Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Welcome everybody back to the Committee on General and Housing. It is Thursday, January 8, a little after 01:00, and we are going to hear from three witnesses in the next two hours before the floor. The first is Charlie Baker, who is Executive Director of the Chittenden Regional Planning Commission, an active, I know you must have an officer status, in VAPTA, and he'll introduce himself. And then we'll hear from Chad Simmons, Director of Housing and Homelessness Alliance, and then also Michael Monty, who was going from Champlain Housing Trust, was going to testify in the morning, he's going to testify now instead. Is Michael coming in by video?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: No, yeah, think so.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: He's actually in the building, Mike. So, Charlie, as you know, this is really an opening series of hearings for us talking about what's working, what's not working with respect to our legislation and what we should do differently. Break it away.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Thank you very much. For the record, yeah, Charlie Baker, as I said, Executive Director of the Tin Gai Regional Planning Commission, lots of days, but then also spending a lot of time with our state association, I chair our government relations committee and have been doing a lot of the work to try to have us collectively work to implement Act 181, which was the regional planning maps, Act two fifty benefits, etcetera. So I'll ahead and review this. Charlie, just

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a quick question about VAPTA. Yes sir. Are

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: you a membership organization? It's the 11 regional banks.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's the 11 RPCs, but it's not individual, individuals or individual planners or anything

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: like that. It's the executive directors really, and then sometimes we have subcommittees that are topic oriented that work more specifically with individual agencies. Right, okay, thank you. So and sorry, I had Catherine Demetriuk's name on here, she was planning to be here but then was out of town, so just to drag her name in a little bit. This is pretty similar, how many of you plugged into the December 9 legislative briefing that we did on Act 181? I think a number of you did, so apologies, this is a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: big We did also have ledge counsel here at the beginning of these hearings, kind of went over what's in the Home Act, what's in one Act 181, and what's reminding us what's in our housing bill from last year.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Good, and so I have some slides that's probably redundant and feel free to wave me on when you've heard that story too many times. So saying a lot about engagement both municipally and with our residents. It also has a new process with the Land Use Review Board approving regional plans, which hadn't happened before. And just in terms of purposes, there's multiple purposes of course in those regional plans, but the one we put up top here was the housing growth areas, and there's language actually in statute that says we have to demonstrate that a substantial majority of housing growth can happen in these growth areas in each of our regions. So that's part of the process that we're in right now. There's also some standardization of the future land use areas and these housing targets. So we'll talk more about that. Just for your sense of what's going on in terms of the regional planning commission's schedule with the land use review board, this slide gives you a rough sense of when we are submitting to the land use review board for this. There's a multi phase process with the land use review board. So we're all submitting for an initial sixty day review. It's kind of an informal review when we have a good draft and then we'll come back months later to get it finally approved. Three of us have gone through that initial review and have gotten letters from the Landings Review Board. They're out there on the Landings Review Board website. If you're curious as to how that's going. I'll talk all of that. We'll talk some more about how that's going and then you can see January a couple more February, March, April, May a couple more in May and July. All the RPCs are going to go through that initial review by July and we are all on a deadline to have our plans done and adopted by the end of the calendar year. So we're all on schedule to do that and this is kind of the rough flow of it. We were trying to work with the Land Review Board to pace it out a little bit so they didn't get five in one month. So hopefully that will work okay for the Land Review Board.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Do you mean maps or no? It's a full plan. The full plan.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Which includes the map. Some RPCs, yeah, it's really the full regional plan including the maps.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Is there any way that the public could access it?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: The meetings? The The plans and maps are all on our websites and when we submit to the Laneige Review Board then they're on the Laneige Review Board website also. Okay. And I won't spend too much time on this, but you know there's 15 planning goals, focus on the future, and we talk about as part of it in our planning work, the statute requires us to look at a whole bunch of different issues, natural resources, economic development, housing, public facilities, transportation, agriculture, and so we have to look at all those things and we kind of basically look at all those things and then have the land use map as kind of a final product of like, okay, how do we look at all the issues? How does it all land on the landscape? What makes sense with our communities? Question?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I do have another question. Go ahead. Do the regional planning commissions take into account the size and future of local schools? That, we are supposed to kind of look

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: at education facilities a little bit, but there is not like a capacity of schools question that I think we specifically get into. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I think you probably already know this, but we present our regional plan and future land use maps to the land use review board. When the land use review board approves our plans, two things happen to have statewide implications or state implications. One is the areas that are eligible for our maps get automatically the designation benefits, whether those are centers or neighborhoods, so those centers and neighborhoods tied to our future land use areas, and then also if municipality opts in, they can get a level of Act two fifty exemption, and that's where you hear about tier 1B and 1A. I can't remember if I have another slide here, but 1B is kind of the easier initial exemption to get, and that allows up to 50 units of housing per project to be exempt, or actually 50 in those areas. The tier 1A is going be a separate process that municipalities have to go through with the Land Use Review Board to show them that the regulations are roughly equivalent to what Act two fifty would do and then they can get a full exemption from Act two fifty, but that is a separate process municipalities go through separately with the Landings Review Board. I think starting July 1, they're going be able to do that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Charlie, question. I'm trying to understand what's in the plan. The plan does show designated village centers, all that stuff, are you going over that? I will, okay, then I'm going to stop, okay, go ahead.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: You've heard about the tiers, just was talking about the tier one areas. That's really the part that we're mapping is the tier one in our maps. Tier two is, well it's always easier to talk about tier three first. Tier three is the rule making process that the LORB is engaged with right now, that is their responsibility. And then they are also in charge of tier two, which we've been so politely calling it everywhere else, but which is obviously tier two is the vast majority of the state kind of remains in generally status quo except for the road rule and there is a new criterion 8c natural resources that they are working on with ANR right now in terms of that rulemaking. Is

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: tier two mapped by who? No, excuse me, three is mapped by LERVE? That's right. Okay.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: That's part of their rulemaking process.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And the road, the areas that are subject to the road, the road rule isn't mapped. That's right, it's everywhere else, exactly. Okay. Sorry for everywhere else, but But it's everywhere, right? It's also in tier

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: one. That's a good, I do not believe so. I don't believe that the road rule applies to tier one. But that is a good question, Mr. Chair, let me follow-up if I had some paper and pen, I would follow-up on that. I will get back to you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I will throw the pen.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Oh, sorry, I got it. I got it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's right there. Thank you, thank you.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: I do not believe that applies to your mind. Thank you for that. Then in terms of our future land use areas, which I may be somewhat related to what you're asking, the tier 1B eligible areas, the tier one areas are downtown centers, village centers, planned growth areas, and village areas. So those are four specific land use categories you'll see on all the regional plan maps. Then there are rural areas, are Hamlet or Crossroad communities, rural general, rural ag and four zero three, and rural conservation. And to your question, Chair, we do the artwork map rural conservation, but it is not tier three. And that's something that we've had to spend quite a bit of time with our individual community to talk with. Just because you see rural conservation on our map does not mean that the world is tier three and has no Act two fifty jurisdictional implication whatsoever. And then there are some other areas that could fit in the more developed areas or less transition areas. Enterprise which are more of the economic, industrial park type areas, and then resource based recreation which is a long way of saying ski areas. There are also some other resource based recreations like lakeside resorts that you'll see in our planets. So here's two regions. Sorry, I know this is not zoomed in very well, but Bennington, smaller region. So these are not at the same scale comparing Bennington and The Kingdom, but you can see just kind of what it looks like and I mean it's not surprising to anybody. Think if you are familiar with the areas, the higher developed areas around the state highways, I'm pretty sure that's Route 7 kind of going down the spine of Bennington, And you can see Manchester in the North and Bennington in the South, and the darker pinks are those village centers or downtown centers, the planned growth area, then the village area. The yellow is more rural general, and then the dark green is rural conservation, the lighter green is rural ag and forestry. So just to give you a little flavor of what the maps look like, any quick questions on the map? I

