Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Welcome back everyone to House General and Finance, and it's still Thursday, February 5. We've been working on landlord tenant issues. We have five bills before us. We've just spent several hours yesterday and today going through side by side and attempting a first pass at reaching an understanding on civil procedure as it relates to landlord tenant issues. And now we're going to start testimony on these bills or on the issue generally, and our first testimony is from the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, and would you identify yourself for the record, each of you, and take it away.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Good morning, and thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. I'm Jess Simon, I'm the Associate Director of CDOEO's Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs. I'm here today to provide support to Karen Ames, who'll be doing the primary testimony and I'll also be answering questions.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: So Karen Ames, Housing Education Coordinator for the Vermont Tenants Program and that is part of CDOEO and part of the Housing Advocacy Program. Vermont, what program? Tenants. Tenants, yeah. Take it away. All right, so thanks so much for having us. We really appreciate the chance to speak, to share information. Also, I want to mention upfront that there is a lot contained in these bills as you've been digging in, I'm sure you realize, and we're happy to come back and answer specific questions as you move through this process, because I'm not going to get into this language and this bill and that kind of thing. It's just more general lovely support and let you know what our experiences are working with tenants. CVOEO, as my colleague, Caledonia, who was here last week, mentioned is one of the community action agencies around the state. So primarily our programs are offered to the Champlain Valley. So that's Franklin, Grand Isle Counties, Chittenden County and Addison County. However, our housing advocacy programs are statewide and we do serve people statewide. So the statewide programs consist of six programs, but primarily the largest three are the mobile home program, which serves folks who live in mobile home parks. So those are people who own their homes but rent their lots. And the resident organizing education, that kind of thing. And then the Fair Housing Project, which Jess leads, is also statewide. And they provide individual consultations and trainings for our tenants, landlords and municipalities. My program that I work primarily with is called the Vermont Tenants Program. It's been around since the 1980s. Sometime between the 1980s and now, quite a while ago, we started offering the hotline. And that is a service that does get utilized statewide and is pretty well known in the community. We get a lot of referrals from a wide variety of partners explaining the service to their tenants. We get a lot of calls from tenants. We also provide educational materials, which is referenced in Chair Mihaly's bill, the preferred renters program, which includes housing, education, tenants rights responsibilities, fair housing, as well as finding housing resources, how to overcome barriers, how to develop a relationship with a landlord, that kind of thing. And then basic finances, building a budget, repairing credit, how to manage your money so you can always pay rent. And that program also includes a one on one coaching experience with a financial coach. Uptick in that program has really increased in the last couple of years as people struggle to find housing and need more resources and want to be more competitive in the market. All of our programs in Vermont Tenant are offered through a problem solving approach. So the first thing, I cover the hotline sometimes with my colleagues, Madeline, is away. And the examples that I'm gonna provide are mostly through the hotline or individual consultations. We approach it with a problem solving approach. The first question I ask a tenant is, have you tried to your land markets? And very often that answer is no for a variety of reasons. They feel bad about being behind the rent. They feel bad about something that's happened. They're unsure or they're intimidated, they don't wanna speak up often if they're complaining about conditions because they're worried about moving their housing. So there's a whole variety of answers, but that's where we start is the tenant landlord is the relationship. And we want those people to thrive in that relationship. So it's all about, as one landlord put it to me, where can you find

