Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: Our communications director, we have a little bit of a slideshow, not a long one,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: just to give you

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: a flavor of what VITA is, who

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: we are, what we do. Everybody, welcome back. This is general and housing, and it is still amazingly January 7 still, and we are continuing our initial hearings on what is working, what is not working, and what should we do differently with legislation in the housing committee. And our witness is Joan Goldstein, who was commissioner, I would point out, for a long time of economic development and hails from South Royalton originally, where I knew her, and is now, she's Executive Director of the Vermont Economic Development Authority, VIDA. Take it away.

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: Excellent, And thank

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: so, when you testified, give us the one minute version of what VITA is and what your current hours are.

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: Perfect, I will do that. Thank you very much and happy new year everybody, good morning. So BDAT stands for Vermont Economic Development Authority. We were established in 1974, so we celebrated fifty years. The sole purpose was really to spur economic development and prosperity in the state. We have about a two eighty five million dollars portfolio of loans. 30% of those are agricultural enterprise, the RADSDA, manufacturing, energy, broadband, tourism, hospitality properties, technology. So it's a very good, diverse portfolio. We are currently pretty self sufficient. We borrow money in the interbank market. We have floating rate through commercial paper, as well as some term debt through another bank. And we're like a bank in that sense that we're borrowing money and we lend it out. We don't take deposits, so we're not doing retail. It's all businesses, farms, not for profits. The current statute allows us to lend directly to agricultural enterprises. And on the commercial side, most of our work is done through other banks. So banks will lend to a commercial enterprise and ask us into the transaction to help with everything from liquidity or they might have concentration limits or What is a concentration? Sorry. So banks will lend to various sectors and they put limits on how much they would lend to a particular sector and or a particular borrower, right? So that they're not overexposed in one particular borrower or sector so that when the winds of fortune change, that they're not caught unexpectedly. So there are times they invite us in. And so the restriction right now for VIDA is that we could do all that, and we could do for agricultural, we could lend to the farmer housing and farm worker housing. And on the commercial side, we're allowed to lend to assisted living facilities, even though that's residential, but it expressly states we cannot lend on the housing side. And so back when I was at the agency, even we talked about this, like we're in the middle of a housing shortage, why not have VIDA also have the ability to lend? Wouldn't more lenders make sense than less? Like what harm would that do? And at the time, I don't think it just ever made it to committees. I don't think it did. And then fast forward, I came into VITA in April and took over as chief in July. And we thought, well, there's still a housing shortage. We know that there are housing developments that are very income restricted, and rightly so, if they're taking state money and state appropriations or tax credits. But we know that there's also a dire need for the non income restricted. So beta is gonna hire 900 people or something, right? They definitely would not qualify for some of those perpetually affordable developments. And we know of other housing related developments that we can play a role in, and I'm not sure yet whether BHFA will play a role. The Hula big development in Burlington, there's a Winston Crowley development, and there's also a hotel development down in Rutland that will have market rate apartments. The idea behind our ask is just, could we participate?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Two things, Joe. One is just for the committee, what you just heard a minute ago when she described how they play different roles is a classic example of an institution using leverage. In other words, there's only so many public dollars, right? Only so many dollars, and so rather than just be the sole lender who walks in and supports the whole project, they're constantly partnering with private sector banks. Not constantly, but often with private sector banks injecting some money into the deal for some part of the deal. Yes. You know, they may cover loan loss reserves or they may do all kinds of things, but it's a classic

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: example of leverage. 70 of our commercial portfolio is done with a partner bank or credit union. Right.

[Unknown committee member]: Right, so that issue, really we have up

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: to 40 My

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: other question, excuse me for interrupting, but they were just saying, I'm aware of your ask, is there a bill?

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: I do not know the answer to that. I know we got language to both House Commerce and Senate Economic, but to my knowledge, I don't know just yet.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Alright, that would probably be before House Commerce. Okay. And I was just Yeah, that's where you are, and that's where Mara

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: is. Exactly. So,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't know whether What do we

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: have up? I don't know where

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: we are. Okay, so this

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: was the proposed

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: language, so that we give deference to the HFA, so we're not encroaching on anything that they would do. We're not duplicating any effort. Not, we just wanna be additive, so that the idea, if you look at the economic development plan of the future of Vermont, Vermont Futures Project, on their housing page, it was sort of like more lenders, more CDFAs, more people who could help aid this problem, and the acknowledgement that we need housing across all of the income spectrum. Multi unit. Multi unit, sorry. Yeah, we're not gonna be doing individual mortgages to mom and pops. Is really for like five plus units, whether that's rental or for purchase, but it's really about the development. So in commercial banks and credit unions, that type of development is kept within the commercial portfolio of those institutions. And like I said, we were able to participate with them either subordinated or senior with them on those, and we just want to extend that capability so that

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: we could do it for those housing developments that they're also. Let me again, just for the benefit of the committee, forgive me if you all know this, but just to make sure and for listeners, when she says subordinated, that's really important. In other words, when you partner with a commercial lender, the commercial lender, maybe they're charging 7% or whatever, which may sound like a lot to a lot of people, but actually, if you're involved in a project with risk, that's not a lot, and you protect yourself. The way you protect yourself is you wanna know that if the project goes south, you can take it, sell it, and use the money to pay yourself off, right? And you don't want anybody ahead of you in line to slurp up that money. You want to know you're first. So when VIDA or other entities partner with a bank, they're not VIDA wants security too, but they'll be in if they're the only other ones, they'll be in second position for that money, not first.

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: They And not always. Sorry. Not always. And not always.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But that's what the term subordinate means. Mhmm. It means that they will accept that the the commercial lender is first in line. And that's not always there, but it's part of what these quasi public institutions can do. Yeah, no, that's

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: a no other question, and just stop me if I'm using terms that maybe people aren't asking anyway. What we really like to do are participations with banks, and that's where we don't have to do, it doesn't necessarily have to be subordinated to the senior lender. And the reason why they would ask us in is currently we're in a great capital position that we could offer discounted rates to the market. That is by virtue of some of the ARPA funding that we received several years ago, and we've lent it out and starting to come back in again, and we wanna pass that benefit onto the marketplace so that more things could happen. So as an example, on the ag side, we can go low, we can go to 5% and on the commercial, we've done some at 6%. It's not forever, that's just currently, that's what we're faced with. We have forestry program as an example, is at 2.5%. But all of this is done depending on who the funding source is. And on the forestry program, it was something that was funded by the state. So maybe a little bit more about BITA. Predominantly, we're doing commercial through another bank, about 70% of our portfolio. There are some instances where we could do direct, that's the energy and the broadband portfolio. Agriculture is where the primary lender. And in agriculture, we could do farm worker housing, as well as farmer housing. That's part of the business transaction typically, so that's already done. On the commercial side, the only lending we could do on the housing would be if it's senior housing or assisted living. There's also some mixed use where if the predominance of the development is commercial, then we could fund that. But if it's mainly housing, we're only gonna take a small percentage of whatever Elizabeth, that commercial

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: go ahead.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Thank you. I'm confused because I have written down that you said at the very beginning that you lend for assisted living facilities, but not housing, not senior housing. It? Yeah, guess, so take a facility like Wake Robin, right?

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: It's a senior housing. It really is, it's not necessarily assisted living. But we've been able to lend to assisted living facility as well as senior housing after Jack Prince is giving to the HFA. That was achieved a couple of years back before my time.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So what if you had a place where there was both assisted living and kind of what do you call it? Like a continuum of care. A continuum of care. So would you participate in the whole kit and caboodle or only in the assisted living?

[Unknown committee member]: I think we can do

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: the whole kit and caboodle provided that VHFA has passed on it. That's currently how the legislation is written. And we would do, again, it would have to be with another bank, unless in the case of Wake Robin, as an example, they were eligible for a bond. So with the bond, we're just arranging the bond and selling it into the marketplace. And that is where you can fund the entire thing. Otherwise, we're doing a 40% of the deal up to 5,000,000. That's currently our statutory limitations on commercial lending. 40% up to

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: 5,000,000 to 2,000?

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: Up to 5,000,000.

[Unknown committee member]: Okay, thank you.

