Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: It's an extraordinaire. Oh,

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: really? Yes.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Oh, we're live. Okay. Welcome back, everyone. It is still the January 8, and we are continuing our hearings into what is working, what is not working, and what should we do differently in the housing arena, and our witness before lunch is none other than the Commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development, Alex Farrell. Alex?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Thank you, Mr. Chair, your haircut looks nice. I'm going to be sharing my screen, but I promise I'm going to move much quicker through these slides. If you see some recap in there. We're

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: at until noon. I'm sure the committee wouldn't mind

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: getting a little better. Make a little better. I told you that.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: The real important question is, how is baby something?

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Yeah, that's what we all want to know.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: He's six months old and I run through the legislature,

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: so. Honestly.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: It's all I need permission to share. This

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: is fun. Yeah.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: So, oh, there we go. Got it. All right. So as I understand my charge, it's mostly to talk about what's working and what are some opportunities moving forward. So I'm not going to get into any sort of recap data or where we're at. I'll do some recap of what I know you've been hearing from Legis Council. And so you know about the bills that have passed in recent years. It's gonna be relevant to what I'm gonna talk about in a moment. So just laying the groundwork, we've invested a lot of money. What I mostly appreciate about that aside from the units that were created, that gave us a chance to innovate and try things that when money was scarce, we really didn't have the opportunity to do. We didn't have a chance to try something like Murr or BD Hit when money was scarce in the pre pandemic days. But we were trying some of this. So why don't we dive right into VHIP, give you all a little update on where VHIP is at. Continues to function very successfully. The average cost is still down around $39,000 Now the handout that you all should have received on VHIP, probably electronically, it's more than just this front page. You can dive in and look at the various iterations of VHIP. As you know, there was RHRP, then VHIP one point zero, then VHIP two point zero. So if you want to see how many ADUs were created, the timelines on these things, can see in great detail what has been done. Again, VHIP has been most effective in places like Rutland and St. Johnsbury, where we know there's tremendous housing stock that's just underutilized. It also functions well in small towns where you may not be able to build at the scale of some of the larger projects that are funded by VHCb or VHFA or our CBG funding, but you could do something like what you see right here in Brandon. I use this Brandon example, not because Brandon's the smallest town, but because this is so visible because it's right on Route 7. If you remember this building right here, worn down for decades. This front part uninhabited for at least twenty years, probably more. There is a back section with an apartment that someone lived in. You can see now it's a three unit, gorgeous, right on Route 7, and three households who have exited homelessness are gonna look

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: right there.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Anything on the hit before we keep going? Yeah.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Do you feel, well, first of all, do you have any sense as to how much capital on average the private owner had to put together to match the 39 ks average?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: What we're aware of is it's roughly a one to one. I believe this is actually under reporting. I believe owners are generally contributing a bit more than we're putting in, which we like because the idea behind VHIP is to leverage outside capital and leverage existing sources.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Do you think that there is a mean, we just heard Laura Lee Kester talk about problems in the kingdom, and one of the major problems that she alluded to, which cuts through a lot of what we all do, is capital, problem finding capital. Do you have any sense that you'd have more applicants if we could add more sources of capital that might work for them? Yes,

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: yes, would. BHIP operates, as most of our grant programs really need to operate on a reimbursement basis, we have smoothed that out with Beavitt a bit where it's not a lump sum reimbursement at the end of a project. They're check ins and as the project progresses. However, that still means you need the capital to get the project going. And so there are certain property owners for whom that's still too much of a gap. Serve.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Do you worry that if you wouldn't be I mean, how would you feel about simply making it not a program that's not a reimbursement? If

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: the legislature explicitly gave us that authority, could probably get comfortable with that, but we do have a duty to be cautious with public funds.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Right, so it would be, if we did it, it would be giving you the authority to do it, and then you'd sort of look at the creditworthiness and the history of the developer or whatever.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: That may be, yeah. Yeah.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: You have a question? I do.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: I've noticed that part of the big beautiful bill was a new fund for updating rural, specifically rural housing. And I wondered whether that might be a solution, is if a person, individual, whatever was able to access that pocket of funding, because that is not a reimbursement. It is an upfront. If they were able to, because that comes with all kinds of requirements, if they were able to access that pocket of funding, maybe BHIP could match because

