Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Welcome

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: back to the Committee on General and Housing, everybody, and thank you for coming. This is 01/22/2026, and we are continuing our hearings through focusing on the Kingdom, the North, really is really representative of many of the issues facing rural Vermont in general. And our witness this morning, our next witness is Patrick Chittenden, who's Executive Director of Rural Edge. Patrick, why don't you identify yourself for the record and talk to us?

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: Great. Thank you for having me here this morning. I'm Patrick Shattuck. I'm the executive director of Rural Edge. We're the housing organization serving the Northeast Kingdom Of Vermont. We've been in existence for about forty years, and I do have a PowerPoint presentation to hopefully share with So our mission is to strengthen Northeast Kingdom communities one home at a time, and that is really how we focus on work. Again, we rely on lots of resources and lots of energy to do that, but ultimately it is keeping things about small Northeast Kingdom scale impacting our neighbors and the communities we serve. For our organizational history, as I said, we've been around about forty years. We began in 1986 and we'll focus on permanently affordable housing. So our first development was Gilman Senior Housing, which was the original manager's house for the Gilman Mill. Because our housing is permanently affordable, we still operate that. It's fully occupied, has services there, and has a long waiting list. Believe at last check there were 51 folks on the waiting list for 10 elderly units in Gilman. With And that, our portfolio has grown. We're nonprofit, we're community based, we focus on affordability, and we look to strengthen homes and communities in and around the Northeast Kingdom. In 1998, we became part of the National NeighborWorks Network, which brought within a home ownership center. So lots of focus on training folks to be homeowners, financial counseling, financial literacy, post purchase counseling, foreclosure prevention, which unfortunately is on the uprise again. And we have a board that includes public members, private government sectors, and resident representation.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: How many units do you have more or less under?