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: I don't really have much else. I know that you've asked questions before about how much of our funding is fixed or floating. So of the $285,000,000 in loans, we've got $234,000,000 in debt. We have a total moral obligation of the state of January, but we're only using 155,000,000. What that does is that helps our lenders. So we borrowing money to lend, and when we borrow that there's a certain rate, and on the portion that we're borrowing, the 155, we get about a 25 basis point discount, if you will, due to that moral op. We're not doing that for you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Moral obligation, you mean the state's?

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: So it's the state's, so basically the state's not gonna let VIDA go, not honor its debt obligation to that bank that's lending. So whether it's commercial paper or a line of credit. On the agricultural side, we have a line of credit. CoBank doesn't use the moral of, it's secured by the entire agricultural loan portfolio. Yeah, so I just, I want to, yeah, our thought here is that there are a couple of things that, there's a housing shortage, we wanna participate, housing is economic development, and we're an economic development authority, we wanna have that ability to expand our capability to help this issue. Again, not stepping on whatever BHFA does because they do quite a lot, but there may be instances where they're not going to want to participate and we would like to play that role. Again, we are not going to be actively pursuing it. We're asked in by the bank. So if the bank doesn't need us, no harm, no foul. If they do, or the credit union does, then we would play a role similar to what happens in the commercial market every single day.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you, are there any questions?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I guess my very brief question, hi Gayle, the treasurer's office explained their role in kind of helping to top off dollar amounts that help bring a project into reality. Your role is at a much deeper fundamental level to help bring projects into reality.

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: Yes, and So as an example, there is an assisted living facility refunded with treasurer P checks funding, the 10% for a month. So we're able to borrow at like 1% and then pass some of that savings on to the developer. In other words, they

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: remember You be intermediary They use these intermediate I mean, the treasurer's office uses intermediaries. They they're one of them.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: They could be one of Okay. Great.

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: And additionally, would be help needed. There are many reasons why a bank comes in to see VIDA, whether they'll participate, and we just wouldn't have that capability. Great, we could help.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you Joan, much appreciated. Thank you. So, our next witness is Maura Caledonia, ED of BHFA, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, fresh from another committee.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: A break or are you?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No, no, we took a break.

[Unknown committee member]: Okay, sorry.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Mara, so we're, just to repeat, we're engaged in what I call an initial general look at what is working, what is not working and where we should go with respect to housing. And appreciate anything you have to tell us in that regard.

[Unknown committee member]: Thank you for letting me,

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: oh my gosh, I'm sorry.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: I'm just logging into the Zoom, sorry

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I listened.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Hi, I am Laura Collins. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. I am grateful to be here and to have you all back in your fears. Thank you for coming back and being willing to do this again. I want to give you exactly what you asked for. And I'm hoping I have the ability to share my screen because I want to click through my slides. And so while I pull that up, knowing Chair Mihaly was very clear that what he didn't want, what she didn't want to know about the things you already know about, which is we have a housing crisis and what's needed and all that. And yet it's me and I can't stop myself. And so what you're going see is that my first slide is, about the need, but then I promise I'm moving up. So let me pull up my, here's a go, Okay.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: There we go. Give it a second to catch up. I'm just so fast.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: So what's working, what's not, and what should you all do next? This is such an opportunity for me to tell you what to do. Appreciate it. So again, in parentheses, real quick, what's needed, you already know we need 30,000 or 40,000 homes, that's not surprising. What I want to point out is that most of what's needed is housing for under 80% of area median income, the more affordable housing. And so what you can see here, if you added up those blue bars of housing under 80%, that is three quarters of the need is at that lowest price point. There's still a quarter that needs that middle income housing. Also two thirds of the housing should be rentals compared to owned homes. So this is imprecise. The reason it's imprecise is not because I'm bad at math. I am good at math. It's that if you can imagine a mobile, you know, with wires and delicate things, if you were to, the housing market is a market. If you do something in one region of the state or in one ownership versus, rental or at one income level price point, and you pull on that part of the mobile, the rest of the mobile will respond. If you build a lot of elderly housing, you may free up a lot of big old homes that elders have been living in, because they want to move to the product that you've created. If you build more modest homeownership homes, you may find more rentals, fewer rentals needed because those people now have access to become homes. And so housing is a market, it is a public good. We can see every day how it's affecting our economy. It's a public good, but it's achieved only through private market means and private actors. And so it's a stickier widget than some of the other problems you all deal with where it's all public entities and things like that. So when you ask what's working, I want to be very clear that there's been a lot of exciting things, and new programs that you all have been supporting. There are several new programs, you did for people earning less than 80% of area median income. I have some links here of some examples. I'm not gonna wanna click on this link. This home is for sale. I hope and I anticipate, I saw your witness list. You're gonna have people come in. The commissioner will come in. I bet you he's gonna be talking about the VHIP program. I see Kathleen Burke from the state housing authorities on your list. I bet she's going to be talking about the infill program. I hope she shows you this link of the homes for sale, because it is great to scroll county by county pictures of actual homes, addresses, Starksboro, all across the state. You can see these beautiful new construction manufactured homes available. They sold over 100 of them last year. And the most beautiful part of the table is not the picture. It's the rightmost column that has the price point. And these numbers are like $95,000.107000 dollars for a three bedroom home. It's they're doing something impressive. That's working well. The state has also had a great program, helping the communities themselves, the parks, improve themselves. So I just

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We have a question.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Oh, was going-

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'm sorry.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Oh no, I was pointing to Sorry.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Really quickly, VHIP, we know it's working, we know it's been working. Would you recommend something that didn't happen last year and ensuring that if any funds go to BHIP, which they absolutely should, that they're put into base funding this year instead of one time funds?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: I would support that because I do think that this is a program that has proven it's efficient and effective, and it's really tapping into the rehab and bringing back online of units. And I just want to call, I'm one of the administrators of each of these programs, and you're going hear about them. So I just wanted to call this out to say, I love what y'all are doing. When we say what's working, what's working is you all taking some risks, trying some new things, throwing the spaghetti on the wall and seeing if it sticks. I like that. Okay. I don't know exactly what it's always going to look like. But I like that we're, we're looking at a changing market, changing demographic, and we're trying some things out. It's okay also to learn and change. Again, I'm not the administrator of VHIP. I don't want to get into the details about the one point zero versus two point zero versions and what happened there, but that's okay. That's great. Can we do more of that please? Where we try something out, we learn about it. We're like, Oh, did a little too much of that, not enough of that, wish that had been different. Someone got away with something there. You know, nothing fraudulent and bad, but learn from it and then have a two point zero burden. I'm going tell you about an example where BHFA is doing this. It's okay to admit that sometimes our fears didn't come true. And maybe not this committee, but there's some other committees that didn't love these programs I'm highlighting at the beginning. And they were scared that the sky was going to fall. And I would say the sky hasn't fallen and it's okay. Like they were right to be aware of the risks of these programs. And they're right to say, look, some administrators of programs know how to run good government programs and the sky doesn't fall and it's okay. Tracking data, doing reporting. I'm thinking of the CHIP program here. It hasn't even launched yet. But one thing I like about that is that there's annual reporting to it. So if we start creating a lot of housing that we all collectively didn't really envision was going to be the goal of CHIP and we get too much of one thing, oh, change it next year. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. We're going to do more. And looking at outcomes and outputs, I wanna just say it's not just legislative committees that get suspicious and have fears. I'll be the first to admit, I was a little nervous about the manufactured housing infill program. I thought it was a great program and was worthy of support. I didn't know where the mortgages were gonna come from. These are leased lots and owned homes. And Representative Pezzo knows better than anyone that that is a conflict conflict right right there. There. I'm I'm a a mortgage lender. We don't do mortgages, VHA, we're one of them. Getting better now. It is, but like we, it's hard to get loans, thirty year loans on an annual lease lot, right? And so I didn't know that the mortgage lenders were gonna step up and be there. And I thought this may have been a waste if there was no known mortgage solution, but lo and behold, the credit unions especially have really stepped up. They've come up with twenty year products. They're doing it. And so there's one, I was wrong. Happy to admit it. I love it when. So what else is working? Well, now I want to get into some programs that we do administer. The top row is our bread and butter. This is kind of tax credit housing. This is the deeply affordable. This is 80% of median and below. You can see some numbers about what a household of three would earn for our traditional programs and what the rents would be for those programs. I just wanted to, I only listed five counties here, you know that there's more than that, but I want it to fit on my chart and be pretty. But this gives you an idea of a smattering of the state and what we can do with our traditional government programs.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: And I'm