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: the

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: documentation and whatnot requirements.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I'm not familiar with it, thank you. I'll look into that. Yeah, and I can report back.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: We're going to get the budget in twelve days, and can I assume correctly that the Governor's request will be that VHIP is in base funds?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Madam Vice Chair, I'm not in a position to say. Last year we did ask for base funding for VHIP.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: Would the agency like to see it in basement?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I can't say prior to the other, but it's I have a lot of staff.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: Wait, do I say it? I'll

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: be very loud as of the twentieth. I have a lot of staff who are limited service and who administer VHIP, not just new units, but managing compliance of existing units that go out at least ten years, that we'll lose if there is not some permanent source.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: One more question. So last year, and I don't remember the specifics of it, I know that we put more requirements on who would be housed with this. Am I remembering incorrectly that there was some sort of report back or?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: So the requirement, the new requirement as of last year was that at least 30% ends up being dedicated to folks exiting home.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: There'll be a report, although it doesn't have a date as to when in the year they're supposed to give them the report.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: I know roughly where we're at, not the report, but did we come in at that for something?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I'm gonna look to see if it's in here. Off the top of my head, I can say we've always safely Okay, so it looks like we are coming in, if you go to the second page on handout, oh, if you have the handout, we are coming in right at 30%.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: Perfect. Thank you.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Thank you. For the five year. That's right, yeah, 30% coming in five year. But that is now a set aside requirement, it won't get low. Keep moving. The Home Act, I know you just got a briefing on the Home Act. It's relevant because, in a minute, if we talk about all the ways that we're trying to sort of take advantage of the sort of highways created by the Home Act in terms of new guardrails on municipalities, I'll say. Act 181, in the administration's housing bill sponsored, co sponsored by Vice Chair Bartley, You'll certainly see some adjustments that we like to see made to what was the Grand Bargain Act 181. I'm not going get into that here because I recognize that's another committee's jurisdiction. Think taking sort of the big picture things and setting those aside, recognize that some of those are lightning rods. I think there are ways, nuanced ways to adjust both the title 24 side, as well as title 10 side of ACC 181 to say, make it easier for tier one communities to administer one. I think you've heard about some of this don't require jurisdiction of existing permits to follow the municipality, allow for tier one communities to contract for capacity rather than having to hire additional staff, things like that. So there are nuanced ways that we can improve Act 181 to make tier one A and one B more accessible to more communities, especially smaller communities. Oh, and then just to be on the record as saying that tier one B, we would still like to see that change to an opt out from an opt in. I think you already heard Let's Move At Home say something similar. Chip, we've all heard about Chip. There is a webinar, though I believe you all may still be in committee, but there's a webinar, the first of a three part series at 2PM today.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: And we're do you know we're having a three committee hearing on CHIP on Friday?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I do. I'm gonna be there.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Are you testifying or just gonna watch?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Well, I'm listed as a witness though. I think I'm a cheerleader.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Okay. So,

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: and just one more piece of context, in part I wanna bring this up because some testimony I heard this morning. The governor signed an executive order earlier in the year. The two items in the top left probably got the most attention. Really important, really, I think a discussion that we wanna continue to have with the legislature around wetlands within this 0.3% of the state. In those areas, could we just narrow the buffers a little bit? And then energy code to fall more in line with other states of the region. So we're just not so far out front. So those got a lot of attention. I don't think those are actually the most exciting pieces of the executive order. Sorry.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No, you're good. I just It's my understanding that there will be as there are a Senate bill that was introduced. I don't know yet. Yeah. Yeah.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: On wetlands. To kind of codify this.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I I've heard. That's what I haven't seen

