Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Welcome everyone. This is the House General and Housing Committee, and we are, it's Friday, 01/09/2026, and we're continuing our initial set of hearings, are addressing the question of what is working, what is not working, and what direction should we take with respect to housing? And our witness this morning is Susan Aranoff, a senior planner and policy analyst at the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. Susan, you want to come up? Just so the health benefits are public, we will be having a joint hearing with three committees. This committee, the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development, and I believe ways in the House, Ways and Means Committee will be meeting at Room 11 at 01:00 to take a close look at the CHIPS program and how it's going forward and the CHIPS regulations. So, Susan, welcome. Take it away.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Good morning. First of all, thank you Mr. Chair for extending the invitation to testify this morning. For the record, I'm Susan Aronove, I'm the Senior Manager and Policy Analyst for the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. What is the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council? I always like to start here because I'm a very strange person in the state house. I am a state employee. All of my email is susanaranoff dot gov. I didn't bring cards, but this thing that I'm about to hand out works like a card. So we, the Disability Council, were housed in the Agency of Human Services in central office. All 50 states and territories have a Developmental Disabilities Council, so there's 56 in the country. And just so you know, because she happens to be in the room, my boss, our Executive Director, Kirsten Murphy, is the chair of the board nationally. So all 56 councils have an executive director, together they have a national association, and the chair of their national association is our Kersten Murphy. So all of the councils receive federal funding. Most of them also receive state funding. We receive only federal funding. And there's a good reason for that. I never want to be in this building asking for my salary. I am always here to ask for what the people who employ me want and need, not what I want and need. I'm a state employee, very well taken care of, thank you. So, all the 56 councils, we have the membership. I'm going to send you, I only brought two of our, we all receive these, our annual thank you card. On the inside cover, you'll see who our governor appointed members of the public are currently. It has changed a

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: little since this card went out.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: And some of you have constituents who are our council members. So our council, every five years, decides what is top of mind, what is most important for the Vermonters with disabilities and their family members that we serve, what matters to them most. Well, no surprise, a couple years ago, housing. Housing, housing, housing.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Did you say your council members are all appointed by the governor?

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: So, our council members that are members of the public are appointed by the governor. We also have some council members who represent the Agency of Education or the Department of Health, and those are not appointed by the governor. But the public members who have to be people with disabilities or the family members are appointed by the governor, nominated by our nominating committee, and then appointed by the governor. And they serve, they have limited terms and they receive stipends for their service, and I work for them.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Very honored to be here. So in exchange for the federal money, raising my salary, we have certain assurances with the Agency of Human Services. One of those is a memorandum of understanding that I can speak freely and advocate for what our council members want and need, and that might or might not be in the governor's budget, or may or may not be consistent with current policy as a state employee, it can speak. It's really an amazing thing. So I always have to give that disclaimer because most of the state employees that you've received testimony from have to really support the governor's budget, the governor's proposals, and that's understandable. I tried to do the assignment as asked. I was asked by the chair, what is working? What can we use more of? And I can also say a little bit about what hasn't worked. So one thing that has worked for people with disabilities has been over the last four or five years at the State House, we've received some focused attention. And part of that focused attention resulted in a short term study committee that produced a report that you received that we're gonna have a hearing on coming up. I'll give you the high level overview, but that worked. Focused attention, focused attention also led to some pilot projects, some planning grants. So elevated focus, sustained attention really works. Yes. Can I ask a really quick question?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. I had a hard time finding the report. Are you able to send it to Miriam so that we can, perfect, that way

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: we Yes. Can, that'll be

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: I believe we delivered it to the specific media jurisdiction, but I haven't sent