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: going to talk a little more about what we can do with affordable housing resources. But what's happened in the last few years and what you all are more focused on are the next two rows, which is our middle income programs. Now, why would you be more focused on the next two rows of middle income? Not because middle income people are more important than lower income people, but because y'all paid for the second two rows. You pay for the top row through VHC B and the funding that goes to support that deeply affordable housing. But at least from VHFA, we're running federal tax credits with or without you. And so that doesn't get as much ongoing attention by the legislature. But I wanted to call out and remind you all that the rental middle income, we call that the rental revolving loan fund. You all gave $10,000,000 to that program. We also asked the treasurer for some of the 10% in Vermont money and put it into that program. And we're able to help households earning those incomes. You can see 6 figure incomes, and they theoretically could charge up to the amounts that I have on this table. They are not, I can tell you right now, because we wouldn't approve that. Those are above market rate rental amounts. So I'm just saying what the absolute caps are that we publish to the developers of what is possible. And what we have been seeing is below that. Similarly, the homeownership middle income program, you can see the income limits for a three person household and the price point limits of homes that

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: are sold. Yes, go ahead. Just to clarify, this is a three person household or a three person income household? Like me, children.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: It could be one wage earner with two children not earning. Could be people not earning income. These are

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: income levels. These are income limits for the household. For a three person household.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Regardless how many of them are working.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: For a three bedroom, three person household?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Well, you could have a, what we are seeing is that the majority of households in Vermont is two to three, it's roommates. No, that there's two to three people in households typically. And the most common types of homes that we're seeing built on the homeownership side is three bedroom homes. That's very common. We're doing a lot of two bedrooms as well through this program. The rental is actually smaller.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: There are more often one and two bedroom units.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: So it's not, I'm not trying to match up that you have to have a three bedroom unit for a three person household. I just had to pick a couple numbers to give you an idea. I could have picked one bedroom units, but there's not a lot of one bedroom home ownership, and there's

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: not That's a lot of just why I'm asking to clarify it. That's all.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So just to clarify, let's take the middle box. So, what you're saying is, the middle income rental for, let's say, Addison County.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Highest limit.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The highest limit to be for a three person household is 125 ks. And that theoretically, again, at the highest limit, that could support a rent of 3,600.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: That's our income limit. Right.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, okay.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: I'm sorry, our rent limit. Your rental limit.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yes. So I have a question similar to this. If there's a roommate situation and two earners and a child, are they looking at incomes or just? It depends on the development actually. So we have historically looked at that as one household income and

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: we would combine those incomes. Let's think of a romantic relationship or something where they're living and sharing. But I can think of another example of a rental middle income program where they've said it's associated with a workforce. And they said, you know what, we're going to put four unrelated workers in this four bedroom apartment. And we'd like for you to count their income separately because we're going to have separate leases and charge them separately and do all that. And so we're exploring that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yep.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So wouldn't it be the person on the lease if there's roommate situation or even a significant other, wouldn't it be the person on the lease?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Yes, it depends on how that lease is written. If the lease is written for a three bedroom unit and you and I and represent Hooper, you know, are all on the lease and that, so they look at all of our incomes, and that we're sharing this three bedroom unit. But, if I'm just renting the one bedroom of the unit, it's that gets calculated out of one person household and you'd be a one person. So we are trying to be flexible and look at this in both ways. Okay. That's not the case for traditional government programs. That's something that we're trying out new and different with this program.

[Joan Goldstein, Executive Director, Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA)]: Was going to ask.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Sometimes there are three people with those incomes in those units because they can't afford to do it otherwise. So do you take that into account? So would you? Well, you have a limit on the household income,

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: because So they would switch, like for instance, in the employer situation, we are looking at, it would be the one person income limit and they'd just be renting the one bedroom. So, I have to be honest that this is a new thing and we haven't closed on that loan yet. So, some of those details are still being figured out. But instead of a 3% income limit, we are looking at using a one percent income limit for that project. So each person could qualify separately, which is similar to how the rental rebate program works in

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: the state of Vermont. You can have roommates and still qualify as an individual person sharing a roommate situation. We're trying to mirror their genitals at stake. Yes, Mary.

[Unknown committee member]: Not really, more credit.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I'm gonna knock, you can go up here. Tax purposes, it's household income tax. Tax For for income tax, for property taxes, all that. Not our own taxes. Isn't it household income?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: How people fill out, I don't get into how people fill out their income taxes.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: That's still individual, the income part of it. Because you can

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: have married filing jointly, married filing separately, you can have had a household, you can not get into that.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: And if you're renting, you're not doing it properly. Right.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Go ahead. I think this was going

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: to be the slide that got the most questions.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: I want point out that as you all, so I said that there was $10,000,000 for the rental revolving loan fund and we used some treasury funding that, the, you also gave us $24,000,000 for the homeownership middle income program, if you remember. And then last year, so we had 10,000,000 for the rental program that, those projects have been approved by our board. They are in development. Some of them haven't started construction yet because one goal of the rental revolving loan fund was to have smaller developments in more rural areas, newer and emerging developers who may need more time and support in building this rental housing. And so some of that has moved a little slower. Some of it has closed and it's being operated, occupied. Homeownership, those have all been awarded. Construction. Those are now in the sales phase and buyers are buying those middle income ownership units right now. And both programs, as we've moved along, this is an example where we've learned a lot of things. We've had, some understanding of how we confuse the marketplace with certain things. We didn't anticipate this whole roommate question that you all have picked up on. Like I said, one of the projects is an employer who wanted to put four unrelated individuals into a four bedroom property. That town is in rural Vermont. There's not a lot of four bedroom rentals to be comps in the market. So they had appraisal issues. Then there's a market study issue because they're like, we don't have a lot of five plus person households wanting to rent in this town. We're like, no, no, no, it's a different market. And so we're learning at how our program needed to adjust to accommodate these unique situations. And so last year, you all awarded us $16,000,000 more that we could spend between the rental and the homeownership programs. We don't yet have a grant agreement with the state and we have not that awarded that money because we are trying to do what I said in the last slide, is learn from the experience of the one point zero versions of these programs. And we're just now seeing those homes be sold and watching this all play out through the Habitat chapters and the shared equity and the market rates in that sense. And we want to make some changes before we open that up, we anticipate opening that up.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Just to clarify, the $10,000,000 that you got for rental, that's in development.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: That, yeah, and a bunch of them are occupied. The

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: $24,000,000 for home ownership, all of that is awarded and we're in the sales phase.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Yes, although we pulled back a couple awards for the products that we do really, all along.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What's the 16,000,000?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: 16,000,000 you all gave us last year to say, can you please keep these programs open to both these programs? And the 16 could be split between the rental and the home market.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I remember we were, so did we end up giving you

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: $16,000,000

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Flexibility as to which, yeah, from last year, and that isn't spent yet.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Correct. We hope to open that up in the next couple months.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I've got a quick question. Any idea what the data is on the number of people outside of Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Isle who earn more than $195,000 a year? Who are homeowners? Who qualify for the middle income homeownership.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: So you're asking, well, overall across all the counties, this covered 95% people. So statewide, I can say like 0.5% of people earn more than these amounts, roughly. How many people- How does

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: that middle income? That's my question. I mean, we have AMI, which is in Windsor County, I believe it's $85,000 a year, somewhere around there. The median income?

