these numbers are gonna be updated, next week after we get our reports tomorrow. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: What does RHRP stand for? [Joe Parsons ]: Rehousing Recovery Program. It was the, it was actually the very first. So that was sort of the first, it was a prerequisite to VHIP. It's sort of been rebranded as VHIP. When we first got coronavirus relief funds, we called the program rapid or rehout RRHP. The acronym is, is, is obsolete now, but it was actually very interesting. We did not have the normal commitment to address people exiting homelessness. It was an option to see referrals and then we've gradually ratcheted up the requirements of this program to try to get it to right size. Shockingly, it's actually I think kind of interesting at the beginning, the home ownership centers were very concerned that if we required housing people exiting homelessness or other vulnerable populations that the program just wouldn't get off the grounds, that it just was a non starter. Now they're very concerned that we maintain that requirement so that we keep getting units that are serving homelessness because we, despite changes in, you know, increasing requirements for property owners, this has still continued to be a very popular program. And so as I, as I mentioned with, a number more. [Chair ]: Couple of questions. You still on VHIF. Yep. Kind of of the thousand units either done I mean, roughly or under construction, how many elected to go the five year route and how many the ten year? [Joe Parsons ]: The ten year route is relatively new. And so about, it's above ninety percent of the units that of the these thousand units are going to serve, somebody exiting homelessness. We've of the four ninety nine units that are online right now, we have issued, I believe, twenty three waivers, because there was some reason why somebody couldn't, you know, find an appropriate tenant. All of those people have all of those units have been rented to folks at eighty percent area median income or below. Most of them off of the Vermont State Housing Authority's section eight waiting list. [Chair ]: Is the since the other option, the ten year option became available, have you noticed that there's been a shift? [David White ]: I will be able to get you [Joe Parsons ]: that number tomorrow when we get those reports. This will be the first time that we've had that option open. And from what I can do, I'll I'll wait and and send you the actual numbers. [Chair ]: I know. I think I [Chris Cochran ]: know the answer to this, [Chair ]: but I think it's important to ask it. The critique of the VA program is that it's not perpetually affordable and that, you know, in ten years or five years, we'll have thousands of units disappear from the low income or moderate income housing stock. What was the thinking behind the ten years or the possibility of making it longer? Right. [Joe Parsons ]: It's a great question and the rent restriction for ten years is such that these again, you know, not dissimilar from, you know, the earlier discussion on tax increment financing. These are these are units that otherwise likely would not be developed or would have been developed on a much longer time. And so, by having the rent restriction for five or ten years, that that margin is enough that if somebody could actually have rented these units, if they could have fixed up the unit and rented it out at market rates, they would take that option rather than restrict themselves to five to ten years of of rent restriction. The the the delta between, a market rate unit today and, the fair market rent that we require the quote unquote fair market rent, that's a term from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The the delta between what they can receive market rent versus what we require them to rent at is such that, if those units could have been could have been built up, they they would have been. We also again, part of the reason why we focus specifically on code compliance issues and not, not other, glitz, if you will. Not to say that, I mean, everybody deserves a dignified place to live. I don't want to say that we're we're suggesting subpar housing, but, these are modest improvements in many cases. And, the hope is that, you know, at the end of ten years, those units won't disappear. They'll still be available. And this so this is really a a rapid, unit creation program. [Chair ]: Right. I'm but I'm wondering if it's true, which I'd not thought of, that they probably wouldn't have been developed but for this because market rents don't justify the change, then why not make them potentially enforced? [Joe Parsons ]: Oh, because the, the amount of public subsidy going into these units just I don't think anybody would be interested in maintaining a perpetually affordable unit for thirty seven thousand dollars of public investment. [Chair ]: They'll do ten years but they won't do perpetual. Right. Thank you. So [Joe Parsons ]: with that I think that, if there aren't any other questions on VHIP. Quick one please. I remember last year, the number was pretty stark actually. You have update on kinda like, you said the twenty percent that they have to put in Right. Compared to, like, what they're actually Oh, yeah. No. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. That's a that's a really important statistic. So we we require a minimum twenty percent match. We have seen well over a hundred percent match in most of these units. There's a I'd actually I'll, when I get back to my desk, I'd love to share a link to, one of the homeownership centers actually put together a pretty, impressive video. It's it is there's a short version and another is like a twenty minute version. So I will I'll send both, but, they did a great job. It was, NeighborWorks of Western Vermont put it together and did interviews with, property owners who I think have some really great testimonials of what, how the program affected their timelines and, their engagement. And one of the interesting outcomes that, was unanticipated, desirable but unanticipated is we've actually found out that many of the property owners who have engaged in this program have gone on to continue engaging with the homeless service providers with other units that aren't in the program. There I think we're really opening eyes to the availability of a pipeline of tenants, especially some with vouchers. So guaranteed rental payments that was, obscured before. And so making those connections has been a really great, I'm side effect, for lack of a better term, of this of this program. [Gail Pazzo ]: What are the average rents for a one bedroom or two bedroom? [Joe Parsons ]: Oh goodness. It varies by county. I can, I'll I'll gladly send the committee. We have a chart that, and it it gets updated. It actually just got updated this past October for, twenty twenty five. So