[Unidentified Committee Member]: it her. I also might have had a with my email because I've looked everywhere.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think you did, but the problem was we were off session. Yeah, I think sending it again, you know, would be a good thing.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Appreciate it so much. Thank you.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Yes. And then what I have sent today, but I'm not gonna be going through slide by slide, is kind of summary. The report's called The Road Home, and there's a summary that I sent in of really the high level findings of that report, the questions asked by that report, and the answers that the committee provided. One thing that I just want to point out is that that committee had two legislators on it. The House representative was Anne Donahue, but she's at the Human Services Committee. The Senate representative was chair of Allison Clarkson. So we're anticipating that many of the recommendations from this report are going to be baked into Senator Clarkson. There are a couple things that I wanna use the time that I have that will either maybe be in Chair's Committee bill here, or in your bill, so I'm gonna focus on some of those. But getting back to what worked, another thing that's worked, and I know you received testimony from Commissioner Farrell yesterday on the VHIP program. One thing that really worked was when you guys amended VHIP to include people with disabilities. So the VHIP funding was used in some of those pilot projects. The Riverflow project in Moncton had VHIP funding, so inclusion really works. You also included people with disabilities in the priorities of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. I would say yes, keep doing that anymore. One of the recommendations of the report is to have a focused infusion of the money to support development, the two types of money needed, the money for development and the money for rental assistance, and then we've got them separately. But for the money for development, what has really worked has been creating within Vermont Housing and Conservation Board a priority to develop housing, service supported housing for people with disabilities. What that's resulted in, in addition to the pilot projects, is there are at least three more projects currently in the pipeline. We're anticipating in Governor Finn, sorry, we just made her a governor, that'd be awesome, in Chair Clarksons' bill, that there's going to be a new dedicated fund housed within the Housing and Conservation Board to support specifically this kind of service supported housing development. Yes? It's confusing for me when you go back and forth between developmental split disabilities and disability. It makes it hard for me to understand which thing you're actually supporting, or whether you're supporting overall, or just specifically. So can you Yeah, please try to be more so that's such a good question. Just so you know, the way that developmental disability is defined in federal law that creates us, it's really broad. So people in Vermont with cerebral palsy are considered under our federal mandate to be someone with a developmental disability, except any disability that occurs during the developmental phase, usually before 26. In our state, we call people with cerebral palsy people with a physical disability and they don't receive services from the Developmental Disability Services Program. I generally try to stay out of the silos, because I don't think it's very helpful. This service supported housing will be able to serve people who are deaf, people who are blind, people who use wheelchairs, regardless of if their disability is at whatever age. So I try not to limit it to people with developmental disabilities, the way Vermont defines a developmental disability. The way Vermont defines a developmental disability, it's IQ based or autism based. That's pretty much it. For people to receive development, I'm gonna follow different, For people to receive developmental services in Vermont.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: So, well, no, what I wanna clarify for you is- You

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: wanna identify yourself?

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: I'm so sorry, I'm Kersten Murphy, I'm Executive Director of the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. I was also the chair of the Act sixty nine State Housing Residential Services Study Committee that provided the road home in mid November. And I was the lead author of that report. So I do wanna clarify that the legislature asked in Act 69 Section five that that committee focus on a subset of the disability community. And that would be people with developmental disabilities defined by Vermont who have a severe enough disability to receive developmental disability services through that division state owned. So that's roughly 3,400 people. That was the charge from the legislature. So the reports recommendations are specific to that sub population. Some of the concepts that socializing here might end up being broader in subsequent legislation. We don't know that yet. But the report itself was asked to focus on people who receive a pretty robust set of Medicaid funded home community based services in Vermont. Is that helpful?

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Sort of, clear as mud.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Because we don't have quite as much time as we would like.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: And also with us in the room is Jennifer Garavienian, who is the Director of the Fundamental Services at Vermont's Disability, Aging, and Independent Living. And so I do want to point out that in the slides, there's a pie chart that references the population that Kherson was just describing, the roughly 3,400 people, and it shows where they're currently living. 39% are living with shared living providers, and another 39% are living with their families, so that's roughly 1,300 in each of those categories. And we're looking to develop 600 units of housing, so that it's not that all of the 1,300 who are living with their families are going to leave right at once, or all the 1,300 insured living, but we know that both of these systems are under a lot of stress and strain. The people living with their families are very often adults in their 30s and 40s living with parents my age in their 60s, and they're just not able to keep providing the constant unpaid 20 fourseven care to their loved ones, and their greatest fear is that when they're gone, their loved ones will live in institutions, and that's not unreasonable here, because right now in Vermont, there is no alternative. And so that's why the focus on these particular families And just a little context for this, people often try to understand how did we get here, why are we here? So in 1993, some of them are really years ago, Vermont closed the Brandon Trails. We were the second state in our country to close our large institution. We sometimes refer to that and just pass over it and say, we did it like it was a really good idea. That's not really what happened. A young lawyer named Sally Fox, who went on to become a representative and a senator, and