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: We have just about a thousand units in just about every corner of the kingdom. We've currently got, I believe, 22 projects in our pipeline. In this photo, the one in the upper left is in West Burke. So the building, the teal building in that photo is nine units of senior housing and up on the hill above, we've got 14 units of family housing. Right in the village, looking at the rural scale, but when we talk about challenges of developing in a rural environment, we have 23 units, it has four separate septic systems, it has a community water system that we have to maintain, it has about a third of a mile of road that we own, and those 23 units are not in one nice double loaded corridor, they are in five total buildings. So when you think about the yard upkeep, the snow removal, all of the different systems to maintain, the challenges of working in a rural environment is so much more difficult and so much more expensive that this is what fits in the community. And it's a great project. In the lower left was Derby Line Gardens, which is another elderly project, 12 units right on the Derby Line Greens. We bring a lot to our service area, about 1,000 units of perpetually affordable housing, long pipeline partnerships, we're willing to work with groups, provide feedback, suggestions. We administer the VHIP program. So we've put about 200 units online since 2021 through the VHIP program. We've saw in the last year about $4,000,000 go out of rural edge to private landlords, and we oversee those projects. This has been really impactful in bringing units to very rural areas. So we would never develop units in Bloomfield, but we have five units in Bloomfield. Just about every small community in Essex County, we've been able to add units through this program. So it's a really effective compliment to our program in providing much needed rental assistance. One thing, unlike the other housing organizations which administer the VHIP program, which provides grants up to $50,000 to private landlords to bring units back online, there's a goal of housing folks moving from homelessness. Well, that's a great goal, but folks moving from homelessness probably can't afford a fair market rent of $855 a month for a one bedroom or close to $1,000 for a two bedroom. So if we're truly going to meet the goals of the program, we applied and received a grant of HOT funding. So Rural Edge actually administers our own rental assistance program for those landlords. So if the goal is to house folks moving from homelessness, we've got rental assistance and we also have a separate contract funded through that with NEPA to provide intense supportive services for up to eighteen months. So the goal is to help people become permanently housed and maintain that and make the VHIP work. Now one of the problems, VHIP only has a five or ten year, depending upon the option, affordability. And we know that there are lots of landlords who are looking to transition those units at the end of that affordability period, to short term rentals, or to really increase the rents. And so as you look at programs and changes that would be impactful if you want to house Vermonters, it's ensuring that there's permanent affordability with the VHIP program. We have construction projects that bring millions of dollars to our communities. We contribute over $900,000 annually to local and school taxes. We provide guidance if people want it, and we really serve the most vulnerable Northeast Kingdom residents. 43 of the households we serve have moved from homelessness at some point. That is the highest of any of the housing organizations in the state in part because in the Northeast Kingdom, we don't have an organization that exclusively serves folks moving from homelessness. So we are the housing arm working very closely with our partners NECA and Northeast Kingdom Human Services to provide housing. Now we have to report that. And I will say, I question whether someone who's been successfully housed for six years should still fall in that figure, but it's someone who's moved in from homelessness. So we do have those cases where people have had housing and they've got stability and they're able to see jobs and their kids graduate from high school and go on to college. So it's really a testament. 70% of our household residents have incomes less than $20,000 annually. So we are serving very, very low income residents. Now, I think it's important to put the piece together. You'll have lots of programs, lots of ass in front of you. How do you use this as a success story? This is a couple who actually spoke at the opening of our emergency shelter, the shelter at Minnesota River, which opened in late twenty twenty three. Until that time, we did not have any permanent shelter in the Northeast Kingdom. This was Samantha Carr and Tim Kidder, Both had histories of addiction and ended up in the shelter. In fact, Samantha had been our tenant at one point prior to this. They ended up in the shelter and they were there for just under six months. And now they got the necessary support and services that they needed to really transform their lives. And they spoke passionately and shared this, it's been in our annual report, about the impact that they had. But when we talk about putting the pieces together, the shelter was paid for with housing from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. It's a permanent resource for the community. But from that time, they moved into a VHIP unit using our VHIP rental assistance program so the landlord has security, they know that when they moved in the rental assistance was paying their entire rent. The Hour Program has eighteen months that they can stay with it. Samantha has had four different jobs, each time getting more hours and taking on increasing roles. There was another person who moved into another VHIP unit in the building who'd moved in from the shelter and they had severe health issues and were no longer able to care for themselves. So they actually moved to a different VHIP unit with two bedrooms so they could take care of that gentleman. So Timothy serves as a caregiver, she works and they just had their last rental assistance and they will transition to the point where they are positioned very well. Their rental assistance amount has diminished over the eighteen months, and they are able to take on the full rent. And have helped others, are sharing that because we have Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, we have funding, we have VF funding, we have rental assistance funding, and it's so imperative. And I think this goes back, I highlight this couple because our mission is one household at a time, and they are one household at a time, but we do that times thousands because rural edge in our just under a thousand units house about 3% of the residents of the Northeast Kingdom. So I was asked to talk about some of the challenges we see. So, you know, we know that more housing of all types are needed, but there are many challenges to bringing new units online. You know, and these are just some of the issues, cost, the exposure and risk, that's time, the amount of money you have to invest when you don't know you're going to be able to get any end product. Rural infrastructure, lack of rental subsidy, construction trades, and then I've included some that you may not hear about as much, elevators, and then the realities of operating. So on the left are some of our projects. The upper left is on Route 105 in Newport Center. When I was before you last year, you saw a video of a building under being demolished. This is what has taken its place and will be occupied beginning March 1. That's eight new units of family housing. It includes three bedroom townhouses, it's three doors from the school adjacent to a playground right at the center of town, and the blight it replaced is remarkable. The town is ecstatic to have it across the street. There's another six unit building on a brownfield site that we had to remediate that's adjacent to a wetland. So you never have an easy site that we work with. In the middle is Packard Court, which is the home on Main Street in St. Johnsbury, which has been vacant since the fire sixteen years ago. We will be breaking ground on that in May, 27 new units of elderly housing. And in the bottom left is the addition at the convent at Sacred Heart, which is four floors to maximize that building. That building will be complete, of course that whole complex had been empty for more than a decade. 26 units will be placed in service April 1, and then we'll be starting later this year with 32 units in the school. So really creating a new new community in Newport, walking distance to downtown public water and sewer. But just to elaborate on some of those things, cost. So we've had four large developments, net new units, we know that has been the directive, that based on our original designs, third party cost estimates, updated cost estimates, and schematic design were considered fully funded. Only to go out to bid in a twelve to twenty four month window after that to find that construction costs had increased between 40 to 100%. That is a really big challenge. Higher increases we're seeing at smaller projects or projects that had scattered sites with smaller buildings. So again, speaking to the challenge of rural construction and the rural scale. It's a higher cost for general conditions, for contractors to mobilize, lots of the requirements because of the size of a total contract to get larger developments, require more bonding, so we aren't able to get unnecessarily local contractors and there's just a shortage of subs. So we have worked through that, lots of design modifications, how can we fit in another unit, how can we value engineer, how can we seek additional resources, but each one of those decisions creates more time and adds cost when the housing is desperately needed. Naylor and Brain recently did a divisional cost increase analysis of large scale projects, 24 units, that they completed between 2020 and 2024, and they saw based on AIA line items increases of between 16578% on line items, but the average per unit cost increase was 53%. This impacts us, whether nonprofits, it impacts the private sector. When we talk about needing new units, this is the reality. I did not think, you know, I just painted my house a house in Gilhall, an old house, but it was $60,000 to paint an old farmhouse, and we know that those are the conditions that was the cheapest bid by far. You know, those are the conditions that people see that real Vermonters face every day, and so we have an aging housing stock that we need to look at maintaining, and everyone is dealing with these issues. Do you