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: it yet.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. Okay. I didn't know if it's okay. So it's my understanding that there may be a Senate bill that is what this is. Right?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: That's right. Okay. I believe so. That those, those top two, right? Certainly at least wetlands, I believe will be in there. I don't know about the ownership. In both of those cases, the legislature will have a chance to weigh in because those are both going through rulemaking, it's coming to Elkhart. But I want to talk about the other pieces of the executive order because this is what is going to tee up action within the administration and sort of dictating through to agencies how we need to shift our processes, but also bringing opportunities to the legislature in the next, likely next session and perhaps even further out. I'll start down here some of the efforts that are underway across the agency to look at permitting internally. How can the process be better? How can we improve the process of permitting to make it not when we talk about improving process and efficiency, think so often what we do is we create efficiencies for those administering the permits internally rather than making it easier for the applicant who is actually going through the process. And as of now, working with DEC, working with HP and my department, working separately with VTrans, rather than a single entry point that can be easily understood and accessed by all the agencies, but easily understood by the app. So a lot more to come there that I don't have all the details on today, but just know that this has been a tremendous effort undertaken by a lot of folks across all agencies.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: I do have a question about that. The order talked about biweekly meetings at the cabinet level. Are those happening?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: They are. They are. Every Thursday. Every Thursday morning. Thursday morning. So we have every other Thursday morning now.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Every other week. Is there any discussion in those, to the extent you are free to discuss it, is there any discussion in those meetings? Let me back up. A number of people, a number of organizations are talking about trying to move a lot of what is now part of permitting into planning instead. So that once a plan is done Yep. A developer can come in and get the equivalent of a building permit, whatever you call it. But what's left out of that discussion frequently are state permits. Is there any discussion about taking state requirements and pushing them up to the plan level so that they are not burdening the developer and creating an entire new Act two fifty appealable event instead.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. There's certainly discussion of that, how we can extend sort of as of right or by right construction through state permitting, so it's not just happening at the local level. There are a couple of different ways one could approach that. And you'll hear both Let's Build Homes as well as a few minutes from me a couple of ways that we're approaching it currently at the local level. Know that in our discussions at the cabinet level and in this permit reform, we are trying to lay the groundwork for bringing that straight through the state level. And your point, Mr. Chair, moving things to the plan, what that requires though, is we do need to set up a mechanism for establishing those minimum standards so that we know something has met those minimum standards. You don't need to go get a permit. We know you've met it because we've moved it to the plan level. That is absolutely part of the discussion. Before I talk about state owned lands, that inventory potentially develop both state owned parcels. I do want to jump down here to talk about brownfields. I heard Polly and Gus talking about the current process. It's something that we have heard about quite a bit. It's something internally that we are really trying to coordinate with our partners at the Agency of Natural Resources to find ways to improve the process. But there's sort of two pieces to this. So there's the process of the corrective action plan and the timeline there. And then Polly also made a reference, you likely heard, to how the standards are set, soil standards or as statute environmental media standards. Currently, those environmental media standards are established at the Department of Health and then adopted by DEC. So what we end up with is very high standard. So perhaps a very limited amount of soil contamination could trigger this need for a corrective action process. So likely there are projects going through a corrective action plan process where maybe in other states, if we were to adhere even closer to maybe EPA guidelines, certain projects actually wouldn't have to go through that process. So one piece of the executive order is to review that, the establishment of the environmental media standards, to take into account what would an economist say, what would housing experts say, what would a developer say. So certainly putting the health experts in the lead and understanding contamination and the health effects, but also what are the broader effects.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: In other words, are you suggesting that it's being considered that the standard, the locus wouldn't be in the Department of Health?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I believe it still would be. There'd be a midpoint where input is taken from, say, an economist, ACCD, through lots of developers, and then it would give DEAS a chance to modify Department of Health's recommendation.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: So, what do you think, do you have any sense of timeframe as to when these standards would be looked at and possibly revised?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I don't know. I don't know. I can circle back. There are a lot of moving pieces in this EO that have been all flowing at once, and so where there aren't hard timelines, I think we're just trying to figure out where things can fit in.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Are you going to talk about the process now, or were you going to move to state owned lands?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I was going move to state owned lands,

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: but I like to just mention on process. Since I've already gone public with this, I may as well say it. I think that the report was have you read the report that was produced?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: On corrective action plans. I haven't read the report.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Okay. You'll probably notice as you read it that we requested it in our bill last year, the housing bill, Act 'seventy three

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: or something?