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: understand the tiers deal entirely with whether you're exempt from Act two fifty and how, okay. But these other four areas, village, planned growth, etcetera, downtown, they're preexisting concepts. Nope. They were came out of what? Act one ninety one?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yep. Okay. This what I referenced making all of our maps consistent with the same future land use areas and great, you know, descriptions. These are the areas I'm talking about. So that these are 181 changes to make us more consistent in how we're mapping future land uses. And then those four that are on the Yeah,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: on the left. Those

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: are the ones that make up the tier 1B eligible areas. You have to be one of these or in these four areas to be eligible for tier 1B and then ultimately tier one A also.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, so And they really make up the tier one areas. But aside from Act two fifty exemption, my town has an area that's called Downtown Village Center, what difference does it make? What does that mean? I have my own zoning, is there a requirement that the zoning has to be consistent with the designation? No,

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: tier one, the Act two fifty benefit, right? The second benefit is around the designation program. So there's a section of statute titled 24, Chapter 139, sorry for myself that I know this, but Chapter 139 describes the benefits that are attached to the centers, so both downtown and village centers, and then to what the designation program calls neighborhoods, which are the planned growth area and village area. For example? Historic tax credits are kind of a big one in our centers. There's also a downtown transportation program, but the benefits are really decided by the Community Investment Board, used to be called the Downtown Board, but 01/1981 changed that to the Community Investment Board. That board is the one that decides which projects and things will get certain benefits in those designation areas. Is that helpful?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Very quickly, the Roan Rule does not apply in tier

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: one. Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No problem.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: I appreciate that statement of fact. Northwest did a little analysis about how does their proposed tier 1B areas compare to the interim exemption areas. So the committee might be a little interested in that, and they have 1.8% in their interim exemption area, 2.1% of the county or the region sorry region in the tier 1B eligible area. So for those who are not really sure

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: 1.8% was

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: the current The interim, 2.1% is what has come out of the mapping process with our towns in that region. Which the current would, we're

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: trying to include one ANP.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: It's not, it's the interim exemptions, sorry, one of the other provisions of 01/1981 was that it did this interim exemption map or diameter basically around the center. So it's like if you're a village, it was a quarter mile from the village center boundaries. If you're downtown, it's half a mile from the downtown center boundaries. So they're kind of circle y, I will call them, kind of like that. As we've actually worked with our communities, it's not always that much of a circle all the time, right? It's a little to be a little this or that.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: But I think the goal was kind of like we're going to get

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: the 1A and 1B. Yeah, it's pretty consistent. That doesn't

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: include the 1A

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: though. 1A is a subset of 1B. So when I hear you say 1b that includes the 180 So

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: there's a little, is it typical that it's a little more?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Guess it's Yeah, I think that was the point of us putting this slide out to you is to let you know that as we're doing the mapping we are bringing in areas that were not included in those interim exemption areas. And of course there is you know we're working it through with our towns so it's kind of consistent with what the town has been working on, planning with their zoning. So we just wanted to kind of be aware of that dynamic that although interim exemptions was kind of a good quick exemption thing, it's not exactly the geography that makes sense locally. One more question and I'm asking this because,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: well there's a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the wrong rule with tier three, etc, and there's discussion, there's various places where people are saying extend the exemption periods. But what I'm wondering about is, I'm not sure I understand the dissatisfaction, I mean, I'm not necessarily saying one way or the other whether I agree or I don't, I'm just saying I understand it. But from what you showed us earlier, it sounds like everybody's on schedule, it'll just be done this year, and when they're done, very often their mapped areas might be a little bigger than the exemption.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: That is exactly what we're trying

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to communicate. Do you feel that in fact everybody is on target to get things done? Absolutely. So you think it actually will be done by year end? Absolutely. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and I just left a meeting, we just had our state association meeting this morning,

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: we actually just reviewed everybody's calendar again and the calendar that I showed you or the schedule that I showed you earlier, sorry, here we go, this is accurate as of today. Is it possible that one of the regions could slip a month or something else or a few weeks? Absolutely, but everybody is very intent on getting it done by the end of the calendar year and we all feel like we're on schedule to do that. That was in terms of the housing targets. Happy to talk with you about that. This was work we participated a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: bit with DHCD and BHFA

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: to come up with the statewide housing targets. So you can see at the bottom here, or in this table you see two sets of columns, the lower and upper for 2030 and a lower and upper for 2050. Think so that's what we got from DHCD after their work with BHFA and we've been really kind of focused more on the 2,050 number just in our business, we're kind of doing longer term planning and so it's 172,000 units in the upper limit or the upper goal for housing for the whole state or 79,000 in the next twenty five years. Those are both multiples of what we're building now. If we're building a couple thousand units now, it's like maybe over the next twenty five years it would be 50,000. So even a low number is probably even a little higher than our trend, maybe 50% higher than our trend. The upper number is maybe three times or more our current trend, think. And so that kind of plays out in each of the regions. One of the tasks that the legislature gave VHCD was to break down that statewide target by region, and so that's what this table is. And it's kind of BHFA did a lot of analysis about needs and trends. There's a whole report online if you want to dive deeper into the methodology of what came up with this. Also as a practical matter, I think what we're both we're all using that lower and upper and then I think what seems to be evolving is like well let's kind of seriously shoot for the middle. That seems like a stretch goal. I know in my region, the lower number is our trend and so like we're going to hit the lower number of this without doing anything in Chittenden, but to, and you can see our numbers here are like 16,000 or fifteen thousand seven hundred eighty three and forty seven thousand, we're kind of thinking you know 47,000 maybe really hard to do, but we could probably get to 30,000 with some hard work. So that's I think or 32,000 whatever that split number was. Any questions on

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the regional and statewide target?

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Yeah, I'm just curious, like, obviously, some of the areas have more urban centers, larger, capable

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: as opposed to rural areas.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: We're we really put our focus on building in those urban center. Our money, our intent really goes towards dense downtown areas that already exist. How does that factor in with getting kinda somewhat similar percentage jumps?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Some of, like, in rural areas, they

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: don't like, a lot of the areas don't have, like, water and sewer.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Right. Right.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: And so it's like there's and also, we're not putting a pile of money into areas that don't already have pretty significant downtown capabilities. So we're like funneling our intent and our money in one direction and then telling these other areas like, and keep up.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Right. Yeah.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: We respond with what I believe state policy and intent is not to put all the money in Chittenden County.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: I'm not necessarily saying Chittenden County, I'm just

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: the other area. Mean, Newport's a pretty good sized area really, Think about it. And I think the intent and the way when I and my peers talk about this even with each other is every town has a village center. Maybe sometimes they have two or three village centers and those are also prioritized in the state policy making, really through the designation program. Every village center, even if they

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: don't have

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: infrastructure, so can qualify for some benefits to encourage reinvestment there. So I guess I'm kind of saying yes and no or yes and. There is the broader notion of like where's the most efficient place to have land development testing, it's on infrastructure. And so you're right, that is. But every region has places with infrastructure, so no regions are left out of this. And even as we get down to the town level, I think we've been trying to work hard to make sure no towns left out of having some investment. And definitely when you get to more rural towns where they might have a small village center with no infrastructure, how much housing growth can they really take there? It may not be very much and those are the conversations that we're having as we're doing breaking these down into municipal housing targets.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: The building part is totally different in rural towns, because we can't build up when we don't have sewer capacity to