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: have any sense as to the factors contributing to that cost increase, and do you see any sign of it evading this year?

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: I do see that there is more, we're getting more folks bidding. We just requested an RFP for architects and eighteen months ago we would have had many architects tell us they were too backed up to even bid. We got six responses for a relatively small project. Likewise, we're getting a lot more contractors looking at us. It's interesting, we just went out to bid for construction management on an 18 unit, five building scattered site project, and we actually had one of the larger firms come in lowest because they want to keep their crews working. So unfortunately what we're seeing is even when we have something that normally would have been skewed to Northeast Kingdom contractors, the bigger firms got the bid because they just need to keep their crews busy. So I do see more of that. One of the biggest issues is just the cost of materials. You're looking at 50% labor, you're looking at 50% materials, We aren't seeing any reduction in material costs. Sometimes you might get a shift in materials through value engineering. Rural Edge has a standard specification, owner's standard specification, because we're going to own things in perpetuity, our spec calls for cast iron tubs and ceramic tile. And I'll tell you that we've got 34 old buildings, we just redid the bathrooms, but the ones with cast iron tubs and ceramic tile, you might regrout a little, you might be caulking, but you aren't replacing everything. A fiberglass tub, you're going to be replacing. So that is our standard spec, and on Newport Crossing we had value engineered because we tried to fit from the cast iron tub and the ceramic tile down only to have the construction management firm say, you know pricing has shifted, and actually it's an increase either way, but it's going to be cheaper for you to get the cast iron tubs, which is why we have to bring our construction firms on early on for construction management with our design teams because everything is moving so quickly and you really have to be able to respond and adapt. That has been our word, we adapt. So cost is a huge challenge. Cooperating.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: You need to get out of it and back in.

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: Okay, we're moving along. Exposure and risk. As we handle larger scale projects and developments that have things like brownfield remediation, historic preservation, and infill downtown sites, they're more complex. The level of pre development work is huge. The picture in the photo is the Saipir De Haert site in Newport, which is 8,000 acres with multiple buildings that had been vacant, as I said, more than a decade. But before we were able to close, take title to that, we had spent over $1,500,000 in pre development expenses that we weren't able to get reimbursement from any of the funding sources. That was a total of three separate pre development loans and $500,000 of our organizational funds to advance that. So when you look at and you say, why are folks unable to build? That is a huge exposure. And then when I mentioned that we have three or four other developments, trying to move them all along, There are many nights when I don't sleep. This is the reality of what it takes to develop. Now the upside is that site we now own, it was a brownfield site, the brownfield

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: A lot of the 1,500,000.0, the brownfields?