[Unknown committee member]: The area median income.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yeah, There's a big leap between, for Windsor County, between $85,000 and $195 and $144 to $195

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: So you don't like the word middle, is that it?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I don't. Because I don't think it's middle. I get that 95% of the owners or renters fall into that category because they are part of that program. But it's kind of a false data because what I'm asking is what percentage of the population falls into that actual category?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: 95% of owners are less than these amounts. So I can see what you're saying about it shouldn't be called middle. The history of the name is that the governor called it the missing middle homeownership program at the beginning. This governor did, yep. And the planning people said, wait a minute, we own the term missing middle. That means a type of development between duplexes and quads or six plexes is considered the missing middle structure, physical shape of a home. And so we were using a missing middle term about incomes for a design term that has a long national history of being used, so we need to change it to something like a middle income, because I need to keep it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But aren't these numbers derived from something like a percent of AMI?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Yeah, can go up to 150% of the area median income.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So, in Chittenden County, 150% of the area median income gets you to 1 195, right? There's your answer.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: And if it's adjusted by household size.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, adjusted by household size.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: The bigger the household size, the bigger

[Unknown committee member]: income the number.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Am I correct that AMI is an individual number? These are household numbers. No, it's AMI first household size.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: How is many more

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: household size. Right? But this Base set about It says area median income by household. Area median income is

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Technically, has sets

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: it wage earners.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: It varies. It has it has, like, number of people in the household adjusted by Okay. Depending on county. Depending on county.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: HUD sets it for a family of four. That's the median, is the family of four. And then HUD will reduce it by, I'm gonna round numbers, say 20%, if you have a three person household, two person, a one person, and they increase it by 15 ish percent. If you have a five person, six, seven, eight. So it's important to remember that an eight person household does not, if you look at census data earn more than a four person household. If I were to show you actual incomes, it's a bell curve. And where does the bell curve P? In a four person household. That's why HUD wants to set income limits at the highest income level possible. And, but HUD doesn't then taper off. You don't often have eight wage earners in an eight person household. It doesn't taper off the way reality does. It keeps saying, you have another mouth to feed, you have another set

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: of healthcare bills. You can, the income limit can be higher as the household goes higher. But when we did the basic needs budget, part of the reason that we changed the definition of a household was bless you, because of the rise in now dominance of people with roommates as a household structure.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: That may be rising, but our household sizes are shrinking. They're very small and they're shrinking everywhere.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: So another thing that's what's working is this spaghetti map, which is the agencies and the programs that do the affordable housing work in the state that frankly, mostly happens outside of your earshot, not because it's secret, but because you all don't fund it and have anything to do with it. But there is a lot of housing activity that happens among these different agencies working collaboratively together. We work really well together. A lot of us serve on each other's boards and we have a housing recovery working group that meets every other week so that we can coordinate and things like that. This is last year's report. You should be getting a new one any day now, of saying who got the money and what did they spend it on? You can see the top part of this chart are the sources of money. There's state appropriations, there's one time funds, there's general funds, pay that row zero, I don't know why that's there. There's federal housing money. There's the equity we get from tax credits, state and federal. And then in the bottom half of this chart, we can see how we all use that money. We used it for multifamily housing, for down payment assistance, to build the housing. And so you're gonna hear from each of these agencies, you're gonna hear about each of these programs. I don't want to steal their thunder. The one thing I wanted to point out is this weird number. This report comes out every year from DHCb. And if you go back in time, that row didn't used to be there. And it certainly didn't used to be there in such a big number, 43,000,000 of one time general funds. And you all did that because you knew what I've told you with the data. Most of the demands under 80% are very median income. Most of the assistance needs to go to rental. And you saw that VHCb was a strong administrator in history of that program. And so when you did that, what did you do? I'm just supposed to be telling you what's working. And I want to tell you what worked and why. And I'm not going tell it from BHCb's perspective. Gus, of course, will show up with his pretty pictures and all the stories of what has happened. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you really boring numbers, because that's what

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I do

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: best. And what you did when for a couple of years in a row, you were able to give extra money to the affordable housing system was that you didn't know it, but you were helping VHFA to tap into some money that we have access to. And that is our tax exempt financing. This is bonding. I've told you how I get money from investors and then lend it out. I keep doing this motion. And that money that I get is really cheap because it's tax exempt and people don't pay taxes on those earnings. Well, that every year, the state's tax exempt bond issuers, which is VIDA for doing economic development, it's VHFA for doing housing, it's the state bond bank for doing infrastructure and schools and hospitals and stuff like that. And it's VSAC, the student assistance corporation for doing higher ed learning. We back in the day used to thumb wrestle behind closed doors about how we were going to divvy up the state's allocation of this tax exempt bonding. The state gets a limited amount, and we all wanted our hands on it for our different reasons. Well, in 2010, the federal government said to VSAC, we're going to do higher ed lending, and your role is going to shift. And VSAC can tell you all about that shift. When they did that, it meant that VSAC didn't need or use as much of that tax exempt lending at that point. So you can see in my history chart that my staff keeps that in 2010, they made this change and the feds don't make the money expire the very year we get it. There's actually a three year delay. There's some rollover that they last have, But you can see that starting a couple years later, that all of a sudden, VHFA was getting a lot of this tax exempt money because V SAC didn't need so much and we couldn't use it all. And so what this is saying is in 2013, there was $31,000,000 of tax exempt money that we were awarded to use on housing and we couldn't get out the door because the deals didn't work. It just, we were offering really cheap interest rates and they weren't cheap enough. And the cost of land, even at that point was too high and development was too uncertain and all that. So it expires and we couldn't use it. And the next year, almost $60,000,000 expired. Now this isn't an appropriation. This is the authority to borrow that money from Wall Street at a cheaper rate, but it's not nothing, okay? So if you added up those rows 2013 through 2021, you would see that the state of Vermont, just for what I'm paying attention to, which is the housing money beach figure. I don't know what the state did in total. I don't know what the bond bank, whatever, but we lost about $300,000,000 of what we could have done. And then 2022, 2023, 2024, that turned around. Why did it turn around? Because of this. Because all of a sudden there was more money to support affordable housing, which means all of a sudden these deals started to make economic sense. They started to pencil, okay? And when that happened, when we could use this tax exempt money, the amazing thing that happens is automatically just by virtue of using this money, housing projects are eligible for federal tax credits. And those federal tax credits are going to pay 35% of the cost to develop that housing. Now, that housing has to be affordable. The developer has to be willing to abide by all the mind numbing federal tax credit rules. That has to be a pretty sophisticated developer. There's a lot of things that have to come together for this system to work, but look, it did work. And for many years we weren't losing money. And lo and behold, as of December 31, I'm sorry to say that we just lost $11,000,000, because it's, as of midnight on the end of the year, we are now starting to lose some money again.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Was that a tax credit or?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Not tax credit, it's a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: volume

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: half of the tax exempt bonds. And so to the extent that the state can support investments in affordable housing, you will help more projects use this tax exempt financing, therefore unlocking these tax credits, therefore expanding our leverage. And I'll give you an idea of the scale of this. For the last several years, it's still the same four agencies, the bond bank, VIDA, VSAC and us. And for the last couple of years, the bond bank and VIDA have not been using this private activity bond cap. And so it's been split between VSAC and us. Genuinely, I'm not trying to be funny about this. I just don't know how VSAC works. I have too much in my brain already. So you'd have to ask them about why they need the bond cap and how they're using it. And does any of those expire? I don't know. I just know that the part that we are awarded is going to expire if we can't use it. So what else is working? Well, what's working is tax credit housing and the affordable housing. I'm going to fly through some of these charts because

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: want to talk In sum, we're losing money again because we haven't been able to appropriate general fund money to some entity, BHCB, whatever, to subsidize housing that would make enough deals work.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: That has been how we've been able to solve this problem. I wanna be clear, there's other ways up this mountain. So if somehow y'all could make housing more affordable, it would pencil and you wouldn't have to give BHB so much money because all of a sudden housing would only cost $200,000 a unit and maybe, you know, the taxes and bonding would be more valuable. There's what you're doing with planning and zoning and density and municipalities and having them accept housing and expand manufactured housing and all these things. They all will help that. I don't want to make it sound like this is the only thing, but it is a pretty direct line. I can show you a bunch of projects. For instance, we only once did a new construction building with this kind of 4% tax credits in my history. And then when you all started giving money to VHCb, we started doing them regularly. Okay. So it's just, it is a proven path. So, what's working? Tax credits are working. The federal tax credits, again, it happens, outside the legislature, but it does pay for a big chunk of the development of the housing. It brings in private investment that would otherwise go to be paying federal taxes, but it's taking those federal taxes that the investor would have paid and investing it in Vermont. And you can see the incomes of the people serve typically as representative Burrows was saying, Vermont's median income is about $78,000 Renters earn less often. So their median is about $45,000 But our tax credit renters, that VHFA tenants, the green bar is showing that they're earning just under $18,000 a year. We have a greater share of racial minorities in VHFA's rental housing. It's 14% of those who gave the race as opposed to 11% of Vermont renters overall.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yeah, can I ask a quick question? Question on the last slide. When you say pays for 35% to 70% of an affordable housing development, Do you have any data that tells you or could tell us what the distribution of that is? Like how much pays for? What is the distribution of-