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Act 'sixty nine.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: It's very heavy on problems that could be corrected through developers becoming more familiar with the situation, through consultants being perhaps better either because they're certified or something else, but there isn't too much on what could really happen with the process. And I'm just hoping that your internal work could address that because there are other actors here who have different ideas.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Yes, I completely agree with that. Not to downplay, I mean, we certainly see it where insufficient applications are submitted, so there's something.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Yeah, those aren't problems.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: But I think you're spot on that we ought to focus internally at what efficiencies can be gained there. All right, thank you. And then just to round this out, I'll talk about the process of inventorying state owned lands, something that a lot of legislators have talked about. There have been various studies throughout the years. The object of this is to try to find some of those obvious parcels that we probably all talked about, Virgins, Windsor, parcels that we're all very familiar with that are large, have access to water and wastewater, and appear developable. Beyond that, this was an opportunity for us to look at agency of transportation parcels, BGS parcels that might be as small as a quarter acre, but depending on where they are, might present an opportunity for the state to either sell at a low cost, at least in any way dispose of these parcels and put certain conditions on them. Where we are right now is at the understand and analyze phase. So, we're looking at various parcels, trying to understand what the opportunities could be, and then the ideal next phase is to try to find some of the, say, five most obvious opportunities, And part of this is to develop an expedited disposal process. It would have to be in collaboration with the institutions committees. To me, the proof of concept is where the real opportunity is here, so that in the future, as we see opportunities come up with these lands, we can move more quickly.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: A couple of little things. One, I think that divestment is a better word than disposal. Wondered, as Windsor is in my district, and I've been working really hard to try to address the Windsor Prison Mom's property, one of the problems is that they need an environmental impact study, not just on housing, but on whether the infrastructure that exists at the Windsor Prisonland is actually adequate for housing. Scott, I wonder how that gets addressed. The environmental impact study does cost quite a lot of money. And so are you suggesting that we put money into things like that When we expedite a disposal process or a divestment process, shouldn't we be giving a full picture of what is being handed off?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I understand. Nothing is being suggested right now. My task along with BGS is to develop what that process would look like. So likely, and I can just tell you what sort of the data gathering process was, list out all of the, whether it's some sort of federal encumbrance, some easement, some other constraint to development, and then you would have to catalog those before we went any further with the analysis. We really haven't even gone down the trail of what would divestment look like.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: So again, like at Windsor Prisonlands, the sewer system is adequate, but the water system, we don't know. So how do you So I guess I'm asking you to please make sure that those kinds of details are taken into account when you consider those things.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Oh, certainly. There would be no glossing over details or just

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: that's I'm not glossing over, but it's, you know, the potential at Windsor Prisonlands is that it only has enough of a water system for today for a small number of housing units. And so it's not necessarily a whole viable. But we don't know for sure because we haven't had the environmental impact study or the infrastructure study. So I'm just putting that out there details to consider.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: That is helpful. Thank you.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: All right, anything else on the EO before we move on?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Of course, Krasnow has gone. Representative Krasnow had a hand in producing the details around housing targets, what should be reported on and then what the information gathering should look like. So I think representative Krasnow and probably others in this committee had a hand in that. So just to say that Act 47 and then Act 181 established that the department must establish targets, disaggregate them both to the regional and