[Rep. Saudia LaMont (Member)]: the win win in this situation?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: So the topics that I wanna touch base on today, and I know you guys like asking questions and I prefer to stop and answer questions along the way. I will not go ask them. Fear not. Excellent, that's my complete mode. These are the key topics that I do wanna touch on today in some parts. So if we get sidetracked on one topic, I might ask if we come back to that if we can. But also I'm here to make sure that you have questions, you get them answered. I'm sorry. As we were speaking, I just wrote down a question, but I figured I could probably just ask, do you know if right now in current state statute, there's language that protects tenants from retaliation. There is. There is. There's a specific line, I can't quote you. And I'm glad you asked that. It prevents retaliation. I forgot the legal term, but it's about a lawyer. But it is something along the lines of there's presumed retaliation if an action is taken within ninety days of a tenant filing a complaint or organizing a tenant's organization or something like that. So that would be for an action taken by a tenant. So if a tenant corrects their landlord and says, Hey, my water heater is busted. And then the next day the landlord sends them an eviction, that That wouldn't be would be covered. It would be covered. They would have to make that case. Okay, But it doesn't have to be an official complaint or anything. It's just like a- No. Okay. Thank you. That's my understanding. Okay. But I'd have to read that statute. That's a good question. I'll ask again. Counsel understood. Thank you. And I'm glad you brought up that question because it does bring something that I do wanna mention somewhere and then we'll get back to this. Sorry. I can get sidetracked and talk housing all day. I've been primed to stick to the topic. But we are not lawyers, but we do help people understand the law and make referrals when necessary, which is often to legal supports or social services or whatever their needs are, financial counseling, whatever it is. The more clear you can be in your language in the law, the better it is not only for the tenant and the landlord, but for anybody in between and who's assisting folks. Right now, some things are super, super clear. Landlord access, cut and dry. It's pretty clear. Anything that is reasonable or nominal, or some of these terms, anything that you can do to specify would be helpful. So that's just a comment about language a little. So to get back, we do not support shortening eviction notice periods. I have a couple of examples to explain why. And I believe that we have some understanding about what's behind that, but the essence of what will happen is more on house people in Vermont. And that's already happening at a pretty high rate. We don't wanna increase that. We do support rent increase limits. This will support all people in Vermont, working families, as well as those who are really struggling. We support just cause eviction protections. For the example that you just had, if someone complains to their landlord and they've gone through their first year lease or they've just always been month to month, even if landlord could give them a no cause termination with appropriate termination and not cite that it's because they complained, but they can just do it because it's available. On the just cause evictions, how many cases in the lot have been for just cause and everything else? You mean for cause or for no cause? Well, have just cause. That's the terminology that's used. The two ways of, as you know, I think, there's no cause and for cause. Right, so are you talking about a for cause? I am saying there should be for cause. Okay, so how many, well, in today's law, when we have the no cause in how

[Rep. Saudia LaMont (Member)]: many

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: cases have been brought to court with just for a no cause conviction, nothing else is fine?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Right, later this afternoon, I believe Jean Murray from Motley Delayed is gonna be here and she has great statistics, I'll refer you to that. My understanding is as of last year, the best numbers that are available are about 20% are no cause. That's an understatement because those terminations don't go to court. Unless the tenant stays after the termination date. So it's a very hard number to get a handle on. And that actually I'll jump ahead. One of the things we support strongly is a rental registry. And one of the problems with discussing these matters is data is hard to find. It's hard to really nail down because we don't have a clear idea of exactly who's renting in Vermont and who our landlords are and whatnot. So that would be a good plug for a rental registry. Justin spoke to that a little bit more clearly. Does that help? The rent registry? No, I'm sorry, to answer your question. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm gonna open it. Okay. Yeah, she's full of information. She will definitely be able