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: I don't have all the numbers yet for the municipal breakdowns, but one of the things I'll say to you now is that that is reflected as we're working with our individual towns on this view of like and a good chunk of these numbers happen in rural Vermont. This does not say that all of this housing has to happen where we have the designations or where we have infrastructure. So as we're working with our towns and sorry just because I think I've had more conversation with Catherine in Northwest, I think they are slightly over 50% is happening in those, I can call them the tier one areas, and so, but 45% or something is happening in the rural. Well, that's the question though, but perhaps what you should do, I mean what essentially people are wondering is,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: are we asking rural areas to grow without resources to grow? And I think one thing you might talk about now is how, what was the process of the dialogue back and forth in terms of us getting down to the municipal level? Did you take into account areas that are developable? Did you take into account sewer and water or other factors like that?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes, yes, yes. You know, I think we're trying to get to something that makes sense, right? And so one of the things we're recognizing is that the majority of housing development over the last few decades has been rural, and so there's nothing in this to stop that. And to some extent maybe we're even trying to encourage it, right, because how do we meet these housing targets without rural housing too? So rural housing is absolutely part of this equation, And the investment in rural housing, I think maybe that's happening through different mechanisms than the designation program, right? The chip financing tool that you voted on last year doesn't have any spatial targeting. So, a property owner that wanted to do a rural subdivision and then maybe needed help with a joint septic system for five houses, in theory they could get chip funding as well. So it is hard to figure out outside of like that kind of septic or well thing, like what assistance would help rural housing or I don't know, maybe there's ways on financing or buying down the cost of the house, I don't know that. Don't know if that, does that help you with the kind of

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: rural dynamic? Did you, I guess what I want to know is what kind of look at, did you look at do the commissions, when they disaggregate this growth, do they look at where water and sewer is, did they look at so a town without any of that is, did they push down the housing?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, and so, and this is also some, probably some negotiation that happens around the regional climate commission table, right, which is, my town can only really handle this much growth, then can somebody else take some more? So I think some of those, it may not be that single conversation, that's generally what we're trying to massage through is kind of what can you handle in your town and can we do some more or do less in a town because of other dynamics. Certainly infrastructure is a big part of it. That's when we spent a bunch of time, I know in my region looking at the water and sewer service areas are a huge driver around the state, I think because we know it's easier to get dense development there, right? We can go up and not just out. I'm gonna ask about whether or not, among all these other criteria, when you set the goals for the really small communities, going up is not as much of an option because of the availability of fire equipment. They don't have

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: a million and a half

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: for a ladder truck is what they need to go up three stories. So two stories is kind of the limit. I'm not the expert on that, although, but I've heard three or four stories is okay without a ladder truck, but I don't know that that's different. I'm hearing different towns have that different debate in different fire chiefs, different opinions on some of that. So that is a lot of what we're doing is trying to work through and I can only speak to my region and in my rural towns, there's not a heavy burden on a lot of growth, maybe a little bit beyond what has been happening in my rural towns. But that's only because I had like my four cities Burlington, Winooski, Essex Junction and South Burlington say, we'll take on more, we'll go, we'll get much denser and go higher, right? I don't if there have been articles out in like Mont Digger yet, but you'll see Essex Junction is talking about 10 stories. South Burlington approved 12 to 14 story buildings last year. Burlington approved up to 12 stories I think last year also. So there is, know, I think you know I was fortunate to have that dynamic where I had some urban towns that could take some more, but the other RPCs are doing the same kind of thing, negotiating kind of how to land these in a way that makes sense to the communities and get community buy in. You know, we all work for our municipalities, so you know, boards have to be okay with this, the towns have to be okay with it. Does that help Mr. Chair?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It helps. Do you know if any region experienced the problem where they went town by town and they decided they simply couldn't meet the region's housing goals?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: I have not heard that, I certainly have heard towns say that, I had Charlotte say that to me, oh, don't think we can do this, well really what we're saying to you is like, do seven or maybe seven units a year or something, can you do eight? And I think that's kind of what their goal is, and we annualize it in my region. I haven't heard that specifically, partly because I think the lower number is not that far off of trend. So, I haven't heard that yet, that's a good question for me to circle back with my peers to find out. And there are certainly towns that want no growth. Sorry, I should make that clear. Like that is definitely a conversation that is going for. I had that Charlotte was basically, now they have a little bit, but they don't want any. And so that is a dynamic that has happened. I know that certainly happened in the kingdom, you know, talking to MBDA staff, like they have towns that were like, you know, they don't even want a village center designation because they're afraid it might attract more growth. And so there is a dynamic out there. Elizabeth?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Thanks. I genuinely don't understand how in a rural community, and I can just use my own home community as an example, which we just cleared 1,000 owners a few years ago. But we have 2,000 homes, so we have a 50% homesteading rate. We just became a 51% homesteading rate. But I don't understand how we got asked to bill 50% more, 50% more, and I don't understand how that happens when all the property is already owned. How does that happen?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: All of this is private property.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So how does that happen? I genuinely don't understand how 50% of the property in Brownsville, ostensibly, some of that, you know, at least some of that property already has housing on it. And and and also, we actually have a 10 acre rule outside of our designated village area. So how does that happen?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: How will there be more housing growth? 500 more units.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Are you telling me that 500 was the number that your RPC worked out with

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: It's your causing our planning commission to make really,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: to

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: make decisions that they wouldn't necessarily make under other planning circumstances. Yep. So how does that happen?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's the intent.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: That has been, I think, the intent of we and the legislature, we need to get more housing to happen and these are the mechanisms by which we're trying to have those conversations. I don't think that's an unusual conversation of like, oh, well, how do we address those targets and how would we do it now? So as to whether 500 makes sense or not, I can't speak to that, but I think that's a pretty common conversation to happen around the state of like, particularly, and again there's some flexibility here, right, there's a lower target, upper target, there's a pretty big range, So I don't know if the 500 is that midpoint. I think when I understood the legislature's intent was to have us do this work and work with our talents to encourage that conversation to happen locally. Like how would you, could you fit more housing here because we need more housing as a state?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Even though we don't have the infrastructure to support that housing.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: No, and again back to my point that a big chunk of this is going to happen in rural Vermont, which is fine. How has that happened over time? Property owners decide to subdivide a lot, or two or three or four, right? That's been largely how Vermont has grown the last thirty, forty years.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think also it's important to clarify that these growth areas, what you're essentially doing is re designating areas for higher density. If property owners don't want

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: to build, nothing happens. That's right. Yeah, there's still property.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I mean, there are, and in fact, under the bill, the administration's bill, which you just heard about, they would be asking towns, well, can you meet the growth targets, and if not, why not? Well, they'd be saying, well, it's in private property and people don't want subdivide, but if someone wanted to subdivide, they could.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: My sense has been the legislature has been looking at all the different policy levers to encourage more housing development, and this was one of the dynamics we're in.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I also felt to understand why Act 73 and all of its components was not taken into account to bring this. Because in my town, for example, the education transformation So in my town, for example, should we lose our school, all of the 500 units that will, or in any town, should you lose your school, then all of the 500 units that were built will become second homes. And is that really what we meant by? How

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: do you know they're going to be second homes?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Because we currently have a 49% homestead rate.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: And from our view, I think we've been kind of looking at it from the opposite direction of like, the whole state is under a lot of fiscal stress, school districts and the state and the municipalities because we haven't had enough brandless growth and growth in general. School population is down, right? That's what precipitated these Absolutely. So I think a lot of this conversation is, well let's look at it from the other way. Could we bring people More houses and fill up the school so that the school doesn't go away because now there's new families and new kids in

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: that school. Yeah, but they're on different timeframes.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: They're totally different timeframes.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: That's what I meant by coordinating. I think we

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: have to let, he's been here almost forty minutes. I'm