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Between 35 Yeah. And I can tell you it goes based on which kind of tax credits they get. If you get the 4% tax credits, it's gonna be between 3037% of the deal. And if you get the limited competitive nine percent tax credits, you're gonna get between 6575% of your deal paid. There's very little in the middle. So it's depend, I can tell you if I awarded a project 4% tax credits, which is what they get when they use the tax exempt bond money, they're only gonna get roughly about 35% of their deal paid for. But if they're one of the four lucky projects, they win the lottery and they get one of our awards of 9% tax credits, we're gonna pay for about 70% of billing. I would love to see a scattershot

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: graph of that. Yeah. Thank

[Unknown committee member]: you. Yep.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: So the distribution of incomes you can see here is mostly, this is same thing, most of our tenants are earning between 5,000 and $15,000 and that not a lot of them are earning over $35,000 compared to all renter households in Vermont. A lot of the folks in this kind of housing has some kind of federal voucher, but not all. They have a Section eight housing phrase voucher. Also, can see that in this kind of housing, it's more likely that these are elderly households. That's the middle green bar saying that at least one household member is 62 years old or older. We're serving about the same number of children and we serve slightly fewer members with a disability. And before I get asked, no, I don't know why that percentage is slightly less than renters overall, especially because we know that the housing we're building is abiding by all accessibility and universal design and all that. But this year of data, it shows just a slight, looks like 2% less.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: And that orange at the end is not part of the graph.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: No, that's my logo that's showing us. So I'm talking about federal tax credits, but back in 2000 and in the year since the legislature was brilliant enough to create a state tax credit program. You were ahead of the curve, by the way, this is like the hot new thing that other states are now copying onto. And they're very jealous that we've had this program for the last twenty five years. And so just to remind you of what you do every year when you pass the budget and the taxes is that you're giving about 2,000,000 up to $2,000,000 a year to develop rental housing That is specifically paired with those 4% tax credits that pay 35% of a building and that get triggered by using the tax exempt bonding. So my mobile thing, it's all connected. You know, we all like to use things together. So the state tax credits pay, there's about $2,000,000 a year to be a source of money for those projects. And in addition, there's about $3.3.3400000.0 a year to develop affordable for sale housing. Some of that needs to be used through the manufactured home purchase and replacement program that we have. And I just grabbed a snapshot of, this was a drawing, of Huntington home manufactured home that, was proposed to be a part of a Heaton, street development that down street's doing. And so we administer these state tax credit programs, and appreciate that the state tax credits, not just pay to create and build affordable rental housing and develop for sale homes. But we use the state tax credits to fund the down payment assistance program. I call it the DPA program. I've talked to you about this program in the past. This is where a first time home buyer gets a VHFA mortgage, and we will give them up to $10,000 to pay toward their dumping fee. And it was created in 2014, and we were allowed to sell tax credits up until this fiscal year. And this year we sold the last of the tax credits. And when we created the program in 2014, we designed it. Actually, it really came from the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce and supported by the state chamber. It sort of started down the hall in commerce. It was an economic development tool because employers were saying that our workers need help buying a home and they wanted to root them in the community. And we designed it as it's a 0% loan that you get and you make no payments on it for as long as you own your home. You only pay us back when you move or refinance. Or die, which happens sometimes, but the other two reasons are much better. So they can use it, buyers have to be a first time home buyer that can't have a lot of money in the bank. We need to know what they really need. You have to get a VHFA mortgage with it. You can pair it with the first generation grant program that we've talked about, but it's different. You don't have to use that. You don't have to be first gen. You just have to be a first timer. You can see the 2,100 homes that we financed with this across the state. It's an eleven year old program with a tremendous track record. And I'm here to tell you that it will be winding down. And I'll tell you more about that. Here's who is served by the program with BHFA DPA means they got the down payment assistance funded by the state tax credits. Without DPA means they still got a VHFA loan, they got into housing, they're great people, but they didn't need or want the down payment assistance. And so you can see that the homes, the people who get this sense are buying are cheaper. These are lower income households. They're leveraging more of their home. It says loan the LTV. I need to delete that CLTV. That means loan to value, they're financing. They're able to put like 9% of the money they need down if you get DPA. But if you don't get down payment assistance, you're actually able to put 14% down. So that's why you didn't need the down payment assistance, or maybe you weren't eligible for it. Maybe you were in a weird community in a strange situation where you weren't a first time home buyer, which we do finance. These people have lower credit scores. They're younger. They have slightly higher household sizes. And so, and that's where you can see who we've served. So what's happened is that we were allowed to sell these tax credits for eleven years. And the idea was when we designed the program, we thought we were gonna be giving people $5,000 at a pop. Lots happened since 2014, prices have gone off. We increased that to 10,000. And between the increase and the fact that people aren't moving because interest rates popped up, it means that we're not getting the repayments that we thought we were going to. This is another revolving loan fund. This money is not out the door and gone forever. It's still invested in homes in Vermont. And when those people refi or move or die, they're gonna pay it back to us. And so you can see on the right that we looked at the green bars for like in the early years of the program, you can see that over 10% of the loans outstanding were getting repaid to us each year. But in the last couple of years that has really dropped off. Here's another way of showing that. The green bars are the repayments we got. Look at 2021, we got over $800,000 of money coming back to us that we could loan out. So we didn't need to be selling the tax credit so much. And you can see that happened when everyone was refi ing. We don't do refinancing at BHFA. We only do purchase mortgages. So when interest rates got down below 3%, they were like, forget the VHFA mortgage that's at 4%, I'm gonna get a sub three loan. That was great. People were able to refinance, go on, they own their home, they have equity. This is a working system. This is good news. But as interest rates popped up, the repayments dropped off.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think you went over this, didn't you, with us last year?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: I did.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Did we not? Did our bill not? And last year

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: I told you I have one more year of selling the credits. You all smartly said, then come back next year and tell us again. And guess what? I'm here telling you that I'm getting ready to close the program. Don't worry, I'll give you

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: till May before I do that.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: This past summer we did have to ratchet back the program, we're all ready, we didn't have a But

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Laura, is this purely an appropriations issue and thus a recommendation from us when we give our recommendation letter To it would

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: be ways and means to the miscellaneous tax bill, I'm hoping.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, alright, so it's not a freestanding bill that will come to us. Correct.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: The thing that this, some language ends up in the miscellaneous tax bill that would say the HFA sold these credits from 2014 through FY twenty twenty six, and I'm asking for five more years to get me through the hump so that we can keep selling the credits, keep the program open. And then I'm hoping it's going to self generate. Someone smart in the room is going to say, wait a minute, you already went from $5,000 to $10,000 that you've given people. Is this really going to last forever and always? And my answer is no, it's not. But I'm not gonna ask you for more money than I need. And we'll all have to base that then if home prices get up to a million dollars, I don't think $10,000 is gonna happen, but we're having other conversations at that point. Maybe the program will have run its course. What I know is the eleven year history of this program, which is that we have lent out about $11,000,000 and these people, let me tell you what that $11,000,000 has done. That $11,000,000 is invested in homes in your communities. You have people in your town where they are sitting on 5 or $10,000 of BHFA's money. It's not lost to the state, it's gonna get paid back to BHFA. But in the meantime, because that person didn't have to get a $10,000 higher mortgage and make those monthly payments, and they were able to buy a home that maybe that was the but for, maybe they wouldn't have qualified. They couldn't have gotten that loan at all. That has generated over $137,000,000 of wealth for Vermonters statewide. Because we can see that these homes, we know what they bought their home for. And we look at the town appreciation and we can see that typically people now have $78,000 of home equity each. So they're using the state's money to leverage. Now they have equity in their homes and they can use that, send their kid to college, invest in a small business, I don't know, buy a HVAC system because it goes out, heat pumps, whatever they're going do if they get a home equity loan or something like that. So this is a powerful program that supports wealth building of Vermonters. And we know that most of the loans are still invested. So these are Vermonters, tax paying Vermonters who are benefiting from us. Typically we give out about 150 of these loans a year. We already had to shrink that last summer. There wasn't enough money to go around. So we actually changed our asset limit. We said, you can't have as much money in the bank. We dropped that down. So people are in a little more precarious of a situation, not too bad. They still can have some money, but if we have to shrink this to only serving about 40 households a year, I don't know how I'm going to handle that. So please don't ask me. I might just close the program for a year until the repayments, I can stockpile enough repayments and open it up. I might geographically base this. I might make this a very low income program where it would just be for, let's say, shared equity housing or something like that, where it's someone earning 50% of median and not above. I got to figure it out.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Laura, we're sort of, you've got kind