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: Oh, maybe $400,000. We had to do over 100 test wells on the eight and a half acre site because there had been two underground storage tanks that the daughters, the nuns had removed, and that was all documented with the state, but there was no documentation as to what had been done with the soil. Now I have my suspicion that they told the janitor to spread it around the field, but we had to test all eight and a half acres, which are at just about the highest elevation in Newport. So you know, not a lot of groundwater at that elevation, so it was over 100 test wells that had to be drilled. So again, time and money, but lots of design work. Of course, had to expand infrastructure. So we were bringing and we did this as a planned unit development. So now that the infrastructure is in place, the city will take over ownership and maintenance, but we had to run all new Thankfully, the city had put capacity for both water and sewer, but had to run all new lines. They required three new fire hydrants, you know, new roads, access roads for fire truck coverage around the building, even though the buildings were fully sprinkled. So lots of that is the design work and all of the engineering and architectural work and holding costs because the daughters were patient with us, but they were also savvy in requiring us to keep and cover the maintenance of the site while we worked through it. But that just goes to show the amount of risk that developers have to be willing to take and stomach. There are infrastructure limitations. We frequently hear about water and septic. In this case, this is in Newport Center. You saw one of the new buildings. They have public water and sewer, but the existing buildings that were torn down had numerous fire and safety code violations and they were constantly threatened with shutdown. But the town's water system doesn't have sufficient capacity or pressure for the sprinkler system. So we had to put a series of folding tanks and pumping stations in the building even though we have public water and sewer. So not only do you have the expense of all of the tanks and that infrastructure, but that the square footage required for that took up the amount of square footage that would have resulted in another one bedroom apartment. So if you think of not only do we have that added expense, we have the lost opportunity which would have reduced the per unit cost. And this is what we see across the board in the developments that we bring online. A huge issue which I'm sure you're hearing about are lack of rental subsidies. We know that at the federal level, outlook is not good, but while between 3,004 new units are needed in the Northeast Kingdom over the next decade, about 75% of those need to house folks making less than 50% of area median income. And so fair market rents are not affordable to this income bracket without rental assistance. To give you an idea of our portfolio, about 85% of our tenants, 3% of the Northeast Kingdom receive rental subsidy either through project based assistance or tenant based assistance. And so, we look to re house folks and we're creating net new units, some which have requirements to house folks moving from homelessness. And in one case we have a letter, it's a contract, a letter of intent from the state housing authority to issue rental assistance for those homeless set aside units. They've told us with the building that's nearly complete that they won't have the funds to honor that. So we have the obligation to house folks moving from homelessness and we have not the rental assistance for those units and we have folks who are currently living in hotels or in shelters who had expected to be able to move in and were working to look for a solution because we need to build those units and we have folks who desperately need them. To give you an idea of what some of our units with project based rental assistance looks like, in the lower left are the Lind homes in the metropolis of South Regate, seven worker homes, so each one is a three bedroom house. So we house many families with five kids in those, all have project based rental assistance, and because we never do anything easily, five of them from rural development and two of them from HUD, all project based. So we have separate regulations and requirements and separate waiting list requirements for seven units. The middle building is on Summit Street in St. Johnsbury, has rural development and rental assistance. And in the lower right is the Passumpsik View, which is 25 units of elder housing on Railroad Street in St. Johnsbury that has had rental assistance for 24 of the units.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Patrick, we are going to have to have another witness in about five minutes.

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: Okay, so speed up. Construction trades, we don't have enough people to work. As a result, folks are bringing in crews from further away, that travel time, that lodging time is all factored into costs. Some of the systems that we have are really, really specialized and there are not local firms available. So lots of travel time, especially when systems break down, when they're placed in service and you

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: need to provide heat in the middle of