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: now we have the office

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: sustained after Sally Fox, young lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid, brought a class action lawsuit to close Brandon, to allow the people who were living in Brandon to live in communities, to live in homes, to live with their families. And at the time when we closed Brandon, promises were made, then Governor Dean promised that we have to take them, that the people who were living in Brandon would be able to live in communities with the IgMont and with the best quality of life possible. Since 1993, there have also been federal laws, the American Statistics Act and the United States Supreme Court cases, the Olmstead case, that have really changed the context, that have really established that people with disabilities have rights to live. We had some cornerstones, big touchstones in our committee. Every Vermonter with an intellectual and developmental disability deserves to live with dignity, safety and self determination in the community they call home. And one thing that the committee was really clear about is it's not about the building, it's about having the right supports in place. The kind of service supportive housing that we're talking about that people need can take place in the apartments being built in Downtown Waterbury, or in the intentional community that was built in where I Moncton, similar to the farm in Hardwick. It's really about the choice, it's really about the services, and right now Vermont's happy either, but we learned a lot. Another thing that worked was when the legislature created the committee, they put together people who didn't usually work together. We had representation on the committee, not just across departments, but across agencies. We had the Agency of Human Services with the Agency of Economic Community Development. We had the Contractors Association with Greenup and Self Advocates, with the Parents Organization Developmental Disability Housing Initiative. Probably the only people you'll meet in this building who are not paid to be here. I encourage you, a lot of you have taken the time to meet with them and talk with them, they were also on my committee. What happened as a result of these conversations was we came up with ideas. One of them I really want to highlight today, because I think it's going to move quickly, and I really like really hoping for the support of this committee. So when I mentioned the two types of funding before, one is the capital development, the other is rental assistance. So when Kathleen Burrows was here, she had some slides and she had some talking points, but she didn't really get to this one, so I really want to elevate this one. Right now in Vermont, there are state funded, state funded, not federally funded, state funded rental assistance vouchers for people with psychiatric disabilities. There are about 80 of them. They're in the Department of Mental Health's base budget. They were created after Irene. They were created in recognition that if the state pays for rental assistance or the people that it's serving in other ways, the state would save a lot of money. On these rental assistance vouchers compared to a daily rate at Brattleboro Retreat, compared to any institution, compared to $85 at a hotel. Gonna post that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So Irene, a little while ago, did it start off with about 80 vouchers or has that grown with the need or have we stayed at 80?

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Sadly, it's shrunk. The money has stayed about the same, but at times was able to serve over 100 people. Now it's serving Thank a 100 you. Because of the cuts that got out. And what was really great about the study committee was we were able to bring in Kathleen Burton from the Vermont State Housing Authority has been administering these shelter fair vouchers. So she helped lead the committee to the recommendation that we have put about between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 into overtime to create parity so that there could be like 80 vouchers for people with developmental disabilities, just like there are people with psychiatric disabilities. Kathleen, she's a lot smarter. Systems thinker. Her new idea, and I think it's a really great idea, could we stop with a siloing? Could we have a shared pool, a statewide pool of state funded rental assistance vouchers for the people served by the Agency of Human Services, which could include people leaving corrections, which could include people who also get housing choice vouchers from the Department of Health, Could include all the people served by the Agency of Human Services. What's key about these vouchers is they're intended to be temporary, so the state would fund the voucher, and then these people would be like first on the list, front of the line for federally funded vouchers. And when they get the federally funded voucher, that state voucher will go back in the pool, be eligible for the next person in the AHS client pool. So I think this is a brilliant idea. What we're so concerned about right now is there are 25 vouchers needed for the people with developmental disabilities for projects already in the VHCV pipeline. And some of these projects got funding from VHCV with the assurance from Kathleen because in the way back machine, she thought there were gonna be project based vouchers for these projects. So three of the vouchers are in Waterbury, 10 of them are for the project in Burlington that the legislature has already invested on St. Paul Street, that the legislature has invested in through the pilot planning grants, through some capital funding, through just ongoing support. So we're really hoping to come out of this session with at least 25 state supported vouchers to begin to build equity in the system, and we're working very closely with Kathleen and Ron from the statewide housing. The other thing that has really worked, and I will say that these auster times maybe that have really brought this together, but when we first began this work, the Developmental Disabilities Council, we were not a member of the Housing and Homelessness Alliance. We did not know Gas Sealy, we were not on the Land Access and Opportunity Board, none of those things. Fast forward five years, we are now working really closely in concert with others and together having kind of a collective impact, and instead of fighting against each other and not understanding where we're all coming from, really trying to work together. The housers recognize that without the services, things don't work. The service providers need housing. So kudos to you for creating a committee that put us all in the same sandbox. One of the things we're going to be looking for, because we see this as a five year project, is an ongoing advisory committee who that would be composed of, TBD, but we think it's really important that the legislature keep its eyes on this process. You've invested so much already and you have a clear commitment, and so we're imagining you'd like to be in a really different place in five years.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'm having a little trouble understanding this proposal. First of all, is there a written version of it?