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: then to the municipal level, and then in Act one eighty one report on those Have those been disaggregated completely by town now by their RPCs?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Not in every region in in most. And and it's happening as a part of the future land use mapping process. And so by the end of this year, they will all be desegregated because that has to be a part of your application to the LERV and it has to be part of future land use mapping. It is required that a substantial majority of the housing targets be accommodated within a region's essentially tier 1A and 1B areas. It's not quite that straightforward, but that's essentially it. And so the municipalities have to have their targets. This is how those targets are distributed by region and what I'm gonna focus on is this far right side because 2050 is really a timeline by which We, state house, municipalities, regions can actually affect, really affect the outcomes. A five year timeline when you're dealing with a housing economy is really hard to make a strong pivot. We can already see improvements from actions we've taken here in the state house, but not to the extent that it would hit these high housing targets. As an example, this is what some local housing targets look like. I'm using Chittenden County because CCRPC had sort of the cleanest display. There's a methodology that goes behind this as to whether a community is more rural, more suburban, more urban, how much opportunity there is. So you can see, for example, want to show you here's Burlington and so you can see their high, their annual high is four twenty seven units, whereas South Burlington's is actually even higher than Burlington's. That's recognizing that there's more opportunity for development and build up in South Burlington, whereas Burlington is going to be more infill.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Could you explain a little bit, what's the I'm assuming, am I right, that the county total has to be what the county total projected need is. And so is that allocated is that built up from what town by town by town or is it first established and then allocated down by town? It's the latter. So the regions have the ability to choose their target anywhere between the low target and the high target. Every region shows somewhere right in the middle.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: No, I don't believe any region shows the full high end of the housing targets as their target. Oops, sorry. So the total, I'm sorry, the total here is, there's the high end, the 47,000 is Chittenden County's high target, and you can see that they're giving themselves a range in their future land use mapping. They use this midpoint as targets that they establish, but they allow municipalities to see their low, mid-nine.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: So for example, Charlotte, that number for Charlotte that says 14, is that number derived looking at land use opportunities and what's the role of the town? Can they say, no way are we going to do 14, we're going to do seven?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I don't know what the engagement looked like between RPC and the town in terms of negotiating these. I know they had a methodology that tried to basically assign ruralness to a community. There is also some aspect of this methodology, and you'll maybe ask Charlie Baker this afternoon, poor guy, throwing up his house. Are taking into account what their historic average has been. So that's what this column is. So they recognize that Charlotte has produced, despite having a large land mass, very low number of units. There may be good reasons for that, but Sherlock native. But the targets reflect that. Same if you look at, Starch Burrows, Buell's score, there we go, Buell's score. Well, that's a bad example. They're trying to give folks a chance to hit these targets.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: All right.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: I'm sorry, but I need to ask a question about how that process, if you can just help me understand. You said that RPCs kind of designate the number for the area, right?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: The housing needs assessment and the housing targets establish each region's allocation. Okay,

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: let's start there.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Is the allocation decided by the way that RPCs work, which is individual planning commissions going to the regional planning commission, or is it It's the reverse.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: The It's

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: the down.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Because our town, we just broke 1,000 voting residents four years ago, and we have been given 500 housing units to develop over the 2,050. That does not make any sense to me, and our flight board is obviously really panicking about it. Don't understand that process, or why

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: this is really

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I guess I could just share how I believe our RPC did it, which was, to my knowledge, they took the towns they have, what percentage of the population you have, and now you get the percentage of growth required with the whole number.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: The percentage of growth required?

