SmartTranscript of House General - 2025-02-19 - 1PM

[Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Conversation. We're gonna move it. Alright. We are live. Welcome back, everybody. It's one PM, in house general and housing. We are going to have, two individuals come and discuss landlord tenant issues. And I think to start, we will quickly go around the room to introduce ourselves to our lettuces. And then we'll have Nora Air Arons come up or speak and, talk about her lived experience. You wanna introduce yourselves first? Hi. I'm rep Sonia Lamont, along with the Washington District, North Sound, Elmore, Woodbury, and Southbridge Choate. Hi. I'm Elizabeth Burrows, and I represent well, I represent Windsor one, which is Harlem, West Windsor, and Windsor. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: I'm Debbie Dolgen, and I represent St. Johnsbury, Concord, and Kirby. I have [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: John Charlton. I represent, Bradford, Athens, Chester, and Wyndham. Joe Parsons, Newberry, Topsum, and Gropp. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Gale Pezzo. And I'm trying to call Chester. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: And I'm Ashley Bartley, and I serve Fairfax and Georgia. So, Nora, if you want to start, that would be wonderful. [Witness Nora Aronds]: Hi, everyone. Can you hear me all alright? [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: We can. [Witness Nora Aronds]: Wonderful. I apologize. I am a little under the weather, but I will try to speak as clearly as possible. I'm Nora Arons. I use sheher pronouns, and I'm here today to share my experience personally and professionally regarding housing in Vermont. Would you like me to start my testimony now? [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: The floor is yours. [Witness Nora Aronds]: Great. Well, good afternoon, everyone. Again, my name is Nora Arons. I use she, her pronouns. And for accessibility purposes, I am a white woman in my twenties with long hair and a purple shirt. Before I begin sharing my story, I don't believe I see chair Mahali, but I would like to take a moment to thank chair Mahali and the members of the house general and housing committee for having me speak today. I don't believe I saw representative Emily Krasnow either. But [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Oh, I just walked in. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: And, chair Mulholly will be here shortly. [Witness Nora Aronds]: Okay. Well, hi, Emily. Hey. A real pleasure to see you again. Sorry. I clicked out of the Zoom screen so I could read my testimony. Representative Krasnow and I first worked together on the landlord tenant law study committee for approximately two months starting back in October. I was nominated to be the tenant representative for CVOEO by Rights and Democracy Vermont, and it was an honor to do so. The committee studied the current state landlord tenant laws and evictions process and whether these landlord tenant laws require modernization. It also studied the current housing landscape in Vermont and how this relates to the landlord tenant power dynamic. Although no definitive policy conclusions remained, I'm hopeful that some meaningful change in support of tenant rights and protections can come about from it. Now I will briefly share about my personal life and experience renting in Vermont. I'm originally from New Jersey, but I moved to Burlington in two thousand fourteen to start college, excited to have been accepted at my first choice school. I have rented and worked in Burlington for the past nine years, graduating in two thousand eighteen. During that time, I have lived in seven different apartments, including multiple managed by well known local slumlords. The places I have lived include an on campus apartment, College Street, Bradley Street, Cedar Street, Colchester Avenue, Hyde Street, and now North Union Street. Never have I moved more than two miles, two whole miles. And yet every time I spend I spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to rent a U Haul truck and make a plea on social media for help to move the belongings of mine that I cannot lift by myself or pay a professional moving company. Since two thousand twenty two, I have endured four different no cause terminations carried out by my landlords. For no cause evictions in three years. I currently do not know where I am going to live past the middle of May when my current lease ends, and that scares me. I do not know how others joining this meeting feel, but I personally hate moving. It is overwhelming and exhausting. Each of my moves has been clouded by a desperate battle to find a safe place to live close to where I work and where my friends live. Memories of these times in my life are punctuated by overwhelming stress and fear as I had to simply accept the fact that I did not have any power in the situation and could not fight to stay. It did not matter how responsible of a tenant I had been. It did not matter that I had always paid my rent on time and in full. It did not matter that I was a quiet and tidy tenant who lived my life and respected and upheld the peaceful enjoyment of the premises for my fellow roommates and tenants. I was kicked out, discarded. I hold this all with the knowledge that I inherently maintain the privilege of a cisgender straight white woman because housing injustice inherently negatively affects those of minority identities to a greater degree. Also, I can always move back home out of state with my family if I were to not find suitable housing in Chittenden County. I truly believe we need housing justice in the form of stronger tenant protections, such as statewide just cause eviction legislation and a statewide rental registry. Everyone deserves safe, stable, and culturally relevant housing close by to where their natural systems of support exist. Not only has housing been personally relevant in my life, but professionally as well. For the past