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: the night and someone's going to come from Burlington or further away. But we are seeing more bidders, which is a good sign, but you know, we have also had the incident in our Newport development because we had subcontractors from out of state firms. We had five visits from ICE. Five visits were crews that were working incredibly hard, 10 were detained the first time, all were rightfully here and able to work, working hard buying eggs from the next door neighbor, playing basketball on their breaks with kids and building these buildings so quickly. They were visited four other times and now the construction management firm is having a full audit from ICE. So all of the cost, the delay, which is just something that you didn't anticipate on top of everything. Elevators, I don't think anyone has more elevators than Rural Edge in the Northeast Kingdom. The number of elevator companies nationwide is decreasing. And so the first thing you do if you've got an elevator in your building, that is the first thing you're going to be ordering because the turnaround time might be a year. And because not only does the elevator have to be made, they have their own crews who may come from halfway across the country to install it. Likewise, firms, there are a limited number of firms for service contracts and they are exclusive and they get to you when they get to you. Certainly it's not been, I mean you may have seen across the state, there have been buildings that have been waiting on parks for a month or two months. I will tell you, I have staff who when we have elderly buildings shut down, we're doing laundry, we're going to the grocery stores, we're walking pets, the fire departments are on call, and you know we just had one instance where to diagnose that on a holiday weekend, the repair bill was $1,400 an hour, was the labor rate, and they identified a part that was over $11,000 that they would not order until they had payment in full. This is for 14 units of elderly housing. So when you look at the impact that this has on operating and on the folks we serve, it's a huge challenge. Likewise, on the inspection side, which is a requirement, the firm that does elevator inspections, the primary firm was sold to an out of state company, which didn't have insurance to work in the state. So if you had sort of an inspection in the last Oh God, Preston's looking at me. The last four or five months, you've been on a list that they haven't been able to inspect. So there are a bunch of outdated inspections, not just in our buildings, know, check the elevator certificates in this building, that are in the queue for inspections. So we have service contracts. They're inspected every month for our buildings, but they don't have the certificates. So this again is a real challenge. And then finally, operating realities, historic buildings and exterior paint, dollars dollars 50,000 on a three unit building. And so we have requirements for historic buildings to inspect, to notify. There aren't enough lead certified painters. Our full maintenance staff is both certified and we have a certified supervisor, but it is a real challenge And oftentimes if you don't have those done, your tenants may lose their rental subsidy. So there's no window. One thing we've recently negotiated is wrapping areas in Tyvek. So we have lifts to wrap in Tyvek because guess what, you can't paint in January exteriors of buildings.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: So I guess could you wrap up?

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: Yeah, that's my last one. Safety is huge and while tenant rights are vital, the realities of landlords, and I know this committee is working on lots of laws, we've got to really consider the safety of all the tenants and expediting emergency evictions where there is clear and documented threats to the safety and well-being of buildings and residents. It's a priority and one that we deal with every day. And so what do we need? Consistent funding because we make the investment for the long term. We've built programs, we've got a pipeline, so VHCb funding is so imperative to our pipeline, both in rental and home ownership, which I haven't touched on. VHIP is great in sort of creating the next generation of responsible mom and pop landlords. But again, I would talk about the difference between VHIP not having permanent restrictions and permanent restrictions, mechanisms to help increase home ownership. So there are so many single family homes that we say, oh, if there could just be the generational change, young families could buy houses. But these houses have extensive renovation needs oftentimes which limit mortgage programs and while there are home repair programs, they don't really address the significant renovations. I'm

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: to have to ask you

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: terminate it. This is the last one. So I'm on a bright spot, continued focus on new solutions, everyone working together to look creatively at solutions, how do we produce more, faster, but ensure high quality, because that is what we are here for. And I thank you for the opportunity, we'd be happy to take any questions.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Thank you. You want to share those with us, right?

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: Yes. Thank you.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Thank you so much, Patrick. Really appreciate your testimony. Our next witness is Lorelai Tester, who has been here once before, who's the Executive Director of the Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce.