Thanks. Yeah. [Ashley Bartlett ]: So it's years. So you're setting what the rent would be? [Joe Parsons ]: We set the rent based on, a HUD housing choice voucher, so a section eight voucher. So any any of these units have to be rented at a level that a voucher holder would be able to pay, And that was that was by by design. [Chair ]: Okay. Are there questions on the VF issue before it moves on? Thank you. All right. [Joe Parsons ]: All right. And, for the next, my next trick, is, the Manufactured Housing Improvement and Repair Program, affectionately known as MER, not to be confused with gold or frankincense. We, we're these, these monies, are, are being utilized to, do three things in our mobile home parks. And, folks, just a quick primer, we have about two thirty eight mobile home parks in the state. It encompasses it's probably it's about seven percent of our housing stock is mobile homes. Granted, much of that is outside of mobile home parks. Parks are kind of a unique, we focus a lot on mobile home parks, particularly because of the, the nature of the tenancy. Oftentimes it's, the resident owns the structure, but rents the land underneath it, which obviously despite, despite the name, mobile homes are not mobile. Many of them never moved to another location after being originally sited. And so naturally that, rental relationship between the landowner and an owner of the mobile home that's sited on land can be a, a difficult power dynamic. And so we actually have in the state of Vermont specific rules that go above and beyond the typical landlord tenant law that applies specifically to mobile home parks, because of that, of that power dynamic. We also recognize that, again, because of the ownership status, oftentimes mobile homes are really hard to finance. They're treated, in some cases, more like a vehicle than like real estate. Whole lot of issues that I'm sure I'll be back here talking about at some point. With that said, we have a number of and these, units are what we like to refer to in the group of of naturally occurring affordable housing. In most cases, these parks have never received a public investment. These homes are owned by, you know, private, private residents that have not received any sort of public subsidy. Yeah. These are, you know, really important, housing type, that frankly has a, in many cases, an undeserved stigma. They're also can be difficult to repair, especially if you're not knowledgeable in specific building science about manufactured homes. They're constructed differently than that aren't stick built, and so they're not as easy to be, to do handyman work with. And so we've found that, there are many, many homes out there in our parks that are deteriorating, people who are at risk of becoming homeless because there's no other similarly affordable option. And so this program aims to address three different needs in mobile home parks. Number one, the biggest being home repair for mobile homeowners. We've issued over three twenty six home repair grants to help and these are helping people again do modest things. A lot of times it's roofing issues, you know, pest inundation, water, water inundation, fixing windows, things like that, to extend the life of these homes while we're dealing with the housing crisis. And also to allow people to live in a dignified manner where they'd like to. Many of these folks, you'll hear over and over the more you, deal with manufactured housing. My own four walls is something that people will say often. Why not move into an apartment? It's it would be less expensive. It's less maintenance. I want my own four walls. It is a very, strong cultural pull, and one that that people ought to a choice that people ought to be able to make. So these, these grants help, keep people housed. Another option, for the, for the funds is to, remove abandoned homes, or otherwise make lots available for new homes to be brought in. Again many of our many of our parks are dealing with deferred maintenance issues or have, in some cases an elder owner has passed it on to children who are less interested or or, you know, can't find the can't make it economically viable. So this allows for creation of new lots and existing parks, cleaning up lots that are, you know, have become overgrown or unavailable, removing abandoned homes. Unfortunately one of the issues with this type of housing is that sometimes the reality is it is more cost effective for somebody to walk away and take that ding on their credit than to spend the tens of thousands of dollars to remove, what is essentially a, you know, a tipping fee. So removing abandoned homes to get lots ready and available for new homes. And the third, piece of the program is assisting with, homeowners with buying new homes and putting the, oftentimes a cement slab foundation underneath them. Department of Housing and Urban Development has the federal regulations about manufactured homes, their building code and and how they need to be installed. They've changed those regs recently to require new homes to have some sort of, well, for lack of a better term, we'll say a slab or a foundation. There's other options, but that's most typically what people imagine. It's a weird thing though, because it's usually the they need to be put down the spec for the particular home that's being installed. Yet, obviously, that homeowner is not going to take that slab with them if they were to ever try to move it. So it ends up being, an ownership value of the landowner, even though the the fiscal responsibility is on the homeowner. So we provide grants to bring down the cost of that slab installation to make new home purchase more affordable. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Thanks. Just to clarify, the new federal regulation, it requires a concrete pour? [Joe Parsons ]: Not necessarily. There's some gravel options, but there are there's, it's, you know, an engineered, landing place. Yeah. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Okay. Thank you. [Chair ]: I have a question. As you as you know, a number of, homeowners have purchased their, entire project. In fact, rep Peso did that. That is engineered that. Is do you guys help assist in that process? [Joe Parsons ]: I'm not sure I understand which process. [Chair ]: Turning it into a co op? [Joe Parsons ]: Oh, yes. We, we actually grant funds to the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, CVOEO. It's called the First Stop Grant. We support their mobile home program. And they, they work directly with park residents. I actually used to work there, in another lifetime and, brought Cooperative Development Institute into Vermont. So yes. Although that is a unique situation as well. The economics of small mobile home parks are very difficult and the governance of a co op in a small, you know, especially when you've got folks who are, lower income typically working a lot of jobs done odd hours and, it can be really difficult with anything less than twenty units. Gets really hard to co op and that's now most of the privately held parks. Most of the parks that are not in non profit or co op ownership are trending downward in size because we've done a great job of assisting our non profit partners and the residents to create co ops or purchase parks to hold them. And most of the larger parks have been acquired by non profits at this point leaving us with some more challenging stock. [Chair ]: Oh, go ahead, please. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Yeah. I'm just the the this is a new area for me. Even I I used to work with, at HomeShare Vermont with Kirby Dunn, who was, like, a massive activist, for, you know, got her start here, with mobile home activism. But, it just strikes me as such a challenge because as opposed to most homeownership, you are constantly losing value, right? You're not building equity. [Joe Parsons ]: It depends. Some studies have shown that especially with a co op ownership model, they're actually Giving [Chair ]: you on [Ashley Bartlett ]: the land. [Joe Parsons ]: Right. They're actually [Chair ]: That's the value. [Joe Parsons ]: Yeah. New Hampshire, New Hampshire has actually pursued mobile home parks in sort of a not shockingly a mirror image of what we've done. We supported a lot of, nonprofits, to to buy up parks. And in fact, originally, the idea was have the nonprofit step in and purchase the park to hold it, work with the residents and turn it over to resident ownership. What was found, throughout the 80s and 90s when that was attempted was that once you sort of took away that time pressure, there was not a whole lot of impetus to go ahead with the effort of, democratically run co op. Most folks were fine with, look, I've got a nonprofit owner. They're, you know, generally good actors. That had been the case. So we actually whereas in New Hampshire, they didn't have that, network of nonprofits. So they focus very much on co ops and we actually almost have as many non profit owned parks here as they have co op owned parks in New Hampshire. And so there's some interesting comparisons about that can be made about parks. Their parks also tend to be retirement communities more often than Vermont's. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Okay. So not necessarily what this many of the economic challenges may be. [Joe Parsons ]: It's not an apples to apples comparison. Yeah. And then my [Ashley Bartlett ]: my my next question is just, that, I'm really wondering about, like, accessibility issues for for people that I know can be a real challenge in in for, and whether any of our funding goes towards, like, you know, setting up ramps or anything like that or whether that's something [Emily ]: No. [Joe Parsons ]: Accessibility is definitely an eligible use for Mer. We've, we've we've funded some ramp, repairs, ramp, creation, trying to get the, Hot Wheels track off of some of these homes from the, well meaning, model builder. Yeah. If it doesn't you know, pitch is kind of important when you're on a wheelchair. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Especially on the sweater. Okay. [Emily ]: Yeah. I know we've talked about this, and I just I still think that at some point, the committee or, you know, you folks, it would be helpful if we really had the definition defined of a mobile home clear for for people. And as we continue to see, manufactured housing go up across Vermont, I think it would just be really helpful if, you know, had that conversation. [Joe Parsons ]: Yeah. I think it's a valid point. And certainly I've I've taken far too much time this morning, but one that, the I think the lines are blurring between, what people think of as a manufactured housing. And there's there's a lot of things that look and feel and act a a lot like a mobile home that aren't technically mobile homes. So yeah, it's, it's it's a it's an interesting, area of building science. [Chair ]: Have you seen an increase in the number of mobile homes? [Joe Parsons ]: No. Not yet. Although we haven't I think I think it's a trailing indicator. I suspect we're gonna see more of them as other housing options become more difficult. And frankly, as the, as the product improves, I mean, you can get some really nice, you know, things that that look I mean, it's it acts like a mobile home, but, you know, high, high energy efficiency. I mean, there's some pretty impressive products out there right now. [Chair ]: I assume energy efficiency is eligible. It's an eligible under your home repair awards. [Joe Parsons ]: Yes. And we actually encourage people to, also reach out to OEO's, weatherization program and the same with VHIP. We really encourage stacking, especially, you know, if we're going to be ripping off walls and roofs and ceilings, we might as well be insulating them. [Chair ]: Thank you. You're welcome. I think [Joe Parsons ]: that's it for me. Sure. [Alex Farrell ]: Thank you. Thanks, John. Yeah. Thank you, mister chair. And just for the record, Alex Farrell, commissioner, DHCD. Rep Krasnow, just you may wanna keep an eye out next week. We're gonna be next week, we're gonna be off-site. We're gonna be releasing a report that we worked on with VHFA on all forms of off-site construction, what it looks like, the history of it, and then what are some policy options that we have here in Vermont. So keep an eye out for that. Yeah. [Emily ]: That's great. [Chair ]: Thank you. [Alex Farrell ]: Really valuable and informative. I can be brief as I touch on these last couple of programs, but I just want to highlight that are administered by DHCD. The the one that really was historically the flag flagship program for our department is the Vermont Community Development Program and so this is HUD, U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding. It's a little over seven million dollars frustratingly it's been a little over seven million dollars since the mid 90s so you can imagine the impact that we can have with this funding has greatly diminished. And so this has put heavier reliance on state funding to sort of meet our affordable housing goals and so this has been one of the challenges that that we have here in Vermont and small states like us But the Vermont Community Development Program as you can see in this handout that I tossed around you can see a lot of the different uses for this funding it's very versatile accessibility modifications. There can be planning grants of the municipality is always the applicant. It can be a municipality in, in cooperation with, private developer or I'm sorry, not a nonprofit developer, which is often what we see for housing projects. And in a lot of cases in those projects, this ends up closing the gap between whatever we get from, say, BHFA tax credits, state funds from BHCP. We