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: to answer that question, Raul.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: We support clarification of application fees because there was a change made last year. And I believe that the intent historically in Vermont has been application fees are prohibited, period. And what has happened is this practice of charging for background checks and credit checks has sort of crept in. Then, well, I'm sorry, this is supposed to be the overview. And then more fees are being charged over the last few years. So I'll explain that in just a minute. And then we also support the rental registry, a tenant right to counsel during eviction proceedings, eviction record confidentiality, and those are some appropriations that Jess will speak to at the end. We submitted a written testimony that has lots of detail on all this. So I'll refer you to that if I'm being too vague as we go through. So I wanna start first with eviction notice periods with two examples to show you the impracticality of shortening those notice periods. So the first example I'll call Alice, I've tried to anonymize these, is a call I took on the hotline last November. And Alice is a first year nursing student and she was working full time and started her nursing program and realized she couldn't keep up full time with her nursing program and working. So she cut her back her hours a little bit and then received her tuition and books and all that bill. She prioritized paying all that, the tuition and books got behind on her rent. So by the time she called me, she was seven days into her twenty one days to respond to an answer and forth. So it took her seven days to figure out how to even get to the person to ask for help. Then I asked her, of course, to call Vermont Legal Aid right away. They're backed up. So I knew she wouldn't get an answer ASAP. But fortunately, have a great website. I don't know if you've browsed it, but Vermont Law Help, excellent resources. They have a form letter that folks can use to provide the correct format because they can't just write a letter. It's gotta be a correct format to respond to court. So I was able to guide her through that process, refer her to Vermont Legal Aid, refer her to my colleagues who do housing retention and support. They were able to work with her to apply to the landlord relief program. And this case ends in a happy ending. She was approved and got some support for that back rent and made a budget and was able to move forward in a sustainable way. That took time. It takes time to contact resources. It takes time to contact Vermont Legal Aid. It takes time to apply for the background. If you're doing it through a HOT program, it takes time. I know that because we do that work at CBOEO. So that's one example. The second example I'll talk about is Jenna. Sorry, I need to drink water. And not everybody is as positioned to provide for themselves and help themselves as Alice was. So Jenna called me on a Thursday, I remember this, through the hotline and she had to file her answer in court by Monday. She had in a timely manner called Vermont Legal Aid and had been waiting for a call back because she didn't understand that she wouldn't get a call back right away. So by the time she asked around and found resources and called me, she had four days. Jenna is a single mom and she lives in a rural part of the state. She does not have transportation. So, she depends on friends and family to get around. And she has two young daughters who are in school. Fortunately for Jenna, she lives in walking distance nearby a library. She has a relationship with a librarian. Was able to, you know, what she said to me on the phone was, I'm terrified of living in a tent with my kids, of being on the street with my kids, because I have a friend who had to do that. So I urge her to call Vermont Legal Aid back and tell her exactly what county she was in and prioritize this help. Meanwhile, I walked her through the process of filing an answer herself. She was gonna go the next day and work with a librarian to do that, to print it out. And then we problem solved getting transportation on Monday. Where was the courthouse that she could get to that she had to file this in so that she could get there and file her answer in court. Jenna did disclose that she has a disability that makes her anxious. And this was partly why she had delayed as well. She could have, I did refer her to Fair Housing to ask for more time because she could ask for an accommodation due to her disability. But by the time she, the timing just would have been crazy. I don't know how that ended up. I did not hear back from her. So I'm hopeful that she filed her answer and that she also, I advise her to go to her local cap agency and get some help with the back rent. So my point is that these timelines for everyday people are hard. And I can sit here and say, I know what to do. If I got a summons right now, I would file that answer. But I know the law, not every tenant is upon every bit of it. What I do wanna say is that we have had conversations with nonprofits, landlords and for profit landlords, and have heard really heartbreaking stories about the intent behind the problem that pushing the, that's behind the push to shorten the eviction periods. And so we understand or what we've been hearing is that there is a very small slice of the tenant population that is causing a huge outsized problem. Presenting dangers to their neighbors, conducting criminal activity, really heartbreaking things happening in housing situations. Very sympathetic to that. Their neighbors are calling us on the hotline too. The neighbors of the very problematic tenants. It's a very tough situation. I'm really sympathetic to that. What I would caution against is opening up tenant landlord law and eviction law and trying to solve that problem with what I consider kind of a blunt instrument to solve that problem. So when you open up tenant landlord law and you say a landlord can decide what's criminal, a landlord can just write an affidavit and decide, that opens it up. There may be landlords who are 100%, I know there are, there are caring landlords who will bend over backwards for their tenants, who will really wanna help their tenants and make good choices about that. There's also landlords who won't, just like there's tenants all over the place with, we're all human, all over the place with their behavior. So I just caution you to be careful because the way I have read those proposals, the bills, I can see how a landlord will use them, not the way that you're intending in all likelihood. So I believe that Jean Murray will speak more clearly to that in terms of maybe some other options available. But if that's the intent is to really get at real crime and dangerous situations, can we target that a different way without doing it through the landlord law? Gayle?