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: I'm going go real quickly now just to let you know, we've had about 500 meetings with the town bodies, planning commission select boards so far. There's a slide here on some of the themes, affordability is key, how do we change regulations, the things you folks just brought up too, like infrastructure being an issue, concern about growth, concern about property rights. Then we've also done a lot of public outreach, at least over seven fifty different events, thousands of Vermonters. This is across all 11 RPCs, you know, at libraries and schools and community functions to get feedback and input on this. A lot of the same themes and housing target concerns for sure. Rutland did a little survey about where to, and of course this is asking existing residents, It was hard to survey people that aren't there yet, they asked if the region continues to go, where would you like to see it? This is like Rutland's conversation about how to attribute the housing targets across the region, but you can see you know the vast majority of folks, you put it in the downtowns and village centers and along Route 4 And 7 and less so in rural and ski areas and some things. Here's a summary of how our mapping is coming out so far. Right now we're at, sorry, 2.2%. Note that the interim exemptions covered 2.3%. So sorry, Mr. Chair, this goes back to our earlier conversation and we're a little bit under the interim exemption areas right now. That is largely due to Central Vermont RPC, that 0.8% that you see for them, it's only the current designations. For the rest of the state, we've expanded the area beyond those designations by multiples, so expect Central Vermont will change significantly. We'll get over 2.3% when the mapping is really drafted. The legacy designations were 0.3% of the state. So we're, you know, a significant expansion in the designation area benefits and focus of state investment as you said. Any questions about that real quick? You can see these range from, you know, kingdom is about half a percent of the region. Most of the rest of us are around 2% or so, obviously Chittenden County is an outlier. And then this is my final slide, Mr. Sherr, which I, and this is not a position of VAPTA, most of these are my personal thoughts, just things to think about as you're thinking about how to improve some of these science. We are working on some language to help clarify the statute around these, where there's things we've seen at the latest review board in order to meet statute is kind of giving us some direction in their feedback that is some kind of inconsistent with the local planning that's been done. And so we'd like to maybe get in there and adjust some of the wording and statute to make it easier to meet these housing targets. I think based on the early letters that the first three of us have gotten, I know from my region, if we do what the LERB thinks we have to do to meet statute, we'll lose about 10% of our growth area that we've mapped with our communities. In Rutland, it was about 20%. So we are kind of, and we think this is a significant issue, we are maybe even interested in addressing it as quickly as possible in this session, so that we could get the statutory change in before we are submitting to the alert for final approval this summer. That's a heavy ask of the body, but that's just so you know, we're working on trying to line partners up, ideally we're all holding hands and there isn't a lot of debate about it. Is there a question on that? This is to

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: changing language around the growth centers.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, exactly. Then also we need a way to be able to amend our plans and maps. Right now there really isn't an amendment process and the process right now is like an eight month review and approval process at least. And so we would like to have something like we're doing an amendment or a town adopts subdivision regs that didn't have it before and they now qualify for 1B, which is happening around the state. A lot of towns are looking at the requirements and taking actions to meet the requirements to get into 1B. We like a process to be able to sit more simply amend our map and plan with the LERB. Also, we want to clarify some of the designation benefits, an appeals thought for you, which is not about who hears the appeal, but more the front end of the appeal. The appellants would have to get more specific about what doesn't comply, what part of statute doesn't meet in an effort to stop the de novo appeals and just really focus on specific issues. Representative Olson has been working on a field around wastewater, I think you're a little bit aware of. There may be some things in there that might be helpful to think about. We are concerned that as communities and developers, property owners start to work through how to land this housing, they're going to come, they're going to be asked for wastewater permits. That is a very slow process and so we've been talking to the DEC leadership about heads up warning them, you have the chip funding, the chip financing, a lot of that's going be water wastewater, that is going to multiply or some number of multiples, maybe three times the amount of demand that that wastewater water sections yields with now. So there may need to be some more resources in DEC to handle that. Other permitting processes could be streamlined, DEC, wetlands and stormwater things and SHPO, so historic preservation. A couple other thoughts, and this is really about corporations buying homes that are then kind of out of the market, maybe there's something to do there. Is there a way to make it easier for developers to obtain condo financing? So after the 2,008 real estate market crash, the banks really tightened up the criteria on condos because condos in like Florida and Las Vegas drove a lot of that crash, right? And it's gotten so tight and if you look around now, every multi family project that has happened in the state that I'm aware of has been rental. Water condos are kind of entry level home ownership. If we don't have entry level home ownership opportunities, the market gets just further broken apart with inequities. And then the last kind of a little bit similar thought, but existing apartment buildings, can we treat them like we do mobile home parks where the residents could get an option? If one went up for sale, could there be a period of time for the residency? Can they form a co op or a condo association and actually get the financing pulled together to actually buy their own building and then actually start to have an ownership stake. So anyway, just a few thoughts for you and I will end that. Sorry to go so long here,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: but thank you. Questions? Final questions. Charlie, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it a lot. I'm sure we'll hear from you again. Charlie, is there language on some of those?

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: For

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: my bill, would you mind if said some of those? Revise it and put it in my

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: We have language on the first three bullets, I think.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It was

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: too complicated as it was. Well,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: if you have that language, could you provide it? It's perhaps being pushed elsewhere, so we know it.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, happy to do that, yeah and there may be something, yeah, we're kind of working that through, we'll see what kind of stuff we get in getting that moved, but if it doesn't move in other committees, we're happy to have it picked up in our housing.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I think that, because I look really deeply into corporate purchasing or whatever, I don't think that's possible, but I do think we can make it harder. I don't think it's possible.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Are you aware of

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: the siege of fiddle? It's not a mess

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: up. No. It does. It's beyond

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: our wall.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Chad, you want to join us? So our next witness, Chad Simmons, has just changed his role. He appeared before us repeatedly as an alter ego to Moira at BHFA and now is director of the Housing and Is it Homeless or

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Homelessness? Housing and Homelessness Alliance

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of Vermont. So take it away, Chad.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Great, it is great to be here in this capacity, it's good to see you all. Happy New Year. My name is Chad Simmons, I am the new Executive Director of the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, or HAVE, as I have been lovingly calling it over the last week. I'm on day four of the job, I appreciate your grace as I navigate a whole new world. Before I jump in, I'm going to spend my hope today is just to reintroduce the committee to our lines. I know the previous director, Frank Knack, was in a couple of times last year, but it may have been a minute since we've last been in. So I'm going to share a very high level overview of our alliance and who we are and what we do, and then I'm going spend most of the time sticking to the questions that the committees had around what are the programs and policies that are making impactful for the state and where can we go from there. Before I jump in, before I begin, is anyone familiar with the artist John Patice? Yes. He's a singer, songwriter, artist, amazing artist. And I listened to an interview with him and his partner, Shalikwa Jalha, recently, and he talked about the idea of tension, and that beauty comes from tension. So I am the leader of an alliance, and we have a lot of different representatives amongst our alliance. And as you'll see over the course of this legislative session, our members might not all agree on a particular issue. And you all, as members of the legislature, have an even taller order of trying to weigh all of the things that us advocates are here asking you to support or not support. And so I come before you with this hopeful message of out of this tension, we can find beauty and we can find good policies and investments for the people of the state. So I've been thinking about that tension as I come into this job and I come to you asking for your support for a lot of the policies and investments that had been working so well over the last number of years. So who are we? The Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, simply put,