can come in with that up two million dollars to close that gap. This program also receives HUD funding for recovery housing, which is, you know, unfortunately tied to fatality rates from substance use disorder here. You know, this is just in the early stages of biennium. I like to share my personal story, and I like to do it through this program. So you know some of my personal motivations are through my family. So I have a younger brother with developmental delays and so we have a lot of concerns about what's housing going to look like for him. Is it going to be accessible? Is he going to be able to live independently? I have another brother that I lost a substance use disorder and so these things really inform my experience and my work and why I want to do this. So this is a program that really means a lot to me too. The last couple of programs I'm gonna touch on are, does not typically yeah. Go ahead. Question about the CDBG. [Chair ]: Well, the community development program. So the six point two million Yep. That's federal funds. [Alex Farrell ]: That's right. That's right. [Chair ]: Are they matched? But I I don't understand how that works. Could you explain how it what's the relationship through the program? What's the relationship between federal funds, which is used pretty as you point out, have remained fixed? Yeah. Are they allocated by they're allocated, I assume, by population and we benefit from the small state. [Alex Farrell ]: We actually aren't getting a small state minimum there is a formula. So important because we're not benefiting from a small state minimum we don't get the benefits that we did under other say COVID era federal funding. So the relationship is we effectively act as HUD here in Vermont through this program and so we get that seven so million dollars for CDBG funding. The only other entity in the state of Vermont that gets this funding is the City of Burlington that's called an entitlement community they get their own CDBG funding and they administer it in Burlington so you'll notice that we don't really operate this program in Burlington but in the rest of the state we do. So we don't also administer state funds through this program this is federal funds. [Chair ]: And we don't, there is no state match or anything. [Alex Farrell ]: That's right. [David White ]: Okay. [Alex Farrell ]: That's right. But we do use this to leverage other funds. So, you know, VHCB funding is often paired with this in projects. In fact, almost any time that you see CDBG funding, it's going to be paired with, VHCB funding. [Chair ]: And it has to be used for low low income and moderate up to sixty is it sixty percent limit? [Alex Farrell ]: It's it's generally eighty percent of AMI, but, it's it's at least half of whoever's being served needs to meet that low and moderate income threshold. At least that. So fifty one percent or more of who's benefiting from the project. So whether it's folks in the housing or the community serve need to be low income. [Chair ]: Yep. Keep an [Alex Farrell ]: eye on this program because you may have seen the news that there's gonna be some recovery money coming through our state CDBG Doctor disaster recovery funding. This is in response to the flooding. It's administered by this program, so the requirements are different. So we're going to need to serve communities that were impacted. And there there's a little bit more latitude than some of the other requirements so that we can actually meet the needs based on the results. [Chair ]: Fifty eight million schedule? [Alex Farrell ]: Yeah, it's going to be around sixty seven million dollars sixty eight million dollars but a large chunk of that they really dictate how much of that, needs to go into certain counties based on [Chair ]: the will be administered by you guys through this program. [Alex Farrell ]: Yeah. That's right. And following Irene, something similar happened. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I'm gonna go ahead and ask [Emily ]: questions. Okay. [Chair ]: I'm sorry. No. It's okay. I was just taking notes. Yes. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I was waiting for your stuff. I'm like, he's gone. I just so I'm concerned a little bit about the, like, the the opiate, settlement funds that are going kind of directly to towns. And it seems like like, as opposed to an unfunded ed mandate, we have dedicated money with no mandate. And I'm wondering whether you all see a role for helping towns direct those funds or, you know, set up models of, like, this is what you can do, you know, aside from sort of holding informative events or, like, it's supposed to be money that doesn't just go to the police or to already existing programs, supposed to be Mhmm. For setting up new things. [Alex Farrell ]: Yeah. In cases like this, when there's, say, federal funding that flows through where we have no jurisdiction over it, the role we try to play is encouraging municipalities to come to us, access our planning funds, our planning grants so that they can develop, you know, a good whether they want to develop a program or study a use of it. Now depending on the amount that municipalities are getting, that might not be the wisest. You know, they might not make sense to take a fifty thousand dollars planning grant to decide what to do with if they're only getting sixty thousand dollars or something. But, generally speaking, you know, if they can tie in with our recovery housing programs or something like that, we see that as a wise use of this if there's not other, requirements dictated by the federal funding. [Chair ]: So, all right. Please go ahead. [Alex Farrell ]: Okay. I'm going to go quickly through these next two, because I don't know that this pertains too much to this committee, but I want you to be aware of it because there's occasional overlap. So historic preservation activity. So, when various development happens including housing development there's a requirement both by federal funding and state funding that it goes through a certain review process through our state historic preservation office and so that project review happens through our team our state historic preservation team both archaeological so on the ground and architecturally so historic structures. And then I do want to highlight this is a very quick brag about our team on this next slide here our state owned historic sites We record year record attendance and record revenue. So good job in historic preservation team and our historic sites. I encourage you to check them out. I'm gonna pass this off to deputy commissioner for Mallory to talk data and some of the next stages, with housing targets and reporting to those. [Chair ]: Okay. Good morning, folks. [Nate Formalier ]: So Nate Formalier, I'm the Deputy Commissioner for the Department. I've actually been with the Agency of Commerce since twenty eighteen. So