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: Thank you for having me back. I'm not quite sure how, I don't know that I actually need the screen. I think in some ways, you all heard what I said. It's an honor to be here. I'm Laura Lee Tester, the Director of the Dineke Senior Chamber of Commerce based out of Linden, but we represent about 50 towns of those three counties, Orleans, Essex and Caledonia. It's been a really interesting experience for me to be in the chamber. And I jumped right in. Was kind of a little bit of the tail end of the last time that I had the opportunity to speak with you. But understanding the bigger picture of the economy of our rural areas, which also impact the entirety of the state, I think is so important for us to just have that global picture. And sometimes, I think it takes a minute to step back and we all get really focused on our sector or our pet project. And being in the chamber, I'm dealing with a lot of, I'm dealing with everybody, nonprofits, for profits, small, large individual. And I think it's beginning to really make very clear a story. I also am on the board of Let's Build Homes, which has been a real education for me. And there's a lot of value, I think, to the attention that that is bringing to our state about the need for housing. And I think you've all heard it probably more than you care to. I don't need to paint that picture But what I'm realizing, especially as I'm one of the very few rural voices in that organization and in others. Feel like I'm often one of the very few who's willing to make the trek over to Burlington for some of these meetings, is so much of the well meaning policies and things that we are implementing in these incredible programs are still not, they're not quite hitting the nail on the head for rural Vermont. And it is a bigger picture than just housing. And I have been really been thinking even beyond, right? Like what happens when we hit the 30,000 mark in the next five years for this state? What happens then? And I think that I just chatted with a woman two days ago who lives in Westfield and she's a new chamber member, and she said, But I think we're gonna move to Tennessee. And this was on the very same day that I received a $30,000 check from the state of Vermont, biggest check I think I've ever gotten. It was for the Grow Grant. And the Grow grant is for relocation and outreach for bringing people to the state, because we know we need better demographics. And I asked this woman, Wendy, why Tennessee? And she's like, I just can't afford it here. And Tennessee is kind of similar, without the snow, where they're looking for. And she said that the taxes are killing her. And I think that needs to be part of our conversation. Came here thinking, okay, I'm gonna talk about housing, and that's what some of the slides were that I sent, because after my conversation and my testimony a week ago, there's a lot of ideas, right? There's a lot of ideas for how we do that, but we need to take that bigger picture of how are we investing our money and our time and understand that bigger picture is so important. How does somebody who has lived here for, I don't even know how long Wendy's been here, she could have been multi generation, she could not be, but she's leaving. She's probably about my age and she's leaving to have her business elsewhere because Vermont is making it so difficult. So yes, we need to sort out our housing and we need to make it easier for rural areas to succeed, but if we don't sort that out, it's all for nothing. I'm feeling a little bit right now, it feels like it's a lot of she talking

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: about taxes on her she's talking about her business, or is she talking about herself, like property taxes?

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: All of it. All of it. It's just the whole picture, and I think it's death by a a million paper guns. Whether it's in the work that we're doing, it depends on who you are. Bud Stevens, a developer in Lindenville, he said that before they even broke ground, they spent $350,000 just in permitting, before they could even get started. I have a great anecdote of a gentleman who runs Kirby Mulch. It took three years, dollars 67,006 consultants to just jump through all the hoops and paperwork and all of it so that you could just start a business. Most people can't afford that. And I think that was a piece that I brought up a week and a half ago, is that our small developers just can't, they can't shoulder that. When you're looking, again, mentioned Market Street, those developers are so big and they can handle it. They can wait because they're working on other projects. But the developers in our rural regions can't. They can't wait three years. They can't shoulder the $350,000 and so nothing happens. Apropos So to the conversation today, I actually hosted a small dinner at my house last night with some leaders in our community to say, all right, what do we need to do with this housing thing? And it was really interesting. There were two developers there, there were two large employer CEOs, and there were a couple banking institution voices. The need is there, the desire is there, the ideas are there, the locations are there, and we're still not able to make it happen. And so just being able to identify what are the hurdles that are preventing this success, because I think we all know that that's what we need. Aside from some people who don't wanna, they wanna keep their pristine, I don't even know. I don't even know what they want because it's not working out so well for us, The idea of NIMBYism. I would love to have a conversation with somebody who's going through these appeals and fighting the idea of development at this point. It feels very hypocritical in a lot of ways. So have some, there's some ideas from some of those developers of things that would just make it easy. I think we have regulations that are killing it, killing the process of growth. And we also have some amazing programs, but it's not quite scratching the itch in rural Vermont. And I also, I totally respect and am so appreciative of the work organizations like Rural Edge and that demographic that we are supporting. But I just listed some testimony from Weidman, which is one of our largest employers in the Northeast Kingdom. They are doing a $40,000,000 expansion in investment in our region. In the last six months, they've hired 100 people and they need 60 more. Their head of HR travels an hour to get to work because she cannot find housing in our area. And this is an organization that, a company that is, they add so much to the economic strength of our state. And it's how are we going to support that level of growth? The consequences are great. So I came to follow-up on something I started. I'd be curious what questions you have for me about what that really looks like on the ground, or I could keep telling stories all day.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Did you get more specific comments at your dinner party in terms of what pieces of the you know, did you get more specifics from the developers or from