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: is to build Vermont

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: with a fundamental right to housing that is enjoyed by all. And I think that's a pretty straightforward vision that we put forth is that we work throughout the entire continuum as we'll talk about in just a minute, that everyone should have that right and be able to enjoy the right of housing. So who are we? My computer's a little slow. So we are a member driven and statewide alliance. We are represented by service providers, youth, older Vermonters, mental health organizations, anti poverty, housing organizations, homelessness prevention, supports, and climate. We formed in 2023 out of the merger of two organizations, the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and the Vermont Coalition End Homelessness. Now this slide I could spend an hour on, but essentially there are two parts of our organization. The first is the balance of state continuum of care. And this encompasses if I were to do this slide over again, would make this box much, much bigger and the advocacy part much, much smaller. But they both have significance. The balance of state continuum of care is a HUD designation, which essentially means that our organization acts as the designated HUD entity that applies for the Continuum of Care funding from the federal government. This is a significant part of our housing continuum and supports and resources for homelessness prevention and support. It also encompasses our local housing coalitions, our HOP, Housing Opportunity, technical assistance and training for those providers of housing supports and homelessness prevention. And so it includes a lot of different activities that my staff, Molly Schimcoe and Grayshire, orchestrate behind the scenes. So it's a really exciting bit of work. I'm still learning all of what we do, but each of your communities has a local housing coalition that's represented and is part of that continuum of care. I should also add that the coordinated entry component is also a part of that. And something that you'll be hearing me talk a lot about throughout the session is how interconnected these are. I just spent the morning in housing services, and my hope is that we can have more conversations between these committees and talk about the spectrum of housing needs that we all have. I'm just gonna spend a minute on this slide. This is kind of making this up as I go along, but as our organization passed our strategic plan earlier in mid-twenty twenty five, as well as some guiding principles for our policy framework, I wanted to highlight a few key pieces that I think are really important. First and foremost is the role of government, federal, state, local government, in supporting the groundwork, in supporting the ability for us to have that right to housing. And I think it's really important to take a minute and think about how our government can play or not play a role in actively supporting that. So the investments that you all make, the policies that you all pass, set the groundwork for success or gaps in our housing infrastructure. Equitable access and investments, simply put, this just means that our organization, our alliance feels that those who need it the most should have access to the resources and the services and supports to access housing. So you'll see that in a lot of the programs that I'm gonna list off and the policies, and some of which you have seen me talk about before in my previous role. These are the types of things that we feel should be most encouraged and most invested in. Permanent affordability, this committee has obviously heard many of our number of organizations talk a lot about this, that state investments should be prioritized keeping housing affordable for those most need and over a long period of time. Fair housing, that everyone should have access to housing and that there should be protections for people, whether or not you're single or have children or older, may have come from another country, everyone should have protections in order to have housing. And finally, restorative. I know this has been a major issue in many of your communities around and across the country, speaking candidly, around how we approach the visibility of poverty and people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Our alliance believes that there should be restorative practices rather than criminalization and punitive activities to address our housing and homelessness issues. We support efforts to look at eviction prevention and efforts to keep people housed even when

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: they might be going through tough times.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Chad, just a question. Does your membership include the local housing providers such as CHT and so not all the non down street, etcetera, rural edge, they're all Yes,

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: that's correct, yes, all of the non profits are members of the affordable housing, I'm sorry, the Housing and Homelessness Alliance, yes. So many of you are familiar with the three legged stool. I'm kind of taking that analogy and putting it in a funnel because I like funnels, I don't know. But I'm gonna use this to kind of build upon what programs and policies we feel are working and we feel the state should continue supporting and further support. So we've got capital for housing development. The dollars to build the physical homes and create the mechanisms for housing to be built or preserved. The second is rental assistance. Again, many of our members represent the lowest income households and work directly in supporting folks that are really on the edge. And so with that, you need rental assistance to ensure folks can remain in those homes. And finally, the services that are required to support people wherever they are in life, and you'll see that represented in those programs. So I'll start here and feel free to ask any questions if you have them. Many of these in this first slide, you all will be familiar with. And I know a number of folks have shared these programs for the last couple of days with you. So I won't go into great detail for each. So the investments, continued investments in the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, BHCB, we support in addition to the statutory property transfer tax amount last year, believe Network twenty six, it was $37,000,000 In addition to that, we are continuing to seek one time funding for perpetually affordable housing. And as you've heard over the last couple of days, the impact of that has been profound on the state's ability to house everyone who needs housing. And in particular, I know more Collins, who I miss dearly and I wish I would get to see yesterday, talked about the investments the state made in perpetually affordable housing for BHCB allowed us to capitalize on additional private capital through private capital bonds. So that's an important thing to think about, the more investments the state makes, the farther we're gonna be able to make those private capital go. The next is the Vermont Housing Improvement Program. Widely popular, and our members have been able to use this program, especially through the coordinated entry system of getting people into homes and rental properties that needed a little bit of work to be able to be habitable. We have a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: question here. Yeah, go ahead.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So I have asked almost everyone who's testified this week, would you support making VHIP putting it into the baseline?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: We are currently supporting it as a one time funding, but we would be open to hearing more about the administration's proposals and legislature's proposals on one time. I'm sorry, on base.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Is there a reason that you'd be supportive of one time over base funding?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: I think our members want to ensure that there is affordability requirements baked into BEAT. So I think that is something that our members will. Okay, thank you. So the next Go ahead.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We've told our next witness that he can come at 12:15, which is in ten minutes, just

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: to give you. Yep. 01:15. Excuse me. 02:15.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: 02:15? Ten minutes? Yeah. I can do that.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Sorry. Can I ask another really quick question? Have you heard of Rep Stevens' idea regarding the rent, the tenant representation pilot program?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: I have not talked to Rep Stevens about that yet, but I would be looking forward to learning more.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I'll make that connection offline.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Okay, thank you.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Wasn't that the, we passed that letter?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, we passed it, it was just for Windsor and Lamoille, and he's now looking, it doesn't need any additional appropriations, but he's looking to make it statewide.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Okay, yeah, and I can talk to our members as well, and see how.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Thank you.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: So again, a number of these you've already heard about, so I won't go into great detail, but the intellectual and developmental disabilities investments, these are recommendations by the Road Home Report, and we support those dollars being made available to again, build the capital, the actual homes that open. The Manufactured Housing Improvement Program, again, we have seen the success of this administered by the Vermont State Housing Authority in rapidly getting manufactured homes. And this has been a strong program supported by the Manufactured Housing Committee that for a very long time has been a part of the alliance. And finally, the Healthy Homes Initiative. This is administered by the Agency of Natural Resources. This provides the infrastructure, so similar to the CHIP program, without the infrastructure it's very difficult to build the homes. So this has been, again, a strong support behind getting those additional dollars for water wastewater to support manufactured homes. Oh, what does MHC stand for? Manufactured housing communities, oftentimes interchanged with mobile home, but our alliance has been using the manufactured housing community.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: You're welcome. So mental assistance. So there are a number of programs that we've seen time and time again are successful and vital to our housing continuum. Vermont State Housing Authority's Voucher Contingency Fund, I know Kathleen Burke was here this morning talking about that. We strongly support their ask to create this fund and to ensure that death spiral that they've talked about can be saved off. So we're strongly in support of that. And obviously the vouchers are a crucial component of our housing, be able to provide housing for folks. CVOEOs, Champaign Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, their own voucher program, and so these are specific vouchers for families experiencing homelessness to get them into rental properties. Again, a really important bridge for folks to be able to access housing. Chad, is

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: CDOEO and Community Action the same entity?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: They are the Community Action for the Champlain area.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is the HOME program federally funded or state?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Is state funded. It is state funded.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: And this morning, Kathleen Burke talked a little bit about the Vermont State Housing Authority's Bridge Rental Assistance Program. We feel like this allows some flexibility to provide vouchers for specialized populations, including the intellectually and developmentally disabled