in a variety of roles, so familiar with what the agency does, as a whole. When the opportunity came to work with this team, I jumped at it. It's a small we saw forty three people, so we're not a huge department. There's not a lot of bureaucracy going on, and it was a been a pleasure to get to work with the team. They do a lot of great work and are very committed to the state. I'm going to touch quickly because I think VHFA was in here and showed you a lot of these slides. So I just want to touch quickly on some data work we're doing. And I found out this morning Representative Krasnow was instrumental in, getting this work to the forefront. So as you've heard, we need, you know, between twenty four thousand and thirty six thousand houses between now and twenty twenty nine, to meet the needs. Is are people familiar with this chart that runs through the types of housing needed and why? Okay. [Chair ]: It was presented to us by the HFA. Okay. Perfect. [Nate Formalier ]: So then the the other two that I would point out is, the building permit data, which you may have seen as well. That's the top graph showing kind of where we were, in the mid eighties, where we've gone, the dip in the twenty tens. And we really need to get back to that mid eighties, building cycle. Then the other thing I just wanted to point out and is one of our problems is Vermont's housing stock is one of the oldest in the country. Twenty five percent of our housing is pre-nineteen forty. Nationally, that number is twelve percent. So we have a lot of housing that is older and needs fixing up and VHIP and other programs are helping with that. But it is an issue we're facing and it also leads to a mismatch. I think you've probably heard this from other people where, the families of today aren't fitting into five bedroom, huge houses. They're looking for smaller units. So these are things we're thinking about. And then just the last part of what I wanted to say today was, last session of Act one hundred and eighty one, the Department was required to set up some housing targets. So the Housing Needs Assessment developed this number. We worked with VHFA again on that. We're going to be releasing those next week. We're happy to come in back in, and talk about them. But that number we'll be looking at, what are what should we be looking at for targets between now and twenty twenty five and twenty twenty five and two thousand and thirty and then between twenty five twenty twenty five and two thousand and fifty. And it's actually broken out by regional planning commission region so each region will have a number of homes that they should be thinking about over the next five and decades ahead. So Can I ask you [Chair ]: a question? Okay. So the needs assessment that we continually heard about and Yes. And numbers from, that needs assessment was going to be prepared by you guys and VHFA? Correct. And what you're saying is you're revising the needs assessment and breaking it out by sub by it's by which by by county or Yeah. [Nate Formalier ]: Essentially counties. Essentially counties. So this is actually gonna be an annex. So the housing needs assessment, which is actually required for us to access the HUD funding that has been referenced, we have to produce that. So this will be an annex to that. It'll be added to it, that looks maybe not just at the need, but what should we be thinking about in terms of our demographics? We know there's a certain number of, second and seasonal homes in the state. So we're going to try to assume, okay, we're going to those numbers are going to stay, at a certain level. So over the until two thousand and fifty, what do we need, more than just a need, but what should we be aiming for? The other part of Act one hundred and eighty one, which we can come back in and talk about, was DHCD is now required to report our progress towards those targets annually. So we won't necessarily have that this year. Starting next year, we'll have that. So we've established the targets. And then we work with the Vermont Center for Geographic Information, that team to develop a dashboard that, uses various data points, one of them being E911 hookups to see where our house is being built and how many of them are being built. And we'll pair the targets with the dashboard to to be able to report to you guys as we're making policy changes together. Is it working? Is it not? Where is it working? Where do we need to be building? And things like that. So this is more of a preview, and we're happy to come back in next week after all that stuff kind [Chair ]: of gets rolled out. Commissioner Brown. Excuse me. Not committee. Commissioner. No. Repairs. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Your happiness. Yeah. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Your happiness. My question is actually a demographic question in a way, but, but I wondered whether you are paying any kind of attention to the conversion of, second homes to retirement homes. Not retirement housing, but people who have retired to their second homes. [Nate Formalier ]: I I think the one of the main categories, it's maybe some people are gonna jump in for me. [Chair ]: One of [Nate Formalier ]: the main areas that we can see that is in the property transfer tax, where it's it's did [Chair ]: did I get that right? Okay. [Nate Formalier ]: Where that's where it's identified, whether it's a second home or or a primary residence. So that's the main data point. But I'll let the commissioner, if there's other [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Well, I mean, you can you can tell by we had in in my town when when we moved there fifteen years ago, we had a less than less than fifty percent homesteader rate. And now we have finally broken a thousand voters. And but that's while also only selling two hundred homes. So or exchanging two hundred homes. So that means that there has been a huge conversion in our town of people retiring to their second homes. [Alex Farrell ]: So so yeah. So for the record, commissioner Farrell, that is a statewide trend. And I think maybe when we present the the full new housing and command dashboard, we can have John talk about that data as well. We did see a significant number of previously second homes in the state now converting to primary homes. So a lot of the inward migration that we saw in the data that I'm sure Laura talked about, a lot of those folks purchased second homes, what were second homes, and they are now serving as their primary home. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: That is exactly what I'm asking about. [Chair ]: So that will be available as part of your analysis? [Alex Farrell ]: That's right. Well, that's gonna be a public dashboard for anyone to access that we're releasing on Tuesday along with our Excellent. [Chair ]: And it's part of what [Nate Formalier ]: made made up targets as well. Yeah. [Gail Pazzo ]: Okay. Great. Yep. [Emily ]: Thank you. I was gonna [Chair ]: Go ahead. [Emily ]: I was gonna say I've noticed that myself. I live in a condo association, and I've noticed a lot of my neighbors that had rental units as also have moved from Florida back instead of the opposite because of, you know, climate, political things regard but I've noticed a lot of my association now is is people who had it as a rental unit or a second home have decided to retire there as well. So I noticed that. And, I just wanted to touch on this too. For folks who are new to the committee, felt that this was important because as policymakers, having the most accurate data would be helpful in this session and to find out, I you know, how we're doing on the goals and targets and keeping it's it's really was a government accountability bill because it's really keeping us accountable to the goals and targets that we need to meet. You know? So having it [Ashley Bartlett ]: in front [Emily ]: of us. So I'm very grateful for the work that you all did on this and, for my housing finance as well. I know it was more work, but it is really gonna be helpful for us moving forward. So thank you. And and [Alex Farrell ]: when we present the the dashboard that's gonna be used in our tracking, we could speak more to it. But what we've done is not done in other states and other jurisdictions. It's truly groundbreaking. And I'm not saying that to give us credit, but the the ADS team and and cross center for geographic information, it's it's incredible what they've done here. [Nate Formalier ]: When the legislation said and then you need [Chair ]: to report on it, oh, I guess I'm gonna [Emily ]: have to create [Nate Formalier ]: a tool to do that because it does not exist. So, yeah, it's gonna be an evolution over years, as we refine the data. Commissioner Farrell, is this the [Chair ]: end of your formal presentation? It is. And then I I do have a question of you. [Alex Farrell ]: Sure. Why don't I [Chair ]: But in the in his state of the state address, the governor indicated that there was a housing plan Yeah. Or housing ledge with legislative language forthcoming. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: That's right. [Chair ]: Do you have any sense as to the timing of when that would arrive? I ask you simply because I wanna arrange for its presentation here. So and, in fact, maybe jointly with the senate, this is to be seen. But my question is when and who should present it? [Alex Farrell ]: Sure. My belief is that Wednesday is when the package will be rolled out, and I would be happy to come and present it. I'll bring along my general counsel who can, talk about some of the nuances with the language where we try to get very specific. [Chair ]: How sure are you about Wednesday? I'm just trying to think about our [Alex Farrell ]: How sure are we about Wednesday? [Chair ]: We can follow-up with you. Yeah. And Magali. And and Magali because Yeah. We right. And I think it would be great if we had a little time with it and then you present it, you know, so that we're not completely green. [Alex Farrell ]: Yeah. I think what will be probably best so we're developing a summary and explainer of each section, each each change to the statue that we're presenting. Perhaps we could give that to you all so you can digest it around the time [Chair ]: of the [Alex Farrell ]: rollout and I may suggest that it'll take multiple sessions for us to cover everything. It will be a fairly large omnibus bill that will be multi jurisdictional here, the natural resources committee, and probably others as well. [Chair ]: What does it mean? It is yeah. Great. I might just add [Nate Formalier ]: the that will come and then the budget we need to wait till the budget is asked for, like, the money item. [Alex Farrell ]: So that's right. So there are planned appropriations to pair with that, but this is we can present them individually. So don't don't assume if you see no appropriations in there. That means we're not. [Ashley Bartlett ]: That was cheap. Yeah. [Chair ]: That's correct. Thank you very much. [Alex Farrell ]: Thank you, miss. Thank you. Committee. [Chair ]: Committee, good hands together. We need to talk just about a few things before we break the lunch. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I'm sorry. [Chair ]: Alright. There's still a hat. There's yeah. We're still alive, and that's fine. Yeah. [Chris Cochran ]: You're gonna switch it around. Yeah. [Chair ]: Yeah. So We have we do not have wait a moment. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Could you close the door on your way out? So just for housekeeping purposes, we do not have further hearings today. We'll value time to think, review materials Yeah. Etcetera. Tomorrow, we have do we have a ten thirty hearing at this point? What is our my golly, what is the ten thirty hearing? [Ashley Bartlett ]: At ten thirty, we will hear from the development for disabilities housing initiative. At eleven, we'll hear from Samantha Sheehan and Josh Hanford from Vermont League of Cities and Towns. And then after lunch, we'll hear from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency for another hour and then adjourn at two PM. [Chair ]: So that's her alright. Rob. I would very much like, two housekeeping matters. One is it's important that if you have ideas as you you know, after a week, you we've had we've had quite an array of people talking to us. If after a week you have ideas, we're missing something or I need more on this, then we should let us know and we will find those people and we can bring them in. We have one bill that has so far been referred to us. We might get another today. I'm not sure. We'll see. And we will, in fact, hear from the auth, the authors of the bill and hear some witnesses, perhaps, on that bill next week. Also, I think we'll bring at least one witness and maybe more than one back or to talk to us more about development economics. Yes. I'm just a little concerned with this and having taught it myself. It is not That's true. Still evident. And you've heard you've heard a lot, from various witnesses. And I think it it will be benefit beneficial to go back over some of it. It's my own view that we will find that a number of the levers that are available to us because we we've heard about all these problems. The question is, how much can we really do about it? And I've learned here it's really important to focus on things you can actually do because otherwise, nothing happens. So very often, the things we can actually do have a financial element to them. And knowing what they are means understanding how development occurs when it is undertaken by nonprofits and how development housing development occurs when it is undertaken just by the market. It's important that I think the committee understand all of that