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Of the statewide rental assistance? No. Okay.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But this unified statewide rental assistance, first of all, is you're saying it would be it would unify what are now separate programs for people from corrections, what other separate programs would be pulled together in this? Corrections,

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: my understanding is that currently the state housing authority administers these shelter plus care vouchers, state funded ones and federally funded ones, or people receiving services from the Department of Health, and I don't know which programs, and people receiving services from the Department of Mental Health. That one I'm more familiar with, and the role of the Department of Mental Health is really just a gatekeeper in all the other administration with signing the tenant up and paying their all of that is done by the state housing authority. Kathleen's proposing that the housing authority would continue to be the one to do all the administration, but that the different departments would act as the gatekeeper. So for someone with developmental disabilities, Gayle would not have to do very much other than say, yes, this person is eligible. So you have to sort

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of unify the administration of this the Vermont State Housing Authority.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Yes, and what I like about it, just from a systems point of view, you know, representative's question was so spot on, the definitions. You've seen this happen with the unhoused population. How disabled do you have to be? Which definition of disability are you going to use? And so the fact that we have vouchers right now for people who get services through the Department of Mental Health, of course we want equity and we want parity, we want services for people from developmental disability services. But then the next question is, well, what if you have a brain injury? What if this would have? You know, it's like the silencing, the slicing, dicing to try and describe the human condition. It's just not really practical, it's not

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: good policy. But would that change under this proposal?

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Yes, and I don't know the phase in of the mental health, but what we've discussed with Kathleen is to make sure that there's some equity to have percentages on the numbers in the pool as we You build the

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: have a couple of questions, did you have a question and then you have a question and then you have questions?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Just real quick confirmations, You said 3,400 individuals?

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: 3,400 individuals are served by the Department of the Chapter of the R4C's. Okay. That's part of the disability.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just wanted to double check.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: I don't want to get too granular, but I was just wondering with the mental health part of it, is substance abuse a category under mental health, or is that separate? I would have to phone a friend to know who can get those community members. And the other thing I wanted to know is, those people that are living with a parent, as a gardener, If something could happen to the guardian and they have no other family, where would they qualify?

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Their guardianship would possibly become a public guardian, but that's not the same as qualifying for services. That's just about who's managing your people.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: So the people that qualify for services, if they have, if they're living with parents Some are

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: guardians, some have have their parent as a guardian. Guardianship is a different decision from sort of where you live and at what services you receive. All right, so

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: let's remove the word guardian. Okay. If they're living with a parent or a family member and that's where they're housed and something should happen to those people or that person, where would that

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: So that's a very serious concern and that is what the older parents are bringing to us as a council because we don't know and we don't want to die and not know that our son or daughter, our adult son or daughter is not stably, permanently, affordably housed. So that is the challenge. And we now are aware of about 25 to 27 people a month. So it's just about 1% of the total service pool who we now are already unstably housed because there is no place for them to go. Now they're not on the street because the state has responsibility in ways that they might not for other populations that end up on the street. But they are in a hotel, they're in a residential care home, they're wherever we can find sometimes hospital emergency room. Have percent, but we have a case to have that, of people who just don't have a place to live.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, Elizabeth and then Joe.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Just to piggyback off of that as a comment, also the Olmsted decision, Supreme Court decision requires that people not be institutionalized unnecessarily. Vermont did have an Olmsted committee that formed, but the legislature never followed through on any of the recommendations of the committee. Now I forget what my question Oh! As a green legislator, I served on the health care committee, and I learned about all kinds of people who had lost all of these supports during COVID. Can you tell us about the impact of that in the context of all of this?

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Yes, so one thing that's referenced in the report, the road home, which we will come back in person, is that of the number of hours the state has paid for through Medicaid paid are designated agencies like Howard Mental Health, Washington Mental Health, specialized agencies like Lincoln Street. Of the amount of money of the services that the state paid to be provided, only 55% of the services paid for had been delivered. 5%.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Minor interruption. 55% of the hours that are designated for community support. So it's different from residential hours. You have a direct support professional to take you to the grocery store or Special Olympics or those kinds of job support, those services. The agencies have continued to struggle with workforce to such a degree that statewide 55% of that hot minute hours are being filled the last time the analysis was done. And the range is somewhere between a low of 38% at our largest agency to, I think the upper side is like 78%. It's over and Christine. A little over.