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: communities.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: So this one's a lot, and this is again kind of more in the purview of that Human Services Committee, but I just wanted to name that our alliance is in support of these services to be able to ensure people stay in their home, or if they're at risk of homelessness, that we prevent that homelessness from happening. And if they do experience homelessness, we can quickly get them into the housing that they need. So these are larger programs, Allstate funded housing opportunities, the HOP. We're looking for a BAA ask, which we just made in human services this morning, as well as a base funding for FY27. The general assistance and emergency shelter program, I understand there is a bill that was just released that we'll be looking at some of the policy changes there. We'll be digging deep into that, but we strongly support the continuation of the general assistance and emergency shelter program investments. Down payment assistance, one I'm fairly familiar with by the HFA. Again, continuing that state tax credit and ensuring that that down payment assistance and that support for folks moving from rental properties to home ownership for first time buyers is continued, and so we strongly support that. Investments in the Land Access and Opportunity Board, I hope you have an opportunity to hear soon from Jeanine Arnella from Land Access and Opportunity Board about the investments and policies that they've been able to do. Anecdotally, I've been working with them in my previous role with the Homes For All initiative, that's a collaboration between the Department of Housing and Community Development, Land Access and Opportunity Board and BHFA. Think those are really exciting partnerships in how they're filling much needed gaps in our housing continuum. Community Action Program, the CAP agencies funding requests. Again, these are services that are extremely crucial to ensuring people are getting their needs met, either within existing housing or at risk of homelessness. And finally, CVOEO's mobile home program. And these are dollars that help advocacy to ensure people can stay in their homes, or if they need assistance accessing mobile home or manufactured housing supports. So my last slide are more of the policies that we'll be taking a look at and some of the things that have worked really well in state policy. Our members have supported and continue to support regulatory zoning and planning land use reform that makes it easier to build homes. Our priorities are for affordable housing, to be able to access that land to be made available for affordable housing. But broadly speaking, we feel this is good state policy to ensure that our land use and regulatory reforms allow for housing to be made easier and more accessible and more affordable. So we will continue to look at the bills that are coming throughout the session, working with our partners in endorsing some of those changes. I know Let's Build Homes was in yesterday and we have had a chance to look at some of their policies and do plan on endorsing a number of their pieces. The housing construction costs and creative building approaches, a number of our nonprofit members in particular have really looked at how we all can benefit from improved housing construction and building practices. We'll So continue to look at those policies and practices and investments. And the last two things are eliminate the criminalization of homelessness. So this is something that has happened nationally. We're seeing lots more of our communities consider criminalization or civil penalties. We would prefer a different route, a more human and restorative practice in ensuring that if people are struggling in public, that we have other avenues in which they can get the help that they need and not lose their housing. What a chance?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That, oh, sorry. I'm not the chair of this committee. I had heard from a constituent that there may be a bill, I don't know if it'll come here or upstairs, probably upstairs, but it was anti cruelty to Vermonters experiencing homelessness. Have you heard about a bill like

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Not familiar of that particular title, but you what I'm talking about? Yes, there are a number of organizations that are looking at a bill that would prevent further criminalization of poverty homelessness. And we are in support of efforts that would

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right, I haven't seen it. I wonder, I asked her, I wonder if it was similar to the homeless bill of rights type of thing. It is.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Which this, I have not seen. I personally have not seen language. Okay. Still playing a little catch up, but we will be looking at bills that are proposing some structural changes in policy.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, I guess we'll wait to see if it drops here or upstairs. Thank you.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Just to go off of that, are you planning on testifying across the hall at all this year on I

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: testify wherever I am at. Yes, as far as I know, there are a number of members who are looking at policies. And again, going back to what I said earlier, that tension is we have members who are property owners and want to ensure the safety of tenants across all of their homes. And so we are trying to ensure what are the best ways in which we can ensure people have access to homes wherever, but also remain safe in decent circumstances. So yes, I hope to be able to speak to those and other communities.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Great. Gayle, you had a question?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: just wanted to verify that these programs are for people that domicile in Vermont? That like someone like maybe they domicile in Massachusetts and then they come to Vermont. Are these programs going to serve them or are these programs for Vermonters?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Sure, sure. It's a fair question. One we've been asked before. And so a number of our communities, so I lived for fourteen years in Brattleboro. Brattleboro is on the corner of Southern Vermont, is on the corner of three states, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. And so in the work I did previously working on substance use and harm reduction, we saw people move back and forth. Some folks had families in Western Massachusetts and wanted to be close. And we see that in other parts of the state. A number of our members worked in the Upper Valley, New Hampshire and Vermont. So we want to have policies and investments that ensure people have housing. And I think that's first and foremost. And then making sure that they are getting the housing in the communities that work best for them. We have not seen a lot of data that suggest that people are coming to Vermont. I know folks may be familiar with the research from Greg Colburn, who wrote the book Homelessness as a Housing Issue. The treasurer invited him to speak a couple of years ago. In his research, he showed that that has not been a trend. Things may be different in the time that the research showed. Our federal policies have obviously shifted considerably. People are forcibly being moved without their own volition to other states. So I would encourage us to look at how those federal policies and the dynamics happening on our border communities are impacting people's choices. Thank you for that question. Do you

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: have a question?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: No, Gayle

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: has a question.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Okay, first of all, I'm going to piggyback on that because I have done some research regarding how many people come into Vermont from Majesty and use the services, any of the homeless services, and it's 4%, less than 4%, half of that 4% is people that have ties to Vermont, whether they lived here before or they have family or they've worked here. So every state says that and they don't want it to be that it's homegrown. So the other question I had was, do you have any data that shows the towns that are putting in their fair share as far as the homeless? Burlington is really burdened, but are there other towns that are doing as much they can?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Great, It's a really good question. I do not have data on the dollar impact. I think it is a great question to ask, and one that demands exploration. I think the idea, I would say that the notion that if we just get people away, if we just eliminate visible homelessness, unsheltered homelessness, that somehow the cost will go away, and we don't see that borne out in data. I think someone else is just having that cost borne onto them. So I would agree that some of our communities are experiencing really acute unsheltered homelessness, and that creates other public health issues. So I think it is something important for the legislature to consider where the cost is being borne. Is it just going from the state tax goals to municipal? Thanks. I know Elizabeth has one more question, but Michael is in the waiting room. So if you want to ask her a question and then chat, I'm sure we'll have you in again. You can send either your statements or we'll have

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: you in again to definitely chat more. Sure, thank you.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Do you know of any data specific to the state of Vermont that quantifies the cost of homelessness to the state?

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: I am not aware of any.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Again, in

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: the book, Homelessness is a Housing Issue.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Oh, yes.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: It's probably the closest. Actually, if you go

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I know what the components are. I know I'm familiar with the book and all of that. I just wondered whether you knew of any specific data or data specific data. I will ask my colleague, former colleague, I was gonna say, who

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: to you know about data.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: I do believe that was some of the follow-up to that conversation, was what does the Vermont specific data tell us?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I'm not talking about housing. I'm talking about rehabilitation, cost of policing, cost of addiction, cost of family services, all the results of being below the line.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: I am not familiar with that data, but I can take a look.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Thank you. We'll talk about it, because I have a lot of

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Jed, thank you so much, really appreciate it. We will be in touch.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And congratulations on your new role.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yes. Our

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: next witness is Michael Monty from the Champlain Housing Trust, the CEO. Michael, welcome.

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Thank you very much. Thank for

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: your flexibility. I'm sorry that we I had shuffled things

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: took the chance to take a nap, so it was great. I appreciate it.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: I'm glad it is.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We love it. Me too.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We have about half, a little more than half an hour, but

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: not much.

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Well, hope I don't take that much time and let me just say I wish I was there. I did get a wrist surgery recently for carpal tunnel, so it's probably ill advised for me to be driving on the interstate to meet with you in person, otherwise I would be there. So thank you for your allowing me to be able to do this from my office, and I hope I'll come and see you again throughout the legislative session. Happy to do that. Know, Champlain Housing Trust works within Northwest Vermont. Principally, we do have a couple of statewide programs. We do do mobile home lending throughout the state of Vermont. We also do farm worker housing throughout the state of Vermont. As an organization, we are a networks organization and do a wide range of things, home ownership, rental housing, five different lending programs, and a fairly robust resident services and counseling education program as well. The question that was posed to us broadly was what works, but let me just say this. And there's very little of what Chad had said that I would disagree with in terms of his testimony. I would say that the nonprofit housing developers, those of us who build, manage, affordable rental housing and homeownership have met over the last six months and have been discussing what specific things that we feel are important as part of the legislative agenda. Again, on the Housing and Homeless Alliance Board, our Chief Operating Officer at CHC sits on that board and we are very much in support of that agenda. But this group sat down and began to sort of understand think about what it felt was important to be able to lay out to you. And I'm gonna see if I if I know how to share my screen. Of course. Right. There it is. Okay. Excellent. And I'm assuming that now I can't see you at all practically, so you're going to have to help me out here, but you can see this sort of five points on the screen. Is that correct?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, but that's all we can

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: see. Can you enlarge it?