despite the fact that it involves math. My apologies. So we are going to try to handle that. But any additional ideas, let me know. Finally, one of the things, just a heads up, next week, I will probably have a kind of general idea of areas for dividing the whole problem into areas. And I'm gonna be asking people to sort of specialize in that area, to be the one, you know, who we rely on or the pair, perhaps, we rely on for learning more about that. Mhmm. And also, it's important that we have committee buddies here. That is people amongst you whose job it is to relate to another committee that really is involved with what we you're doing. Some of that is my responsibility in terms of communicating with the chair of natural resources and environment, communicating with the chair of ways and means. Those are, you know, important committees for us, but I'll be asking for that. And one of those will be a budget buddy. That is somebody who talks to, rep rep Loomley who is the person I think, in fact, I know who is has been assigned housing on the Appropriations Committee. That's how the Appropriations Committee works. That's what I did last year. I was education, a simple matter. And everybody on the committee is assigned an area where it's up to them to look at the agency's budgets and look at the overall budgets. And it's Tiff Bloomley who is our person, and so she'll want somebody that she can interact with as well. It may be me, but we'll see. [Ashley Bartlett ]: She's my four seat buddy. [Chair ]: Oh, she is. Yeah. So those [Ashley Bartlett ]: are the [Elizabeth Burrows ]: former member of [Ashley Bartlett ]: the Right. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: General housing committee. Yes. [Ashley Bartlett ]: General housing and military affairs. [Chair ]: And military affairs. Is there anything else? Again, tomorrow, our first meeting will be after the floor. The floor is at nine thirty. So after the floor let's when have we set it for ten fifteen? [Gail Pazzo ]: Ten thirty. [Chair ]: Ten thirty. So, look, given what floors have been like lately, you're gonna have a little time, but please be here by ten twenty or something like that so we can start promptly at ten thirty. I'm trying to start these things on time. I realize that means sometimes some of you wander in a little late for reasons that are probably beyond your control. I understand that. But I think we have to try to keep our hearing from moving. So that's what we do. Because if we don't it's like the doctor's office. We don't wanna get to the point where [Elizabeth Burrows ]: hours of waiting. People are waiting and waiting. [Chair ]: Witnesses are just waiting and waiting. Is there anything else that anyone on the committee would like to say, please? [Gail Pazzo ]: Emily, the mobile home task force Mhmm. Report, I think it defines mobile home. [Emily ]: Okay. [Chair ]: I know [Gail Pazzo ]: it's long. [Emily ]: I'll take a look. I'll I'll look at I can look into that. Thank you. [Gail Pazzo ]: I think that there's a good amount there that distinguishes what mobile home is. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: It definitely does, but I think my impression was that Emily wanted us as a committee to have a better understanding. [Emily ]: Yeah. There's not to get too into it now, but there are a couple places. There's one in Williston that's having you know about it, Gail, that's having some issues. So it's not a necessarily, like, a lead priority, but I just wanted to bring it to their attention too that it's Establishing the time. Still need to keep that conversation going, and it's not fixed. [Gail Pazzo ]: Okay. Right. Well, please. Sorry. I didn't [Ashley Bartlett ]: mean to are you guys all set? Okay. I just think it might be helpful for, like, a deadline, ID deadlines, for if you want us to digest this this report or if you wanted, like, some of us to be assigned a part of it to just, you know [Chair ]: I think the report the report that she's referring to, we handed out in hard copy. It's the act one eighty one report. It's pretty general, and it's general enough that I think you all should read it. Okay. Fantastic. This is when we get into things like the local home report or, you know, you know, I think, yes. So I think there's only so much that everybody can do. Right. So when we start [Charlie ]: talking about essentially the economics of, housing, Could you take a couple of minutes to walk us through what the long term implications of just broader economic change can have on some of the strategies that we're talking about? What we do, the interest rates come down and the log jams start people will start moving from their starter homes or whatever? Are we creating a problem down the road where I don't think we are capable of creating it here. But when we get down the road, if ten years from now we have a housing glut, what does that do to the equity programs? For instance, the shared equity. There may not be as much equity, if prices come down a bit like they did in two thousand eighteen. [Chair ]: Talk about that. And it does occur to me. I've heard things that witnesses have said that I think could be explained. I could actually explain a little of. And maybe if we have time tomorrow after that Samantha Sheehan and Josh Hanford's testimony, which is from eleven to right? It's from eleven is it still from eleven to eleven thirty? Yes. So we'll have, you know, before lunch, we'll have a little time. Maybe we can get into that. One of the things you have heard in the testimony so far is that if the as you've heard, a lot of these programs are supported by housing tax credits. Mhmm. And the housing tax credit, the engine that drives it is the desire on the part of usually banks, but not but other large investors to buy the housing tax credits. And those tax credits are worth to them a dollar off of their taxes. If the tax rate goes down, if the current administration reduces the corporate tax, Even though it's still a dollar for dollar, the evidence seems to indicate that when that happens, it's harder to raise money through the tax credit process. What did I wanna say? I I would appreciate, talking to each of you. I would appreciate feedback on the way I am chairing this meeting. I'm happy to modify the way I'm doing it. As you know, I am I'm not new to meetings, but I'm new to chairing in this particular meeting. So please talk feel free to talk to me and say, could you do this or could you do that for your information and then we'll stop. My meetings my set meetings are I have a meeting every Wednesday morning at eight thirty with the speaker. That's the time when I can really fill her in on what we're doing and something I do, what we're doing, and a special issue. If there is any, she can tell me how to behave or whatever she wants to tell me. At four thirty on the same day, there is a meeting of