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: of Okay, 10

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: all right.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Last thing I want to

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: say- In

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: case, only two minutes.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: Last thing I want to say is that I focused on funding and programs because VHFA is a funder and we administer programs. And so I see that impact up close. But as is well documented, the cost of building is very high. And so any funding or program is going to go further if the cost of housing were cheaper. And so you need to look beyond funding and programs, not just because you're not an appropriations committee or ways and means, but because your job in partnership with natural resources and all this and fabric committee is to look at how to increase density, make the system more predictable, and lower the cost of housing through that. And so speed up the building timing, focus on those most in need. So these are the probably non controversial causes of our housing shortage that you've not going to spend time on, I promise. But to solve these problems, you need to look how many times it says build more dense housing, build more housing, make it cheaper, support the workforce. There's things you can and should be doing to address these things. And I chose not to spend my time on this because I looked at your witness list and I saw that you are going to be hearing later today from Moreau Weinberger, the head of Let's Build Homes. I think you know that I'm on the executive committee on the board of that group, we're the fiscal sponsor and all this, a big fan. So just because he's saying something different than what I'm saying, doesn't mean that I wouldn't be sitting behind him going, because I'm gonna, we approved our legislative, package, the board, voted on it. And I am so excited about what you're going to hear from him. So I'd like to be clear that there's a rousing endorsement for some of the planning and zoning ideas, some of the funding ideas, some of the shoring up the basic needs, net ideas, manufactured housing, and learning from what's been done through the Act two fifty mapping and the municipal planning and stuff like that, and making some tweaks that are needed to go back to my first point, let's learn, let's grow, let's not be scared to look at things again, because we're all smart people can handle the growth mindset of learning. And also while I haven't seen the Housing and Homeless Alliance of Vermont, HHAV's priorities just yet, I know that VHFA has been a member of that organization or whatever form it's in for many, many decades. We funded them frankly while they were in some dark days. But I hope you all have heard they have happy times again. Has everyone heard the news about the new executive director of HHAB? I know him. My friend and colleague, Jack Simmons, which is fantastic news. I'm so excited. He's such a coalition builder. This is really going to be incredible. And so I'm anticipating supporting their platform once that's been finalized. And because again, we know that there's so much need at the lowest income level. Now, will you be able to do everything that all of us want? No, you will not. Trust me, I've talked to you some in the off session, you've been very clear, we all are gonna walk away unhappy in May, but I want to just keep driving home that it can't just be funding. It can't just be programs. It can't just be planning and zoning. It can't just be complaining about that the costs are too darn high. It can't just be looking at pick whatever topic. It can't just be manufactured housing. Sorry to tell you, can't just be the manufactured housing you're focused on either. It can't just be, you know, design a housing or whatever. It has to be scattershot, broad based, do it all please, we need it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you very much, Marc. Any last questions before we go on? Yes. So, you briefly touched on

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: this with this model of employer provided housing where you've Do we Did we You've set up contracts for making sure that people qualify, that like roommates or whatnot qualify for the benefit. And you said, but I'm not in charge of your fax system or whatever. Is there anything needed? Is there any action on our part needed for ensuring that it doesn't take away any benefits or not really because these people are renting, so it's not like it's going to affect their?

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: I'm going say, you don't need to do anything because when we created that program, you all were very trusting of VHFA and you said, we think you can work this out in your program guidance. It's kind of like CHIP in a sense where we knew that Pepsi was going to go and write all the rules and get specific and just say like, here are the pillars that we care about. And then the details we're going give to an administrator to figure out. You all set a couple standards. You said, don't give them more than 35% of what they need because we want you to leverage other things. You said, don't go over 150% of median income. You said, I think there's something about, there has to be an employer engaged and involved, stuff like that. But otherwise, you didn't get into details like how do you calculate income by roommate and bedroom and all that stuff like that. You knew that VHFA could do that. So I don't need anything from you all to find the right solution there. Okay.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you so much. For members, Laura, I really appreciate your first appearance before us in this session.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: And like the Terminator, you'll be back. I will, although it'll be a couple weeks, because surprise, surprise, I talk too much and I have to get my tonsils out. Oh! I will be out of commission. So if you don't see see me, it's not because I don't want but between not having Chad and having to, do that, I'm a little nervous on how much you're actually going to see me this session. So I will, I want to be of service to you all, but it may not be in the witness chair as much this year because honestly I'm understaffed.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, the next time you hear, we'll have a bite screen. I

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: just want to say that, really my top priority this year

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: and what I'm gonna be

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: prioritizing is this down payment assistance tax credit issue because we're the ones who administer it. So we have to be the ones, you know, championing it. But that doesn't mean that if I'm not here smiling and nodding behind Chad or Merrell or any of our partners, I see Polly and Megan and, so Josh here before like it all is a partnership and we are in support of what's happening.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So, what we're going to do now, Megan Sullivan from the chamber, who was scheduled for this afternoon and graciously agreed to testify now. And I wanted to do that because we have a hard stop after lunch at 01:40 and we had both Megan and Mihaly, I just wanted to make, since we have an extra half hour, Megan has graciously agreed to testify. So, you wanna

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I have one more question from ours. When you have a first time home buyer, in the process of advising that home buyer, do you put them onto other programs? Nope. You don't tell them about them? And the reason is, is because they don't come to me. But what if they did? They don't.

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: They, I'll tell you how it works. They go to a participating lender. So they go to Eastrise, Union Bank, Northfield, anyone, and they will talk with them and they say, here's my income. Here's kind of hustling about And the mortgage loan officer is the one showing them their mortgage options. Other buyers will choose to take a home buyer education class and they'll be advised through the state's five home ownership centers about the programs and things for them. We are very back office dealing with it after the fact. We do have a website. We are a friendly person and people email us and social media us and say, what can I do? And yes, we send them to the state's five home hardship centers. We send them the list of our participating lenders, but we do not do a lot of that kind of handholding that the community action agencies or the home ownership centers do. We do a lot, we don't do it all. We have to work in partnership with others, which is what I was referencing. Yeah, not to mention two eleven, put in a plug for that. We do refer people at 02:11 and they refer people to us.