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Could I make it bigger? Yeah. How's that better?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yeah, that's better.

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yeah, yeah, I agree. So let me just say this. We sat down over the last handful of months, and this is again, Champlain Housing Trust, Downstreet, Royal Edge, Twin Pines, Windham Windsor Housing Trust, Cornerstone, Addison Housing Works, Ever North, Cathedral Square began to say, well, what do we need as we move forward? And these five areas are the areas that I think I'd like to highlight. I'd like to spend more time in the first two, but certainly highlight them all. Certainly the Vermont Housing Conservation Board has been a critical source of resources for us, for all of us, for this group. And without it, we would not be able to do what we do have done over the last handful of years, especially with them as a resource for the various funds through the federal government during COVID. The Vermont affordable housing tax credits have been critical for a range of programs, both homeownership, and we use them also for manufactured housing. The VHIP program, the networks organizations have been working through the VHIP program, and we find that as a very good program, we're very supportive of it. We've seen how it's been very positive within the community in terms of turning some properties around. And so we'll continue to be supportive of being able to implement that program on behalf of the state. And manufactured housing plays a critical role, both with what the state housing authority does, as well as the various programs at CBOEO, and as well as a lending program that we have to support people to become manufactured homeowners. A very important part is the funding that we need. We're asking for an increase out of the from the base that we do have for funding. And I'm going to come back to number B in a second. Let me just skip down to a few other issues. We're very aware of the importance of addressing cost. We have done some, ever North has done some great work. I hope Kathy Beyer comes and visit you as soon as she hasn't already and describes to you the distinction and the cost opportunities we see, so the opportunities we see for reducing costs and development. This the truth is there's not a lot that we could do. We can't wholesale. We take a cost of unit development and and just, you know, do half the cost of this building right now. We have seen labor and material costs increase over time, but we do know there are some small turns that altogether could be have some value, I think, for the state. And if we could do some of those things, we could sort of see that we could, in fact, begin to reduce costs. One of the things I think is important for you all to do is to pay attention that when we build a unit of housing, sometimes we're building one bedrooms and efficiencies, which is what the private sector, at least from a rental perspective, has been doing mostly in Chittenden County. But we are building two, three, and sometimes even four bedroom homes. And unit costs are one thing, but cost per square foot is another. And cost per person served is a really important issue to pay attention to. Landlord tenant safety, I'm hoping that we don't have a big divide amongst the coalition members that Chad was talking about. We feel really, that it's really important as owners of property that we could ensure community safety in our properties. Frankly, we don't, we're not calling for no cause evictions. We believe there should be just cause evictions. We believe that tenants have rights and frankly, CHD is a very robust program to provide tenants opportunities to build credit, opportunities to move into homeownership, opportunities to be a tenant for as long as they need to be with us, as long as they're sort of being able to be a good tenant, and programs that support them if they run into problems with financial issues or others. But every once in a while, find ourselves in situations where, as owners of properties, we're not able to ensure the overall safety of a community. When I say community, it may be buildings or set of buildings. And that's been critical. It takes sometimes just too long to move people who are creating havoc within our communities to move them out. We did a comparison, Ever North has a great chart that shows the difference between Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. And we're just three or four months longer than those states, and there's no reason why it should be that way. So hopefully there'll be an opportunity to have more discussion about that in the future with you all. It's critical for our, from a financial point of view, for us nonprofits to be able to sort of work through that issue in a more expedited way, but also in terms of the people who are living in our properties to be able to know that safety and security is as important as anything else. The issue of preventing homelessness, we and many of our nonprofit development partners are doing more than ever in terms of homelessness. We house over nearly a 100 families last year. And I think that work is a critical in this in this particular bullet, we're calling out the state housing authorities need for support. Let me just say that it's impossible to move someone who's very low income into a rental housing without there being some level of support to the voucher program. So are you looking at that and seeing if there's some support for that is a critical, I think, step to ensure that we could continue to house people who are homeless into permanent housing. Going back up to a permanent affordable housing, It struck me last year that we provided leases to about three fifty houses, the households at CHC. We didn't build three fifty house houses last year. I think it was altogether we've hit about a hundred hundred plus a little bit in that number. So the the our our permanent affordability, the the ability for us to continue is to always have a permanent stock of affordable housing ensure that an additional two fifty or so households were able to get the support they need to become, to achieve affordable housing. This is true of our home ownership program as well. Almost half of the folks who came through our home ownership program last year came because we had already had a previously built stock of permanently affordable housing. And the importance of that from a state investment perspective is critical. This particular paragraph is laying out the fact that most of the homes that people wanna build, the 30,000 number that is a target, that many of those homes need to be for people who are 80% and lower median income. And even we go up on occasion in homeownership to 120%, and how twothree of that housing needs to be in that range. And in order to achieve that, we're gonna need to have that a decent investment. Let me show you another graph that I think is really a telling graph, and I'm hoping that you can see that okay. Can you see that okay?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yep.

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Excellent. Oops, did I make it too big? No, I made it too big. How about there? There you go. Perfect. This particular graph basically illustrates the level of investment that we've had since 2020 to 2026. And we're still building and developing and leasing up housing now from the '24, '25, 20 '6 resources that were available, and how they're going to be trailing off if we don't get that 45, if we get additional investment in Vermont Housing Conservation Board. And you can see in 2020 was probably the this is a fiscal year. You can sort of see in 2020 was probably a little bit of early COVID money, but probably the governor's and I'm gonna say the legislature's investment in additional housing bond funds just a couple of years earlier. Funds are available and often enough it takes us a couple of years to get something up and running. So you certainly, there was a huge peak of investment. And that level of investment was enormous, and no one's saying or asking that that level of investment be created again. But we're really gonna have to go and do better in the next few years if we're gonna be able to keep up to something even at the 2020 level in order to meet some of the affordable housing goals. If we don't do that level of investment, we're gonna be trailing off in a significant way, and we're not gonna be able to sort of meet the the the needs of the community, certainly in Northwest Vermont, but I certainly throughout the whole state. So I'll stop there. I hope I hope this is illustrative and and useful, and I'll be glad to answer any questions. Again, I'm not fully representing the group of nonprofit housing developers, but we have been meeting fairly regularly now for a few months to work through some of these particular points of view here that I'm put back on the board.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Michael, do we have this document?

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: We do.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We do.

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yeah, we did. I did send it. Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And the graph.

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: And I think we sent the graph too.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Oh, great. Thank you so much.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Sure, sure.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Questions of Michael. Michael, a thousand thank yous for your testimony.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And I hope your wrists feel better.