chairs, all the chairs. I've been through one of them, and they tend to be kind of more kind of coordinating. But I've only been to one. Every Thursday morning, first thing, I have breakfast with, Allison with [Ashley Bartlett ]: the The Senate Housing. [Chair ]: Yeah. For Senate Housing. And, that's something we'll continue, although we may actually spend more time together if we need to for obvious reasons. And right after that, we have a planning meeting here about the week, which consists of our committee assistant, whoever that may be. And our me as chair, our vice chair, and our ranking member, plus our to the extent they can attend, our two, lunch council. Patrick Titterton may JFL [Ashley Bartlett ]: comes only if there's a fiscal note. I don't want to. [Chair ]: Only if there's a fiscal note attached. [Chris Cochran ]: So I [Ashley Bartlett ]: mean, if you want from [Chair ]: the Yeah. [Ashley Bartlett ]: We come. [Chair ]: But Yeah. Well and they they have lots to do. Those meetings are not closed. We're just sitting in here planning the next week. And anyone who wants to listen in or come can. We're just that's what we're doing. Any questions? Yes. [Speaker 11 ]: Yep. So, thank you. Thank you for that and all that you have are doing and have done. So just some suggestions on logistics on how things go. So far, it's just been a lot of information and introduction, but as things go forward, it's gonna be, more pertinent information coming in. And, just suggesting or offering to find a balance between the amount of testimonies that are booked in a certain amount of time to allow for that to happen because as we've seen thus far, people have been getting cut off. There's not an opportunity for questions. And even though we're gonna be inviting them back, that's fine. Then also, I don't know about anyone else in the committee. I will speak for myself. I don't process information that quickly. So this morning was very dense, right, and after a very heavy subject matter. So we had a safety briefing, and then we jumped right in. So for my brain, that's that's not really it needs more of a reset to talk about from safety so that you can focus to learning. Right? And then also as we're going on and we're about to be taking testimony on different subject matter outside of housing and economic development and all these things, when we get to talk about the human rights and all these other things, moving through testimony and committee at a speed and pace like this can be harmful and also not be productive and conducive. So as we go forward, I just wanna plant that seed so we can consider timing and spacing and maybe show that there's a little more flexibility so that people can pivot. [Chair ]: So what I'm hearing let let me translate that into a couple of ideas. One is it's important to do things like what we're doing this afternoon. Nothing. So people can read, think, vegetate, whatever process. Another is that it might be good to have a little more gap sometimes in testimony. Yesterday, for example, was a a very intense day, I realized, having gone through it. Particularly, if we think that the testimony can be rather disturbing, like what happened this morning. I mean, I'm walking around thinking, oh my god, you know, that's hard. And then finally, we really have to allow enough time for questions. And if the pace is such that we're we don't, we have to have them back. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Because, for example, when they were running through the safety thing, they they didn't even allow it. We didn't even see all of the slides, let alone have the time to look at the slides. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I was saying they asked for one. Like, they just said [Emily ]: they needed an hour. [Ashley Bartlett ]: So [Chair ]: And they did get an hour finally. They needed more time. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: They And it wasn't I mean [Chair ]: That's that was that a bit [Elizabeth Burrows ]: on them. But still. Still, they shouldn't be they should either cut the slides out or not or allow time to read them. [Chair ]: Well, this is something we can communicate to them. [Ashley Bartlett ]: Or divide them so you can follow along. So [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Provide them so you can [Ashley Bartlett ]: follow them. So it's it's It's easier to process. Yeah. [Gail Pazzo ]: Can we request when someone is giving testimony for copies of the slides? [Chair ]: Oh, yes. [Speaker 11 ]: So first of all, [Chair ]: the slides are usually first of all, anyone here can request a printed copy Okay. Of the slides. Only some of you have. But if want more if you want them, feel free. Really, just tell them about it now. [Ashley Bartlett ]: The list here. Yeah. [Chair ]: And I would. [Emily ]: And if anyone needs help navigating the legislative website or how to find the testimony or documents, I'm happy to help folks figure that out as well. [Chair ]: And [Ashley Bartlett ]: like, notes and slides are on the website before they're testing on me unless if they have not sent them to me. Okay. But everything today is on there. Everything yesterday is on. Awesome. [Chair ]: Yes, Tom. [Charlie ]: I'm curious to know if there is any kind of a resource that might summarize all of these different agencies and organizations. And by the time I get it all organized, my head will be campaigning again. Right? [Ashley Bartlett ]: Mhmm. So I [Charlie ]: don't know if anybody's ever put together or the agencies maybe put together even a spreadsheet. These are the state agencies. These are the nonprofits. These are the the business players, flowchart. These well, [David White ]: it could be like if you're like four dimensional flowchart because [Charlie ]: they're all connected in a hundred different ways. It would help me kind of visualize how all of these parts can break them out of the cut because there seems to be a lot a certain amount of duplication in what many of them do. I think I can [Chris Cochran ]: put them in a little bunch [Chair ]: of I don't think it that's an impossible request. No. I think it could be done, and it may have been done. But I think the person my thought and, Begali, I'm curious what you think that the person to ask to do that is our ledge counsel. Yeah. [Gail Pazzo ]: And not just in acronyms, either. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Except that our ledge council is brand new. Yes. He does. But [Chair ]: he does. [Ashley Bartlett ]: I would say, given that he was has been in economic development for a while for labor things, he has a decent knowledge, and it might be helpful for him also. [Chair ]: I wanna ask a question, but I think I'd rather do it off the record so we don't have to introduce somebody new. Is it alright with you if

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