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: One of ideas moving forward is how do we aggregate all of the need? Because when you're dealing with something, so David Kaplan, who is actually going to be here at the State House tomorrow, he's also a CRNA and he's representing healthcare tomorrow, but he's also a developer. He has a plan for a 49 unit apartment building. And what the conversation really sounds like is if you're dealing with anything under 150, you can't get the finances to work. And I don't, as far as details, and so the conversation's all right, how do we come up with all of the projects in the whole region and begin to pull it together so that we can be just economy of scale. And so that's gonna require people beginning to work together. And I'm thinking that it might be an extra project for me at the chamber to begin to gather all that data, because there are some real central points in Newport and Hardwick, Leninville and St. John's Pray where there's opportunity, but each of our individual developers are not coming up with projects that are large enough to make the finances work. Yes, go ahead. Is that 49 units with it as infrastructure already? No, it would be starting from scratch. It was a site, it was an old, the Lincoln Inn, it was a motel that was right there, and they actually have plans scoped out for something more significant, it's more of just a place to draw, I think similar to the Cambium or Cambium Rise. Cambium Rise, but St. Johnsbury scale. Did he mention how much 49 units in that area would wind up costing? He might have, I apologize, I don't know. You were having a dinner. I was having a dinner party. We didn't go into the granularity of that, but I can certainly find it out. I'd love to. Thanks.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yes, I'm looking at the slides you brought in last time. One of the things, a lot of it reinforces conversations we're having elsewhere and that's very valuable. There's one idea here that I'm wondering if you can unpack a little bit. It's rural housing rehab and conversion acceleration. You mentioned the streamline code compliance for rehabbing buildings, upper stories, barns, schools, commercial building. The life safety focus and not new build standards. Is this something so Well,

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: I think the idea really is stemming from the town of Lunenburg, which has just under a thousand homes on their tax records. And nearly a third of them are uninhabited or inhabitable. And so, think about what that does to a community and what that looks like, what the results of that. And so, there's still so many hoops that end up needing to be jumped through, but imagine being able to rehab that in a little bit of a better way and take away some of the, like a house is meant to go here, how can we streamline that process to make it easier?

[Unidentified committee member]: Okay, are we finally gonna have to choose between doing a large project, do we have these buildings where a lesser amount of work would make it habitable, or they're having to choose between doing a master project and

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: nothing? That's a great question. I think that one of the pieces that we're beginning to ask the question of is just because we have so many issues with labor, and being able to make some of those things happen is how do you reduce the cost per square foot? And that's shifting the conversation. I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

[Unidentified committee member]: Well, I'm trying to it's just I've had conversations with contractors on the local level.

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: Mhmm.

[Unidentified committee member]: About, yeah. And and the fact that a sizable amount of those funds gets used for code compliance. That might not ordinarily be required if it wasn't anything. So wanting to take the dollar as far as we can, is there, know, say we are rehabbing an old school, are there I'm trying to isolate where the regulatory roadblocks are between rehabbing it to be life safety focused as opposed to having to take an old building and rehab it to new build standards, which is very different. Right. So am I following