[Michael Monte (CEO, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yeah, me too. Thanks. They are, they're getting better, slowly but surely. It was important to do. So thanks very much. All right, thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Appreciate it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're done a little early. A couple of things before we break off. First of all, tomorrow morning there's just floor at 09:30, and then we convene and we have one witness at 11:30 late in the morning, Susan Aranola, that's to deal with the whole developmental disabilities issue.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: There was a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: report, even last year, we knew we needed about 600 units. Remember, this is the problem that came from the deinstitutionalization in the 80s, the closing of facilities, the returning people to the community, which guess what, meant their parents, and the parents are now aging, and so we have a problem. So testimony comes in the morning. I'll save it for tomorrow. I also wanted to just alert you to an issue which was alluded to today and that was the testimony by Kathleen Burke having to do with the downward spiral.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Death spiral.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You remember that, the death spiral? I'm going to speak for myself for a minute. I consider that to be a very serious problem. Every year we have fewer vouchers. The proposal that Kathleen and others have advanced is a proposal for a one time expenditure of money in order to increase the share of Vermont's share of whatever is appropriated by Congress in the next year. In other words, each year, the way HUD decides how much we get is a formula that comes from how many vouchers we have in use. We have to every year what's been happening because they don't fund for inflation of rents and other things, every year we have fewer vouchers. So if we drop, you know, 5% of our vouchers the next year, that's what they look at, and they fund us even less, and so we've been going down. So this is a proposal one time to expand the bottom of the funnel of what we get. There is, I think, a growing consensus that we should try to inject some money into this early this year, so that we maximize the effect of the investment this year for 2020, so that when HUD acts and looks at what they're going to fund us for the twenty seventh calendar year, it's on calendar year, it would be higher. So, I put in a bill which was prepared, it's not done yet, but it's a short form bill that would allow us to invest in 2026, essentially soon. The fastest way to do that is through the BAA, the Budget Adjustment Act. There is support for doing that and however, there's a feeling that various people have requested of me that this committee write a letter in support of using the BAA as the time to make this one time investment. And so I will next week be bringing to the committee a draft letter, which the committee then can consider and debate whether it wants to do, but this is pretty urgent. The reason it's urgent is because the longer we wait in the year to do this, the less we will be able to influence the appropriation for the following year. In other words, HUD, when they decide, remember it's by calendar year, so in calendar '27, when they decide how much to give us, these housing authorities, they look at how many voucher months did you have in '26, And the fewer voucher months we have in '26, the smaller our share of the national pie is. So this is a one time effort to expand well and slow the decline of our voucher months for '26 in order to ensure that the '27 appropriation is higher. In order to do that, the sooner we act, the sooner that we can use that money to keep the vouchers going. And the thing is, it's really up to the Appropriations Committee what they're going to do and how they're going to manage this, but we've been requested to weigh in, just like we weigh in on the budget. Do you guys remember, always send a letter that says here's what we support and here's the order in which we support it. Last year we did it by tier one, tier two, tier three, and we debate that letter and make changes and then send it in. Well, this is the same thing, but just for the BAA, and I will bring language for you to debate and consider. Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Are you looking for a discussion it's a committee discussion.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, don't want the committee to send a letter about

[Unidentified Committee Member]: is this not time right now?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No. It's not for the budget. It's for the BAA. No.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I know. Are you asking next week? No. I know. Next week, we're gonna discuss it.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Yeah. Oh, you're just giving us a heads up. The

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: BAA is, like, mad.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Not to discuss it now and give my opinion. Yeah. Got it.

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: Just want

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'll to give you all a heads say

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: it twice if you'd like.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I don't want to waste time.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah. Yes.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: So last year there was something said about the vouchers that weren't used.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: So, I'm sorry? That was one of the things think.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Okay, so is that calculated into that? It is. What happens is,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: here's how many vouchers are authorized by Congress. Here is how many vouchers are funded by Congress. In order to use a voucher, the agency has to find someone through the coordinated entry program who is appropriate and then match them up with a rental unit and then the voucher is in use. Okay, there are times where a voucher is available and not used.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Not a rental unit.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's not a rental unit, there's not a person. Also, I would imagine, and I'm just speaking for myself, that there is a variety of capability in the housing authorities. I mean, the state housing authority, the Vermont VHSA, Vermont V SHA, the Vermont State Housing Authority, probably pretty good at keeping people using the vouchers. I would imagine there might be others, there's something like a dozen of them, or 11 of them, thank you, who are not always able to. There is another issue, and that's the spiral. What happens is, well to begin with, Congress appropriates an inadequate amount. Then, the money they calculate doesn't include anything for inflation. The reason inflation is so important is that the whole point of the voucher is to make up the difference between what people can pay and the rental market, so the higher the rental market goes, the more money they have to spend per voucher. So, throw all that in, they don't have enough money, so what they do is, every time someone moves, leaves, whatever, and the voucher becomes free, they don't put it out again, they retire it. And they're being prudent, they just think, oh my god, you're not going have enough money, we're not going to make it through to the end of the year, so they retire vouchers, and steadily retire them, and you remember when Kathleen talked about losing a certain number of vouchers, he projected they would lose 700 or something, I don't know, whatever it was, that's how they would, they just don't have the money to make it through the end of the year. Joe?

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding of your second second explanation of funding vouchers doesn't jive with your first.

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: In no way.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: It's not a this many vouchers and you're funding this many. It's this many vouchers. You come up with you come up with the price that each of those vouchers is. So those vouchers are all pegged at, say, a four you have a thousand vouchers at a $400. Well, if you're giving out $800 vouchers, you're gonna get half as many.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: They my understanding, but we should ask Kathleen to leave me. This is she knows That's my understanding. Yeah. I know, but she knows. My thought is, HUD actually approves so many vouchers at so much, they know what that amount is, it's $900, something like, on average. Of course, it's different in Chittenden County than in other places, but anyway, Congress, it's not like they say, here's how much money you have, you just want to pay. Congress very deliberately funds less than the authorized. They don't, as a matter of policy, they have previously authored this much, and they're just not But going to fund whether they what I'm saying is, and we have to ask Kathleen, I don't think it's that we're more generous, so we run through the money.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: No. I'm not saying we're generous. I'm saying we have people that can't

[Charlie Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission)]: afford and our rents are really high.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And our rents are really high? Mhmm. That could be it. You know what, Joe? I you've just gone beyond my knowledge.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: No. Don't think so. No.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No. But I think we should I'll ask Kathleen. I'll be talking to her. Okay. Perfect.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I don't know enough about

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But anyway, the I guess one more thing I wanna say about that. All of this, this one time attempt at dealing with the downward spiral, think of it this way, think of a funnel. The top of the funnel is where Congress dumps money into the system. The bottom of the funnel is, the size of that is how much we get. This is an attempt to increase the bottom of the funnel. It doesn't deal with the top of the funnel. It's perfectly possible, Lord help us, that Congress in its wisdom is going to cut the entire program by 40%. If they cut it by 40%, what we're doing now is just saying our share of that 40% will be as much as we can make it. But if they really do cut it by 40%, we are going to face issues that are much greater magnitude than this issue. I mean, what we're talking now is a one time investment of $5,000,000. If we were really faced with having to throw 3,000 families onto the street, we're going to it's just gonna be, you know, something we're really gonna have to look at what we do.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'd like to hear what other states like, what are other states doing about this too? Do we have people come talk to us about that?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I'll tell you, one of the things that other states are doing one of the things that other states are doing is capturing the tax cuts that were given to the 1% Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And funneling it straight back into, providers for

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So a surcharge? Yeah, I mean California just enacted a huge Yeah, fill that gap.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, it's not just the 1%, but the top end.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Got it. Well, the federal tax cuts. Right, right. Okay. Those people who got tax cuts, it basically just capturing that same amount, almost as if it was a gift to states of that money.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, there are certainly, there are bills that are going that are around here to do that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And some drops

[Chad Simmons (Executive Director, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont)]: today. That's not.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Is your intention with how you're gonna do it that just money for the program? Or is it held back and it only takes effect? Should we run out of vouchers?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's the kind of thing. No. Its purpose is to be it's halfway in between.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Meaning that there's a voucher and there's somewhere If

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: they have a voucher that this will result in a reduction in retirement of vouchers, or an increase in the number of vouchers that they can issue. It has to be used. Money can't be used, it isn't gonna be spent.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: So we're

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: closing that gap with what's not with the voucher. Yes, one time, because if we're successful,