eight months, I have worked full time Monday through Friday at a local housing nonprofit, which happens to be the largest housing provider in Chittenden County. This organization provides emergency shelter for single adults and families, transitional or temporary housing, as well as permanent housing. My job title is a family supportive housing advocate. I assist families with at least one minor in the household to find housing as well as remain stably housed. I am joining this meeting today virtually during my lunch break because it would have been a challenge to travel to the state house and take time off of work because every day, I have clients in various stages of crisis that I need to assist and support to try and help them find or keep their own housing. Although not a requirement, families are prioritized as referrals for my caseload if they have a history of chronic houselessness, have DCF involvement, and or a child under the age of six years old in the household. The irony of my choosing to dedicate my career to housing justice while experiencing housing insecurity myself is not lost on me. My relationship with accepting this identity has been a journey. Reflecting back, not only has my experience with evictions been incredibly stressful, but also frustrating as not once has my landlord properly followed the requirement of informing my roommates and me in writing regarding our inability to renew our lease. This mass, matches research conducted by Princeton University, which revealed for every eviction that goes through the courts up to five and a half do not get recorded. I have self evicted a number of times because I know from my professional experience what a barrier having an eviction on your record can be in finding future housing. The first time I found out I was being no cause evicted was when the landlord stopped by unannounced one evening with a new group of tenants to tour the apartment and sign a lease. Once, I found out in an email. We will see what my current landlord does come April as landlords are supposed to inform tenants at least thirty days in advance. On top of the stress of trying to find housing in a county with less than one percent rental vacancy rate. A healthy rate is somewhere between six and ten percent, by the way. I have to also financially plan on what to do with all of my belongings for the two week gap between when my current lease ends the middle of May and when I likely will be able to move into a new place on June first. Research suggests the average renter needs to make twenty two dollars an hour for expenses to be sustainable. However, the average renter makes just thirteen dollars an hour. I am lucky enough to make over twenty two dollars an hour, yet my rent to income ratio still averages between fifty and sixty percent, not including utilities. I wholeheartedly believe we need housing justice as a state because keeping younger people in Vermont will lower health care costs, lower taxes, and lower the cost of living for everyday Vermonters. We need stronger tenant protections because housing injustice fundamentally harms minorities to a greater degree. We need policies like just cause eviction because it will provide a sense of permanency and control for individuals, allowing them to stabilize other areas of their lives, such as employment, physical and mental health, substance use, and more, thus benefiting our local economies and communities. We need just cause eviction because our homelessness population has gone up two hundred percent in the past four years, and it will slow down the housed to unhoused pipeline, helping people like me and preventing the families like the clients I serve from becoming unhoused and living through that trauma. For the past ten years through ups and downs, I have built a life for myself here in Vermont, and I am hopeful that I will continue to have the chance to do some to do so come June first. With policies like just cause eviction, this would not be a hope. It would be a promise. Implementing this policy statewide would change my life and the life of the nearly two hundred thousand Vermonters who rent for the better. It would stabilize our lives, remove ever present anxieties, and allow us to take root and flourish in our communities. I would like to humbly thank everyone for listening to my testimony today, and I am now happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Members of the committee, questions of North? [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: I do have a question. The Princeton study that you or report that you had mentioned, is it all of is it the whole country, or or was it specifically for Vermont? [Witness Nora Aronds]: Yes. So I actually received that statistic from, Tom Proctor from Rights and Democracy Vermont, who I believe is in the room currently. He would be able to better speak to that question. I apologize. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Would you like to speak? [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: Do you have that answer? [Witness Tom Proctor]: I believe it's in New York. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Can you identify it, please? [Witness Tom Proctor]: Sorry. I apologize. My name is Tom Proctor. I'm already [Member Deborah Dolgin]: have a [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: a little louder time so that people can hear. [Witness Tom Proctor]: My name is Tom Procter. I'm a lead organizer for rights and democracy, Vermont. Nora is one of [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: our members of rights and democracy. [Witness Tom Proctor]: The Princeton study that Nora is referring to, I believe, is working at New York, We're not looking at Vermont. There is no studies that are [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: taking place in Vermont around this particular event. [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: I'd assumed. I just wanted to be sure. Thank you. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Okay. I'll go ahead. [Chair Marc Mihaly]: So, [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Nora, you said that the landlord just showed up with tenants to look at the apartment. Did he give you any reason why he was there with people to look at the apartment? [Witness Nora Aronds]: Yeah. So at the time, I had graduated from UVM at that point. My three roommates were still in undergrad at UVM, however, and were graduating that spring and had chosen not to renew the lease. I had informed the landlord already via email my intent to renew the lease. However, he did not respond and then showed up one evening after I got home from work and with the new group of tenants who had applied for the apartment and agreed to come see it and sign the lease. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: So you were gonna renew the lease on your own without the roommates? [Witness Nora Aronds]: And find my own roommates, to clarify. I could not afford a four bedroom by myself. Does that answer [Member Deborah Dolgin]: your question? [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Gotcha. Question. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Yes. Go ahead. So I have a question. I don't know how many units are in the building that you're in, but let's say, there was a drug dealer in your building, and the landlord had to get them out with just cause. I mean, with we've all seen, quote, the drug deal or a budget drug deals. And, I mean, how are you gonna prove drug dealing out of an apartment under just cause? [Witness Nora Aronds]: So do you mean I just want to make sure I understand your question. So let me start by saying I currently live on North Union Street in the old north end of Burlington, and my apartment with my two roommates is just one of a house that was split. So it's just a house that was turned into two apartments at some point. I don't actually know when. I apologize. I do know the house. I once searched it on the city database and discovered the the house itself was built in nineteen o one. But in regards to your question specifically, are you asking if I had a neighbor who was engaging in substance use or selling substances out of their apartment? [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Yeah. Like, doing just cause for criminal activity because they're you believe they're dealing drugs next door. You got multiple people coming to the door, staying for just a couple minutes, you know, all hours in the night, blah blah blah. So how would you how would you want that addressed when, you have a just cause for criminal activity? [Witness Nora Aronds]: Yes. I think this is why a rental registry is important because it is clear it makes it clearer who your landlord is. I've had experience when I lived on Hyde Street that I never even met my landlord. They lived out of state, and they were kind of just an entity. I sent money to virtually every month for rent. So, you know, solid landlord tenant relationships are so important. Mhmm. I have experienced that personally and also professionally. That is partially what I support my clients in. And so I would reach out to my landlord, and just cause eviction does not make it impossible to evict someone. You know, there would be a clause where if the lease was not met or a part of the lease was not met or if there was criminal activity, then a landlord could still evict. Just cause eviction protects tenants who follow every part of their lease and, yeah, just live their lives, go about their day. But if yeah. So if a tenant is violating either part of their lease or violating their neighbor's right to peaceful enjoyment of the property, then the tenants would be in violation of their lease, and state statutes would give landlords the power to pursue repercussions for that tenant. And I could possibly testify in court on my experience with my neighbors on the disruption that was occurring in the building. Does that answer your question? I can also pass it to Tom again if he has anything else to add. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Actually, no. I mean, even with a a violation, it's the proof would be on the landlord to prove that there was a prove that there's a lease violation or if there's criminal activity. [Witness Nora Aronds]: Yes. That is, you know, part of landlord responsibility when owning property. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: I don't I don't know how you prove that. [Witness Nora Aronds]: I mean, I'm not a criminal investigator myself either. I assume, you know, there would be a paper trail in terms of me speak reaching out to the landlord as well as other tenants possibly reaching out to the landlord. And, yeah, I'm not privy to how a landlord starts any sort of investigation with local police, but perhaps Tom knows [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: what Okay. This is the kind of thing that Debbie, this is exactly the kind of thing, I think, that the committee would discuss. Okay. And how are your opinions, your ideas with if we had a landlord or tenant, bill in front of us or element to our to our committee. Nora, thank you so much for taking the time. I'm Mark Mahali, by the way. I was out. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Did you [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: I think we might have a question. Do you have a question? No. So thank you. [Chair Marc Mihaly]: I'm sorry. Sorry. Just before we say goodbye, I I just wanted to ask, I I apologize. I walked in late as well. But, how you said you've been evicted without any cause for four times since when? Well, he's got You give us a year or [Witness Nora Aronds]: Four times in three years. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Yeah. [Chair Marc Mihaly]: Since two [Witness Nora Aronds]: thousand twenty two. [Chair Marc Mihaly]: And can I just ask, I mean, we're barely into twenty twenty five, so that's almost two years? Can you tell me what the the were you in month to month leases at in in those periods or in some of them, it was all one year leases? [Witness Nora Aronds]: Yeah. No. Good question. I have never been involved in a month to month lease nor a six month lease. I have always signed a year long lease. So my first experience with no cause termination or eviction was in May twenty twenty two. That is the time the landlord showed up with the new tenants to tour the apartment and sign the lease. And that actually occurred several months in advance in the fall, in October of twenty twenty one. My record, so to speak, is if I I've always done a June to May lease, and the earliest I've ever found out that I would not be allowed to renew the lease come the following spring is August, so only two months after moving in. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Thank you. Other questions? Thank you very much, Nora. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. [Witness Nora Aronds]: Thank you so much. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Do we have [Witness Nora Aronds]: He's online. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Is John online? Thank you. [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Thank you. [Witness Tom Proctor]: John? Yes. I [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: will unless were you were you here when the committee introduced yourself? Good. Introduced itself. In that case, would you state your full name for the record and tell [Witness Tom Proctor]: us about yourself and what your testimony is? Sure. My name is John Dunbar. And, first, I'd like to thank you for inviting me to testify before you today and for the work you do representing me and my fellow Vermonters. I especially like to thank the Wyndham three representatives, representatives Leslie Goldman, Michelle Bostlen, and as well as senator Wendy Harrison and Nadar Hashim for supporting our work in the housing sector. As I said, my name is John, and for most of the fifty two years, I have been a resident of the town of Rockingham. My family moved to the village of Bells Falls in nineteen seventy three when my twin brother and I were born. Our father, a local business leader, instilled in us the value of serving our community and a sense of doing well by doing good. One of my many roles in the community are also as a member of the Rockingham Planning Commission and as a member of the Rockingham Select Board. I'm here today to speak to you as a housing provider. My twin brother, Jeff, and I became housing providers indirectly. In twenty fourteen, we took over three duplexes in Bellows Falls that our parents had owned since the late nineteen seventies. As we became more involved in our communities, serving on boards, committees, and other groups, and working for a local web authorization company, we became acutely aware of the need for improved housing. Our communities are strongest when we work together to support each other. That's evident when we shop local and shop small. It's evident when we come together during flooding events or other natural disasters. But it's also evident when we work together to provide safe, comfortable, and financially accessible housing. Many of us in the housing discussion statewide have heard residents lament about the challenges of housing having housing stock owned by out of state investors, sometimes referred to as absentee landlords, or the challenges of finding financially accessible or available housing when a not insignificant number of properties are listed as short term rentals. My brother and I know firsthand the value of driving by one of our rental properties daily and interacting with our tenants when we are there to maintain the lawn, remove the snow, renovate a unit, or collect rent. The interactions at the grocery store, coffee shop, or at local events only strengthen those connections. We are grateful for these relationships, and we take pride in our work to improve housing conditions and the collective view of landlords. We also believe that housing is the hub at the center of many challenges we face in small communities, whether it is dealing with mental health or substance abuse issues or attracting employers to provide good paying, secure jobs. For these reasons, mom and pop landlords are a significantly important part of our housing landscape. However, we do not do enough to encourage them to become or remain housing providers, nor do we do enough to protect them from tenants who fail to follow the most basic rules of their leases, to pay rent on time and in full each month. I challenge you to find a small scale local landlord who will testify that being a landlord provides significant passive income. There is very little passive about being a small scale housing provider or developer. It is very much an active profession, often occupied by people with other full time jobs and responsibilities. So I'd like to share with you the financial reality of being a housing provider in a small community that is doing its best to help reduce the many housing challenges we face and that the state has identified as one of its main goals or one of its many goals, I should say. This includes updating housing units, weatherizing the buildings for improved comfort and energy efficiency, managing the risks of lead paint, replacing century old plumbing and knob and tube wiring, all while keeping up with the routine maintenance we all experience as property owners. And one of the biggest challenges, doing all of this while keeping rents affordable. In the provided spreadsheet, you'll see financial data from two duplexes and two triplexes we own. One of the duplexes and one of the triplexes have mortgages. These mortgages range from a hundred and twenty five thousand to a hundred and fifty six thousand at rates of four percent to six point seven five percent. You'll see that the properties without mortgages have a net operating income of approximately sixty two to sixty five percent of the potential annual income if there's no vacancy, while the