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Right. You have 10% of the population, he's saying. Now get 10% of the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: growth of that full number that came up.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: And it actually be existing housing stock rather than population, I believe some of the housing stock populations.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: That's what I was wondering actually, that the reason that we got up to, we had actually the highest growth in the entire state at 33% at the last census. That represented, there were actually only 20 homes that were sold. It was a total number of 200 odd residents added, but they were people who retired to their second homes became full time residents. So I wonder whether that's new homes being built or new residents added?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Whether the target has to do with residents moving in versus new homes being built, new units. New units. But I take the opportunity to ask Charlie Baker this time because he has more detail on how to get BAPTA to develop unified tenants. Just to show the dashboard of how we're tracking these, I'm not going to go into great detail because this is published on our website and on housingdata dot org, but just to say this utilizes the nine eleven data. You've heard about this, but you also included in statute last year something that allows us to work with the tax department to get access to brandless data so we can now use CAMA data. So that will soon be coming in here. Just one more way to strengthen and improve this data as we need to report back and tell you how we're doing. All right. This is what I really want to focus on. So I know you all are largely familiar with our Homes for All initiative. You should have received some handouts on all the beliefs based on Homes For All. The first is toolkit. You have a few up on the bookshelf there. The second being this training cohort. So taking the toolkit, creating curriculum or in person workshops will be this year, the first one in February. There will also be online curriculum. Those in person workshops are prerequisite to the online curriculum that will develop this cohort. We're working with the Land Access Opportunity Board to create a platform so that this cohort can continue to exchange ideas and share lessons learned, like what you see from Jonah Richard with his Substack where he's constantly sharing his thoughts and experiences online. So we're trying to create that on an ongoing basis with a cohort. The third phase of Home Tarot, which we're calling eight zero two Homes, this is something you heard from us about last year. We're working with the same vendor that helped us develop the toolkit to take it a step further and create 10 actual designs, building plans for 10 different units, starting with ADU going up to four unit multifamily homes. These are open source designs. So any builder could access these designs. They can save time and money. They don't have to spend money and time while they're developing their own designs. We are working with pilot communities to help develop these. We want these designs to fit the Vermont vernacular. We want them to blend in in our neighborhoods. The pilot communities are Essex Junction, Hartford, and Manchester. We actually received over 20 applications for municipalities that wanted to participate as pilot communities here. These communities will have the chance to help be on the front line with the vendor, with builders and developers in developing these designs. Just to say that this has been extremely successful in other parts of the country, showing you South Bend right here, but Kalamazoo, Michigan, all very similar efforts, pre approved, ready to build, designed, released to developers. We see this mostly helping our small scale developers, ideally those that come out of the homes for all training. So in our vision, somebody could pick up a toolkit, maybe go through the trainings. They could go grab one of these 10 designs, go to their, if they're in a pilot community, to their town office, say, I want to build this design. There's your building approval. They could go get a VHIP grant, and then they've developed one of these small infill units. This

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: is

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: an example based on the toolkit, what some of these units may look like. This is going be the basis. This necessarily what the designs will be, but this is the basis of the type of homes that we're talking about when we talk about infill. These are all Vermont buildings that you can see here. When this was developed, we sent them all over the state to various communities to get a sense of what this Vermont vernacular is so that they can take that into account when building these designs. And this is a great example of one of those. This is a side by side plus one. So it's a three unit infill and you can see just a little corner lot. You might drive by this and think it's a single family home, but it's actually fitting three The rear unit there, in this case actually being universal design. I'm going to come back to this in a moment, but I want to mention one last thing. We have spent a lot of our time off session working with financing institutions, developers, general contractors, trying to understand what needs to happen to better facilitate off-site construction. I know you heard Laura Lee just talking about it. I'm sure you've probably heard a lot of others. There are a number of actions we could take and are already undertaking. In fact, we've done a lot of work to just educate, especially some of the smaller financing institutions here in Vermont to help get their underwriting more comfortable with off-site construction. We've already seen headway there, where some of the underwriting groups are now going to take on modular and panelized housing. Are other things we could do to whether or not we increase the industry here in Vermont, are things we could do to enable modular vendors to play in Vermont. Right now they won't because, for example, we don't have a unified statewide building code for off-site. We don't have an easy way to do inspection on a grand scale. Those are things that we could change. A statewide off-site code, a vendor could be in Maine, but as long as they know that there's a unified code across Vermont for anything off-site, they could feel comfortable building here. If we could Question. Yeah, please.

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: Sorry. Would the recommendation be that it's Because I think two years ago, a few of us had talked about a universal code for Vermont and that had a lot of pushback from several entities. Is your recommendation that it's specifically for off-site construction?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: I think that'd be a starting point. Ideally, it would be more broad than that, but I do recognize that there's that perspective. I think a starting point would be Unified Off-site Code. Colorado has had some success with this. There have been a few other states that have had success.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Is there one thing that isn't clear to me? There's no building code requirement here for anything less than multifamily. Do local jurisdictions have authority to have building code requirements?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: You know what, that's a better question for fire safety.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Okay. Rather than I speculate. We're gonna have them in.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Yeah, my jerocher has Oh, has that been?