[Unknown committee member]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Megan, thank you so much for agreeing to testify at a different moment.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: You are so welcome. For the record, Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. It is lovely to see you all again this year. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, for inviting me to talk with you today. I will get you written testimony this afternoon, for sure. I think we all, everyone testifying got sort of the message, right? Like, we know there's a problem. We don't need to necessarily hear all about the problem. We want to know how are things going out there. So I've talked to, our members who are in the development committee. I've taken my experience from being on many task force around 01/1981. And also a little bit of my experience being a homeowner in a very exclusionary town, to come today with, some of what we have in reflection on what's happened, and some ideas of how to move forward. I am going to support some things that the people we collaborate there have said today, both Maura and Josh, I think, have hit the nail on the head in a lot of areas. And one of the things that Maura talked about was, that some of the programs that the legislature has created in the last, five to ten years, especially with the influx of federal funding, have been innovative in ways that it's hard to do when you're just talking about state funds. And you become very risk adverse when you're dealing with state funds only. But the federal money that came in allowed the state to have a really innovative approach for programs like the Rental Revolving Loan Fund, for the Middle Income Homeownership Development Program, for the manufactured home development program. And these have been incredibly successful. And so I would say, as those federal dollars are gone and you're worried about state funding, that the opportunity to continue to stay innovative, we hope you will take on because it is really proven to create some incredible programs. One that I specifically want to talk about is DHIP. This program, and I'm sure Commissioner Farrell and his team will be in to really talk about, they have a public dashboard with a lot of the outcomes that are exceptional in there. We fully support moving funding into base funding. We know that it's important, even with more one time funding, it is incredibly difficult to run this program with one time funding. The staff need to have that longevity, know that they have a job available in order to run this. So moving that to base funding may really support. I think one of those unexpected outcomes or unanticipated outcomes of this program has been the creation that it's allowed for new developers in the market. I think five years ago, we were really struggling. There were very few home developers in the state because it is so challenging to develop homes in the state. VHIP has created an opportunity to support where over 600 unique developers have participated in that program. And some have participated multiple times. And there are some folks who have become small developers who first gone into this looking at the VHIP program. It's pretty exciting. And it's happening in our small towns from Franklin County to Bennington County. So someone is interested, they're not sure how to go through it. They hear about this program. They see that there's some financial support and it sort of gets that ball rolling of how do you actually develop a new unit of housing or how do you redevelop a unit of housing? And I think that's that critically important part of how do you think, especially in our rural areas, a property that needs to love to be able to come back online, how can I as an individual get into this? And as they build those skills, they're really starting to get more development done. So I think that's been a huge benefit, of this program that, should be celebrated. As we're looking at these limited resources, again, I hope that we can continue to think about these innovative programs that we've come up with that have really provided a bang for the buck. When we're able to get a unit online for $30,000 It can really help, especially in our rural areas, meet the needs that are coming up. I want to talk a little bit about Act 181. So this is the Act two fifty bill that came out two years ago. I will say we were strong supporters. We were part of the coalition that came into the state house, a diverse coalition. And with the Act two fifty report and supported the passage of 181. And I still believe that the intent behind the passage of that was to create robust areas where we were incentivizing housing to be built and providing protection to natural areas of statewide significance. And that it was a very balanced approach that met the needs, both environmentally and for our housing future. I know and would agree that, the Land Use Review Board is working very hard on the implementation of this. But I also think this was a large bill. They went through a lot of changes, in the last couple of weeks. And it was new and innovative. And now is the time to look back and say, Okay, how are things going? What's working? What's not working? And I am afraid that there is enough that is not working in various pieces of this bill that if it is not addressed, that it could turn into a massive conservation program, not one that is meeting the needs of our housing goals right now. I look at that from tier one, and I think Samantha and Josh did an excellent job of really illustrating how tier one, where we expected tier one is going to be drawn in a way that was inclusive of where we want growth today, but also looking at, okay, over the next twenty years, where do we need to grow? We're seeing those maps be very small and very constricted. There's not enough uptake of 1A. There's not enough happening in 1B. And when you take that and pair it with tier three, which we think is going beyond the scope of what I at least saw as the legislative intent, that that then, you have a small tier one, larger tier three, the impact of tier two is going to be significant. And Samantha showed that map of, you know, in a wildlife corridor, if you are being incentivized to say, build closer to the road, have less impact on the forest, And then also being told, you can't build next to the road because that's where animals are moving. So you have to build in the forest. You are in Act two fifty regardless. I don't think that was the intent of the legislature. And I think there needs to be some review of these legislative intents, of what was the legislative intent of tier one. I don't think it's being met with how it's mapped. And so we need to address the challenges. Why aren't more towns using 1B? Why aren't more towns using 1A? 1A is supposed to also be inclusive of exemptions for industrial and commercial. The idea there was that these 1A areas should be complete communities where people can walk to work or get to work quickly. And if we're only mapping in terms of housing and not in terms of commercial industrial, we're missing the bigger picture of what those one areas were supposed to be. If not enough communities are taking one B, then they are either going to be tier two or tier three. And that is creating additional challenges, again, in meeting those housing goals. One of the reasons that we specifically supported a five person professional board was because what we heard from our members was a lot of challenges in the district offices, that things were being done with some gatekeeping around what got from the coordinators to the commissions, that things were taking a long time, that there was not sort of parity between the offices. You might get a different answer depending on what office you went to. And what we understood was the professional board was really needed to provide consistent oversight and training to the district offices to ensure that this was being done fairly. And with the idea that we want to provide as the state a level of customer service, we're trying to help people figure out the best way to move a project forward that meets our environmental needs. And what I am hearing is that that dynamic is not improved over the last two years, that that dynamic is getting worse and that people are struggling even more with that relationship with the district offices. So I think we need to ensure that our land use review board and staff are really committed to this process and to providing this oversight.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I guess I have one question, sort of a contradiction. Towns, I've heard one of the problems is that, with one B, is that towns that could theoretically opt in aren't 100%, but the reason I'm hearing they're not is because they just prefer to let Act 150 commissions, the Act two fifty commissions do the job instead of them. What do we do about that?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: So I love the carrot approach that the state has taken to try and work with communities to help us meet our housing challenges. I think we may be at the point where we need to balance carrot and stick. If you are saying, let someone else deal with housing, we don't really actually want housing in our towns, but we would like all that state money for our schools. We would like all that state money for our transportation. We'd love that state money for our utilities. I think the state needs to be saying, we have a statewide crisis and we need everyone on board. If you want the state's help in other areas, we need your help here. And I have this later on. I wouldn't just put that on towns. I live in a homeowners association because we have a shared water and sewer with a restrictive homeowner's covenant that says nobody can build any additional units on their lots. And we're exempt from the Home Act because it was in place before the Home Act. So the Home Act said you can't put these things in place if there are, for future covenants, but the state can't really go back. I do. I think we have a question.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Oh, go ahead.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: But our HOA can apply for state funds to help do work on our wastewater. I think there's opportunities again. I'm born into my Gymby of saying, if your HOA is saying, no, we're closed, we're gated, we don't want any new units, we don't want affordability where we live. Can you access those state funds?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Well, just like with the struggle with Act 73, all of the data, the contemporary data in the last couple of years, says that without community buy in for low and middle income housing, the social impact is too big for residents who would move in, or erstwhile residents. How would you square that?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: Yeah, we see that, right? We see that with communities of color who not, when they get into a community, don't feel welcome. And it's a huge problem. We've, are supporters of the declaration of inclusion of communities coming together and making the statement, but it needs to go beyond just making that statement of putting the yard sign of like, what does that actually mean in your community? And I think that's part of what we're saying here is I live in a town that is very politically progressive. What are our actions that are backing that? And I think if you were to talk to the members of my community, they would say like, yes, we want diversity. We want diversity of income in our town. But I think there's also that education of what does that mean? I didn't know when I bought my house that there was a restrictive HOA that said no one can can build other units here. And there are 2,000 households in the town I live in, and five zero six have restrictive deed covenants on them.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: But what I'm asking actually is, the reason that I made reference to Act 73, is that the state forcing something like that is not helpful. And so, how can it I mean, the state can't force a productive outcome socially. It's not going to happen. So how do we square that?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: I guess I would push back a little bit to say that the state can just say, can have the funding you need for everything you want. And if you don't want affordable housing, if your community members don't want affordable housing, that's okay. I think as community members, there needs to be a little bit of understanding that there is a tie between the needs of our citizens and of all of our citizens and the funds we want. If the funds we want for our schools are just for the kids that live there now and not the potential future kids, I think the state has a place to say, we need to evaluate that. Does

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: that answer your question? Sort of, yes, I agree with that. But what I don't agree with is the idea of the state imposing I guess I would agree. Can I I comment on your think that given competing goals and what's good for the community versus what might be good for an individual making a decision just within their household, when those things are in competition? I do think that there's a role for us to say, well, in your competing goals, if we balance out a little bit of the carrot, right, with these help for these other things that you also desire, with a little bit of stick that's saying you may not get all of that carrot if you block out all growth or any change whatsoever. I think we make these compromises all the time, but I do see a role. And I think that our conversations need to continue. I agree that we do it in a way that benefits everybody, including the new people that we're trying to attract and nurture in our state.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I have a question for you. Just along the lines of what you're saying, does the chamber have a position on whether that opt in to tier one B should be replaced with an opt out?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: We would fully support. We supported originally that it be an opt out. Okay. And if it continues to be an opt in, that priority housing projects are in those communities. So you're saying we're opting out of one b, but priority housing projects are still allowed. I think the opting out of 1B shouldn't be the ability to opt out of affordable housing.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. Thank you. Go ahead.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: So I sort of moved around