properties with mortgages have net operating incomes of between eighteen and twenty six percent. Adjusting for a low three point five percent vacancy rate and accounting for property management and capital expenditures, we see net annual income ranging from forty one to forty three percent without a mortgage and a range of minus two point seven percent and plus four point five percent net income with a mortgage, with a mortgage. What this spreadsheet does not show you is that over the last five years, we have invested over two hundred seventy five thousand dollars in updating, improving, and adding housing stock to our small community. With the help of the VHIP program and traditional bank financing, we're in the middle of a three hundred thousand dollar renovation turning an unsafe inefficient duplex into four new one bedroom units. You will note one property has been highlighted in this spreadsheet. This property, a triplex with a mortgage, was purchased in twenty twenty four from an out of state investor with dozens of properties in our community with total unit counts likely in the fifty to one hundred unit range. One tenant in the three unit building has not paid rent since September of twenty twenty four. In December, a local housing agency was able to secure two months of rent while funds were still available. This paid their rent for October and November. The tenant has currently paid no rent for December, January, and now February equaling thirty nine hundred dollars. The tenant is traveling through the southeastern portion of the US selling crafts at art and craft festivals all over the region. They have been gone since mid January, will not be returning until mid April, all while their twenty year old daughter remains in the apartment. The excuses for nonpayment of rent have ranged from a client for commissioned work has not paid them to Elon Musk is preventing full payments of funds to his bank account, and most recently that the art festival in New Orleans, which has historically been a good income producer for them, was scheduled on the same weekend as the Super Bowl and, hence, was an economic disaster for the festival. As you can hopefully see from the spreadsheet, one tenant's failure to pay rent for just a few months can completely wipe out any money at the end of the year that would reimburse the property owner for their time and the risk they take on to provide homes to members [Member Deborah Dolgin]: of our [Witness Tom Proctor]: community, not just for that one unit, but the income from the entire building. Should the property owner have to evict a tenant, the income for the following year or years may also be wiped out. The easy solution is to raise rents enough to cover these undesirable, but sometimes necessary expenses. But that only makes our work to combat rising housing costs that much harder and further cost burdens our tenants. My question to this committee is what recourse does a small community minded landlord have to obtain payment without having to extend their losses by hiring an attorney requesting three to five thousand dollar retainer fees and then having to go through what can be a six month or longer legal eviction process? I also ask you how many rental relief programs are engaged by the noncompliant tenant versus how many are engaged by the landlord that can't afford to further subsidize the housing for the tenant. Will the bank be okay by not getting their mortgage payment? Will the town be okay not getting their quarterly property tax payment or the monthly village water and sewer payment? Will the heating oil provider still deliver fuel full tanks of heating oil if they haven't received payment since the heating season started? Without protections or remedies for the landlords, our local housing providers will not be the small, local mom and pop landlords who interact with their tenants in the community, but rather they're gonna be larger scale, institutional, out of state investors with little connection to the community and a large enough portfolio to absorb the added cost of nonpayment and eviction. Or will long term rentals be turned into short term rentals to avoid the expensive eviction process? Is this the landscape we want where cost burden tenant finances leave the community to support those outside investors as Nora spoke about? Or do we want a system where community minded, energetic, entrepreneurial residents can make a direct impact on their community and provide their families with some added income to stabilize their futures and pay for their risk? We see the effects the current eviction process has on potential local investors. Recently, our older brother moved a very successful home improvement business that was established in Bellows Falls in nineteen thirty three. Not just out of town, he moved it across the river to New Hampshire because of tax regulations that were more favorable to businesses in New Hampshire compared to Vermont. He has also invested in over one hundred housing units and, like us, takes pride in providing better quality housing. But nearly all of those units are in New Hampshire, and he is contemplating selling the approximately ten units he still has in Vermont because he does not feel that Vermont supports him as a housing provider, instead directing most of the resources to protecting the tenant. I know that there are many examples of entrepreneurial small scale housing providers and developers in many of our raw rural communities throughout the state. We can't afford to lose them, and we need to show them that they are a valuable tool in our work to reverse the housing challenges we face today and likely in the foreseeable future. And I thank Nora for her testimony, which certainly is frustrating, and, I applaud her for the work that she does. And I appreciate your time, and I welcome any questions. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Committee, any questions of the witness? Go ahead. Not [Vice Chair Ashley Bartley]: a question. I just want to thank you. I think a lot of times we hear anecdotal stories on for for both sides, and this definitely is a very contentious topic. We we spent time last session on it. We've talked about it this session. I find it really helpful to have our numbers in front of me, and a lot of times, that can be uncomfortable to share. So I just wanna thank you for your testimony today and being willing to share these numbers. It's, in my mind, very helpful. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Go ahead. You're welcome. [Chair Marc Mihaly]: Sorry. Yes. Another one? Yeah. Have you had I don't think I've ever gotten a chance to ask the landlords. I mean, we've heard a lot about these Vermont Housing Finance Agency funds for folks to renovate or upgrade or modernize or weatherize their homes. And we've also heard about funds for, you know, helping to pay for missed rental, you know, missed missed rents. And I was curious what your experience had been, whether you've, whether you're, you know, just do you do you qualify for those things? Do your renters qualify for those types of programs? [Witness Tom Proctor]: Yeah. Great. Thank you for the question. So, historically, we've had as many as fifty percent of our tenants be on some sort of state subsidy, typically section eight. We have rented to people through the pathways program in the past. Currently, I think we only have three tenants who three out of seventeen who are on section eight, and and some of them are our very best tenants. We have utilized various resources that the state provides, and we were part of a VHIP one point o project when it first started in twenty twenty, where we turned a an unsafe and you know, no one could really go in the building. It was a a third unit in a building that was attached but separate from the the other units. It was rotting, into the ground, and we either were gonna have to pay to demolish it and never get that money back, or we decided to invest approximately a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in completely gut renovating the building, and we created a brand new unit in twenty twenty one and utilized the thirty thousand dollar BHIP grant. And then, currently, we are in the middle as I said in my testimony, we're in the middle of taking a duplex and turning it into four one bedroom units, u utilizing some bank financing where we had to refinance a property that we own. We are receiving a hundred and eighty thousand dollars in BHIP money. And so it's another complete gut rehab to bring that up. This as I also said, this this past or the current tenant that we're having payment issues with utilized a state funding program to pay for two of the months that they were behind, and there is absolutely no expectation on their end what to do after that point. So they have theoretically, they have not paid from their own funds for almost six months now. Other questions. And I will say that we we are also utilizing because I'm in the weatherization business, I'm very familiar with the weatherization rebate programs through Efficiency Vermont, and we also utilize those whenever possible to, you know, to help improve our buildings as well. And in the years that we have owned our properties, very, very, very little of the money actually goes into our pockets. It's actually going right back into the buildings that we own because, as you know, we have some of the highest, sorry, oldest housing stock in the country. It is very expensive to repair. It's very expensive to build, now. And so, quite honestly, that's what what's needed when you're living in a small rural community and the housing stock is sold that just to get it back up to the level that it needs to be at for it to be safe and comfortable requires, tremendous amount of reinvestment. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Questions of John? I guess I do have a couple of questions, John. Have you had to evict tenants? Yes. Did you have to use a did they self evict after you gave them a notice of eviction, or did you have to go to court? [Witness Tom Proctor]: We have had to use attorneys in many cases. Sometimes, some people have gone ahead and found or, actually, I would say that if they were in a pathways program or subsidized housing in some way, the agency that worked with them was able to find them housing so that they did not have to go through eviction. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: But you have had to go through evictions. Yes. Did any were any of those evictions do you remember were they because of were they all nonpayment of rent, or were they any of them other violations such as dealing drugs or other activity like that? [Witness Tom Proctor]: One was a they had been incarcerated and therefore did not pay rent. And that one, that was probably in twenty fifteen. And then most recently, the we haven't had to go through a legal process. As I said, the agencies were able to find them new housing, and they just they the apartments either weren't the right fit for that client because of any, you know, issues that they had had or the client was not being safe in the building and putting others at risk. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Thank you. Any final questions of John? John, thank you so much for taking the time out of what I'm sure is a busy day to testify. [Witness Tom Proctor]: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Alright. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: We now have [Member Deborah Dolgin]: Recovery day. [Member Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: It's recovery day, and I guess we're waiting for witnesses. So I think this is a good time for the committee to take a break. And we I'll tell you what, let's keep it to a short break. Could we reconvene here in five minutes? I'm just giving you a little time. Is that alright?

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SmartTranscript of House General - 2025-02-19 - 1PM

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