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: I think so, yeah, to some degree. I mean, I think that it is, that there are lots of, I think that one of our solutions is that it's an all. It's making all of these plans work, and in certain pieces, and I might be in a little out of my depth, I will confess. Yeah. As far as all of the nitty gritty, and I know that there are people who are smarter than me in those areas to put it all together. So this is a little bit more of a broad, okay, there are so many different avenues that we can and should be taking, but how do we make it possible? How do we make the Newport thoughts of the TIP District work out? And what are the things that are holding us back from making that happen? If we are taking some of these homes and just really identifying where's the route so that you don't necessarily I think the conversation, I met, chatted with a man two days ago up in Newport who has, I think 300 units in the region that he has accessed funding through with the VHIP program and requirements, again, this is where the details, I might not know all of them, so I apologize, that working with some of those restrictions he has done for five years and for ten years and has received money to make that happen. And then in this most recent project that he's working on, he's like, I don't even want to be bothered. So he is now successful enough that he can make that decision. But why is it that we're making, what are those restrictions that are making those development opportunities so difficult? Yeah, okay, so I'll try to find a little bit more details of why.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Other questions? I've got, I guess, a very obviously difficult question, which you may answer by saying I have no idea. One of the contradictions we face is we're hearing on the one hand that our taxes are too high. On the other hand, we're hearing the complaint that state government is hollowed out and can't respond. So, example, we just had testimony that people can't get inspectors to come out and inspect elevators. They can't get any response from the state on the homeless. And if you talk to state employees, they'll tell you that they have too few people trying to do too much. So how do we resolve that contradiction? There are those who argue that it's just an artifact of being a state that's too small, and that there's nothing to be done about it. And I'm wondering if you, looking at the big picture, have any thoughts? I do.

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: I think that we are, in some ways we want our cake and eat it too. I think in so many different pieces of our lives, I think about healthcare and the expectations that we have placed on, want God, right? We want somebody who doesn't make a mistake where our outcome is exactly what we want it to be. We wanna be able to take a pill and have it all be easy. And that's not reality, right? And it's also really expensive when we create that. And we have created systems now that are so complex that we cannot be successful. And so the problem now is that because we don't have enough people, our healthcare costs are extraordinary. And because we don't have a balance in our system, I I 100% believe that everyone deserves to have their needs met. I grew up in a log cabin in Newark and we didn't have plumbing or electricity and it was not a lifestyle choice. Let's just put it that way. It's important to have safety nets, but we also need to provide balance for our communities. And the reality is if we're only serving the safety nets and we're not creating a balance, the numbers just don't work, right? And so there's somebody like me, I mean, I'm on six boards. I work way more hours than I've ever paid for, and I'm not paid well, right? But that's okay, I love it. I love what I'm doing. I feel like I'm participating, but most people don't necessarily have that deep love of, everyone in this room does, but that's not enough to run our society. So, well, you got me going. I think that our systems are so complex. The expectations that we have are so complex and we want perfect outcomes every time and that's not sustainable. So we need to figure out those places where we can make it easier. We want so badly to regulate everything that it makes it hard. And so, especially on the East side of the 91 Corridor, mean, it's just as easy to It's way easier to go to New Hampshire than it is for me to come to Montpelier. Developers aren't interested in dealing with St. Johnsbury. I actually chatted with a woman who was in a development, economic development organization, who was planning a move to New Hampshire because it's more affordable and she could send her child to St. John's Brae Academy. So we need to have a really, really good look at why is someone who works for an economic development organization in Vermont making that choice? There are reasons. And I think we all could really, we could probably type it into chat GBT and say, why might someone do this? What are the policies that we have in place? And what is it that we're really trying to do? But we need to broaden our workforce. We need to broaden our tax base, or all of these things are never gonna work, and we're never gonna get somebody to come and inspect our elevators, because it's just too hard to live here. Thank you. Any questions?

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Laura Lee, thank you for coming.

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: You. Much

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: appreciated. We are at the end of this section, the Northeast Kingdom earrings today. We're going to we're going to do next is we have one bill to take up and we're scheduled on our agenda for a vote, but, are we gonna have counsel? 11:45.

[Laura Lee Tester (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce)]: Thank you so much.

[Rep. Tom Stevens (Chair, House Committee on General and Housing)]: Thank you. She'll be here at 11:45. So what we'll do is we'll take a break, and at 11:45 we'll come back here, and the assumption is that with age five thirty two, which is an act member relating to mandatory retirement of college professors, which happened to violate federal law and therefore was simply ineffective, but in order to make that clear, this bill aligns itself with federal law that's been that way for a long time. It has been our assumption that since this is merely a technical correction, that we don't need to take testimony, but I would like our counsel to be here and then we'll vote on it, whatever the vote is, the vote will be. Alright? So We're at 11:45. 11:45. Thank you very much everybody for coming This to is

[Patrick Shattuck (Executive Director, Rural Edge)]: my pleasure to make sure.