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a little bit.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: I will say, in terms of Act 181, I think a technical corrections bill is really important this year. And we are thinking of it as a technical corrections bill, not a like, let's blow this up. It was a large bill that passed. It's been a few years. We're seeing how it's going. We know we need to fix things in lots of different areas so that this can move forward the way that I believe the legislature had envisioned it. And certainly, I think a lot of the folks in the coalition envisioned it. Home Act, that was 2023, did a lot of good things. I think there are some tweaks that need to be made there. One thing that has come up is the definition of served by water and sewer. So a lot of the provisions in the Home Act are for areas that are served by water and sewer. And I think there is, say, a difference of opinion on what that means. And I'll give an example of if you are doing a development on one side of the street and the sewer is on the other side of the street in the right of way. It's just on the other side of the street. There are some folks that are saying, well, that's not served by sewer. So that doesn't count. It is on the other side of the street in a right of way. Think the intent would be that that is served by sewer. Is

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: this a local option kind of definition or is it this?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: This is, well, state says served by water and sewer. So I think it's clearly defined what served by water and sewer means so that an interpretation of saying we don't have to, allow that because the sewer's on the other side of the street, therefore it's not served.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So something more specific that would say, like, proximity

[Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA)]: to it.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: Yeah, and we have members who can come in and sort of give their experience and their, know, get into the nudgy details of how that's been working and what could help fix it and clarify. Another problem that was flagged is municipal plans can take a while to update. And sometimes the municipal plan and the zoning district plan have discrepancies. And there is worry that that's a place for an appeal. So if the new zoning districts, you're meeting the requirements of that, but that doesn't exactly match the municipal plan because the municipal plan hasn't been updated, that someone could appeal the project because it doesn't fit with the municipal plan. I don't really have a solution there, but I wanted to flag that it's a problem. And so maybe some thinking about how we write that, knowing that municipal plans can take a while to get updated in the meantime if someone's doing a project within the scope of a zoning district. How do we

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: make sure that that doesn't get One could, I mean, I can think of legislative solutions. I don't know if they're wise or not.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: I mean, would be

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: easy to say that in an appeals, that no appeal can be taken if a project is consistent with the local zoning based on the inconsistencies with the plan. Brilliant. Okay. Let's see. Alright, okay.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: Another challenge we're hearing about is the use of impact fees. Impact fees being added to new housing developments that are coming online. So as the state has moved to reduce the cost of housing, these impact fees can bring them right back up. I really understand the challenges that communities are facing with dealing with infrastructure, whether it's town infrastructure or school infrastructure. But I think we need to have a conversation about if those challenges are being paid for through new units of housing coming online, that is not helpful.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You know, guess I just want to ask you a question which I suppose isn't that comfortable, but you know, in California, even when I left California twenty years ago, it cost $20,000 to get a building, 5,000, in some places 30,000. Before Prop 13, which limited property tax, you know, that building permit was $1,000, the reason the towns did it is that they couldn't tax. So, would the chamber support an increase in the property tax or an increase in the income tax to pay for the things that right now impact fees are paying for? I mean, the money has to come from somewhere, It's not good enough to say, oh, we don't want it to come from here. Where do you want it to come from?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: Well, I think that's why programs like CHIP are there to help, right? That is a way that the legislature is providing a tool for communities to build infrastructure using future tax increment. And so we greatly supported, CHIP and every other iteration that came before CHIP for the last six years before this past, as an opportunity to say, how are we going to, help towns meet their needs, when so much of the property tax goes to a state education fund and out of the town? So innovative tools like that, I think the bond bank has another tool that was passed last year. And I think those are the type of innovative ideas we have to keep coming up with because just saying we'll continue to raise property taxes, we'll continue to raise fees, we'll continue to take more out of people's income is not is not a solution that we think is going to work and is going to help our economy grow.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You have a question. Go on. You might be getting to this, so if you are. I

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: want to ask you the same thing I asked Samantha and Josh. Would the chamber support extending the exemptions? Yes. 100%. All of them?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: Yeah. And I think we've seen, if there was any question as to whether Act two fifty was an impediment to more housing development, I think the exemptions that shown where we've seen what was going to be nine units turned to 25 units. It is a challenge. Philosophically, I'm not sure that exempting people from a regulatory process in itself is a great move. I think if we are at the point where we are having to exempt people, that should be a clear sign that regulatory process is broken. Right? You should be able to go through a regulatory process in a predictable way that doesn't say, I'm going to go from 25 units to nine units just so I can avoid this thing. I think there needs to be a deeper dive into what are all of the challenges? Are all of the 32 criteria we're looking at necessary? Are they duplicative? And I know that appeals is going be coming up in committees this year, we are excited to have those conversations. Because ideally, a regulatory process should not be something that is so scary and onerous that the only way to meet our housing goals is to say, well, we're just going to make sure nobody ever has to go through that. And something that the state chamber is working on, is securing a grant. There is a organization, that has worked with other state chambers to do specific regulatory reviews in areas. And it's not to say regulation is bad, but they do a deep dive to say, okay, what are the regulations? What's the statutory language in all the different places? And then what are all the rules and the regulations at the state level, at the local level? Where does duplication exist? Where have rules gone way beyond what statute says? And they do this deep dive and they can create a report that really outlines that. And I think these are some things we talk about, but getting our arms wrapped around, like where are all of the specific challenges is difficult. And so we are working on a grant so that we can hire this organization to do this review on housing in Vermont. Who is it? Good question, and I will get you that name. Do you know how long it takes for the deep dive? No, we would have to get them to do that. And because we know they've done it in some states on energy regulation to say, how do we get more renewable energy moving? So I think it depends on the scope and size of what we're doing. But yeah, I know this would be great for us to have done four years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. We're working on it now. We want to make sure we have broad buy in because we want the results to be things that people are interested in learning about. As we move on, I'd love to come back in and tell you how we're doing.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: How much does it cost?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: That's my Okay. But we're going to ask for state funds because we know everyone's asking for state funds.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Let's turn it around I the other think there's a market for the information that that would produce that's urgent.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: Yes. In other words,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't know whether you're going to get legislation this session, but there are, I mean, Murrows, there's so many different ideas circulating around I would think that we could spend next summer, that is between the sessions, but I can't believe that we can wait longer than the next session. No,

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: I think our hope is to get this moving quickly.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're kind of out of town. How are you doing?

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: I just have like two small things.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, go ahead.

[Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce]: One is Wetman's big challenge. We have some ideas on that. We know that that's going to be coming up in other committees. We'll talk more about that. But one piece in particular is our small developers have an exceptionally hard time with various state permitting programs. And I'm not even talking Act two fifty here, which is a whole other beast. But you'll probably hear from state agencies that once we get an application, we review it in three months. But the ability for a small developer in particular to hire a professional engineer to do the work when there is pretty limited resources there, you've got a big project that you can be doing and you've got two or three small projects, that big project is what's going to take priority. I think we need to figure out how we continue to support. If we're going to make all of these small projects go through various permitting pieces, we have to figure out how to support them with the limited resources that we have in the professional community that can do the work necessary to put that application in. And then one plug, and more just left for the down payment assistance, we put together information for our members about what are the things that the legislature has done that you can use to recruit and retain employees? Because I'm sure you hear from your constituents, the state doesn't do anything to help me. We know that you guys do great things. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of innovative marketing of how do you frame these things, to show that they are tools that a business can use to recruit or retain employees and things like employees leaving because they can't afford to buy a house here, ensuring that they know about tools like the down payment assistance program, the first gen program, are helpful. So that, I would say, in addition to being a great tool for homeowners to use for down payment assistance, is also a retention tool for Vermon employees to ensure that their employees know that there are ways that the state is trying to help them meet the challenges that the housing crisis has left us in. So thank you for your time, appreciate being here. Thank you, any final questions? Thanks

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: so much, Megan, very much appreciated, I'm sure we'll see you again. You will. Alright, everyone, we are going to go offline in a minute and we will reconvene at 01:00 and we will hear at 01:00 from Weinberger, after that we may have some time before the floor convenes. And we have to be in the floor by 01:45, because the Governor's giving a state address, they have to get there, it's a joint Senate House hearing.