[Ashley Bartley, Vice Chair]: We've talked about

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: it. Okay, okay, all right.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: We stay in touch with Mike Garrosher and his team, try to make sure that they're

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: on board. This

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: is my last slide, but this is where I'm gonna share a little bit of a couple of the elements in the administration's House of Proposal that maybe fall under the jurisdiction of this committee. Take eight zero two Homes concept that I just shared with you a moment ago, the 10 open source designs that will be pre approved in pilot communities. We'll be proposing that as of 07/01/2027, so following the pilot and then following a one year comment period on those designs, THCD is given the authority to establish a list of designs that are pre approved statewide, respective of the zoning. So for example, if we have up to four unit multifamily designs in this list of 10, those four unit would only be pre approved in a residential district that is zoned for four units. So single family and duplex residential zoning districts, it's only those ADU one and two that would be by right there. But it would establish this new system where the department would have a list, a catalog of homes that again, it's open source designs, so everyone would have a say in what they look like and they're pre approved. The zoning administrator just gives them approval.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Yes? We learned last year that that catalog, the physical catalog, would be coming out this spring because I've been waiting anxiously for it to come out. I see now as of July, I'm just skimming because I'm over caffeinated. As of 07/01/2027 is the new No, that's to make pre pre.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: So the design will still be published this spring, so they'll be developed in partnership with the pilot community. So the pilot's going on now. Yeah, yeah. The proposal is that across the whole state, regardless of whether the municipality has opted in or not, these designs are pre approved and making it effective 07/01/2027, so that there's time for a comment period.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: I would just want to say all of my municipalities love that book, the first book. Oh, good. And they are all waiting for fated breath for the next iteration. But I wonder, so I would love to direct them to the pilot program in White River Junction or Hartford. Do you know whether they have a required timeline for building? No. As a pilot?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: For actually building units? Yeah. So the way we establish the grant agreement with those is we require that they do certain things. We require that they make these pre approval. We know municipality can't control whether or not something's built. So just to the extent the municipality can create that highway for people to travel on, that's the requirement.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: So there's no benchmarks that like I could say, oh, by the way, next week there'll be, you you should go check this out because

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Well, may be more specific benchmarks built in that I can find out, but I can report back on where HR.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Thank you.

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's really exciting.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: So in any area, like if it's Town X, there's a certain area that's residential, a residential zone. If these developments otherwise comply with setbacks, density, etcetera, they are approved. But most towns, the non discretionary approval is a building permit, but many towns don't even give building permits. Right.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: Okay. Brattleboro did this, I think probably fifteen years ago, ten or fifteen years ago. They had a catalog of I think that's why my communities are so excited about it, because they had an actual physical catalog of preview designs that fit in with Brattle Burrows ordinances and whatnot, and it was well publicized in our area. It's not dissimilar from

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: a four base code. And just to say that that is a stepping stone to down the road potentially bulk purchasing of materials so that developers of these units could tap into lower cost materials because we know a certain amount will always used. The last thing I'll mention is trying to create consistency all the way through state housing targets, regional plans, which are required to have the housing targets, and then incorporating the housing targets in municipal plans now. This is broader than just saying the municipal plan and the zoning is required to incorporate the housing targets. What it says is demonstrate that your municipality can accommodate the housing targets. If it can accommodate the housing targets, catalog why? There's not enough development sites, we don't have enough infrastructure, our zoning won't allow it, state permitting won't allow it, whatever those are, just to catalog what your constraints are. The long term goal is not only to strengthen the housing targets through all planning, but to start giving the state more on the ground feedback as to what specifically the constraints are in all municipalities.

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: I just have one yesno question. Please. Do you take into account the units created by VHIP in the housing targets? Yes. Okay, thank you.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Is that it, Alex?

[Elizabeth Burrows, Member]: That's it.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: Alright, I have a feeling that this is a man we will see again. These are in the administration's bill, right?

[Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Department of Housing and Community Development]: That's right. Okay.

[Marc Mihaly, Chair]: I have questions, which I will postpone. Thank you very much. Committee, before we go off, we will have testimony starting at 01:00 sharp, and we have three witnesses and and house floor at three.