[Jennifer Garavienian (Director of Fundamental Services, VT DAIL)]: Yeah, that's a weighted average. The 55 statewide is a weighted average and it is, Cuban might say, it's a pretty wide range.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: So the work, so one of the things that's happened, it seems like anecdotally, that the people living with their families are getting fewer hours filled. And so the families are really full time caregivers, full time transporters, time, and no, there's no help out there. We think some of the things that legislators done in recent years are going up. So there was a bill passed a couple sessions ago that's going to require regular rate review, not increases, but at least rate review for the rates paid to the Medicaid work. That's sometimes, that's gonna help. There are some ideas being floated, might get across the finish line this session, for some caregiver tax relief. So for full time caregivers or however long. After COVID, the federal rules opened up a little so that some family members, and it first started with veterans, but some family members can now be paid for some caregiving. It's nothing like what people need, but it's not nothing, it's something. And the changes that needed to be made to allow responsible adults to be paid in Vermont have been made. So there have been some changes to try to mitigate some of the harms that the lack of work.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Joe, why don't we wrap up with you because we're

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Perfect, that last section was actually very informative to where I'm kinda going with my question. In the report, and if it's later on the report, I haven't read the whole thing, unfortunately. Like, the idea of should it be more congregate living, should it be apartments that fit the need and services? It was like a scrap that idea. We need services for people, things like that, like not just necessarily looking at doing one or the other. My question was gonna be the workforce that'll be needed for all of this. Is it easier at the moment to find people to work in more congregate type settings where it's all more in a general vicinity, not necessarily one building, but in an area versus scattershot apartments they all have to go to?

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: So I love your question, and I'm just going to call your attention to the pie chart that shows where the people are living. The part that says group living, 35%. Vermont is such an outlier about that, and for a good and understandable reason from the time, we didn't really create what are known as group houses, group homes, whether they were five people or 10 people. In Vermont, if you put more than two unrelated people in a house, you need a license. What we really depended on, really COVID and Airbnb worked pretty well for a lot of people, was its shared living, which is really adult foster care, tax free stipends like the IRS allows for adult foster care paid to community members, the Brandon workforce, others to provide housing. That's why we're so disproportionate in that area and really small in the group living. Some of the intentional communities supported by the pilot grants, the staff live on-site. You guys know Vermont's hourly market, that's a huge benefit. So I think there's a lot more to be looked at. A lot of group homes provide staff, provide residents for staff. It makes that kind of employment, I think, possibly more attractive, especially in New Orleans, especially now. So

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: those are probably people going there at 80% of what they should be receiving, Are they more in that setting?

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: That's actually broken down by agency. Jennifer's got a couple of data people coming on board at the department and we're hoping to get some more fibroid analysis. We don't know for sure.

[Jennifer Garavienian (Director of Fundamental Services, VT DAIL)]: Certainly, if there's interest in understanding some of that data more, we would be happy to come and talk with this community and explain how you just kind of give a level set on what there is for data available. We have some talking with doing these interviews, am really sort of thinking differently about the data. Have a lot of data, happy to come and talk about it and give kind of a level set on just housing in our system and sort of where we're looking to go, where we've been, happy to do that with you all.

[Susan Aranoff (Senior Planner/Policy Analyst, Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council)]: Some of the issues that come up with some of the group living have to do with what kind of license you have to get. So one place the report goes is where we need future work is on coming up with a licensure that would work for this type of living. The current licenses available are not really attracted to the designated and specialized agencies, and there are a lot of people living in a group living in workarounds or not in licensed settings, and that doesn't sit very well with Green Mountain Self Advocates and with parents and family groups, that that licensing issue, once we get that result, I think that'll go a long way to opening up doors to more people being able to live together, which for a lot of people is like a fully age normative thing to do in their 20s and 30s. Live with your friends, with peers, and we've seen a lot of models. There's one in Hanover, New Hampshire that just is a beautiful example of what's possible, and I think that repeats the routine people living in that state.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate your testimony. Thank you. And thank you for coming, and do send the report to the committee. Yes, we will do. Thank you very much. We have at 01:00 everyone in Room 11, joint hearing on Betsy's response to Chittenden, and we'll have testimony in the work that will do our hearing in Room 11, together with Ways and Means and Commerce. Are we coming back here after, or we're done after? We're done. That's it.