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Oh, yes. I had

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: a question about what you had said earlier about confidential evictions. Yes, confidentiality of eviction records. To whom? Confidential to whom? Let's jump and talk to that and I'll come back to rent increases. When someone, So even though evictions are a civil violation or a civil record, they become part of someone's record. And it hangs around for life. So if you have a one time, you lost your job, your car broke down, couldn't pay the rent, got into circumstances but for the last ten years you've been great, that still shows up on your record. In this housing market, landlords don't wanna deal with even hearing about someone with a problem. Eviction, that's all they hear. The person been evicted, done. Because they've got 30 other clients, sorry, potential tenants ready to commit, We don't have that on the record. In addition to that, what's been happening recently, I had a call just in the last couple of weeks from a person, a tenant who had applied to a large nonprofit housing survivor and been denied based on eviction. And his call was, How do I get this off my record? It's like, Well, there's no way right now. But, You've been evicted? Did you go to court? Oh, no, no, no, I've never been to court. Well, turns out that he moved in, he knew to Vermont, moved into Vermont with the help of, and a partner organization in the community had agreed to pay the first three months rent, and then he was going to pick it up and move on. The partner agency must have lost funding, I don't know, they stopped paying after a month and a half. He didn't know that. So when the landlord sent a notice to vacate based on non payment of rent, he went, yikes, okay. He came to see the OEO, he got help with the back rent, he spent on time, perfect ever since then. His landlord has given him a beautiful letter of recommendation to that effect. Because he applied to a nonprofit housing provider that has an appeal process, I was able to guide him through that appeal process. And happily, I learned the other day that the denial was overturned and he's been offered housing. My question is, how many people don't know about that denial process? Or how many people apply to private landlords who don't use the process like that and are losing out? Plus, I was like, wait a minute, you haven't been to court. Why do you have an eviction record? And I looked at this letter from this nonprofit agency and it's right there, eviction. What? So I asked, and it turns out that landlords are using these consumer, that's the word I'm looking for. Consumer reporting agencies, they're national. They may or may not tailor their services by state. They don't. This one that's in use a lot in Vermont does not. It's called Real Page. They do background checks. So it was kind of one stop shopping for a landlord. It's background check, credit check, rental history. That rental history is not Port Records. It is aggregating data from 20,000 reporting communities. So, what had triggered that landlord was the notice to terminate, notice to vacate. A notice to me is a notice. It's an opportunity in this case. Most of the time, I would contend those tenants know when they're buying in rent. In this case, the guy didn't even know. And so, I'm disturbed that people are being denied housing based on a notice to vacate being in a record. And I'm disturbed also by an eviction record of some time, some point in time being a lifetime barrier to house. I think that a lot of evictions happen for nonpayment. Last I knew it was about 70%, Jean Murray can correct me on that this afternoon, for nonpayment only. We shouldn't be penalizing people for being poor.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. Just to alert you, you have about ten to fifteen minutes left.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Okay, and we do have the full written testimony.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Great, thank you.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: So you'll be able to read the form as well.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And I've asked the CVOEO to submit. They have a textual analysis with suggestions, and I asked CVO to submit that as well.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: So, let's see, what should we prioritize? Rent increase limits, I think, the big one, yeah. This is actually a slide, don't have to talk about rent increase Sorry to interrupt you. Saudia, you have a question.

[Rep. Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Yeah, I want her to finish and get to the rent increase limits and focus on that, but I just wanted to clarify a question. Hi, Jess. Just wondering, can you clarify to me, I don't know if I missed this in the, if you had said this already, the notice to vacate, is that required for people to get assistance for back payment?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Yes, I'm glad you asked that question. Yes, through the HOT program. Yes.

[Rep. Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Okay, thank you.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Yep, the HOT program is designed to help people who are literally homeless or at risk. And one of the ways to determine at risk is the notice to make today or tomatoes.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: And similarly, the Vermont State Housing Authority's landlord relief program, which can provide the payment of some back rent, currently requires a court docket number. That's an excellent question.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: I'm glad you brought that up because it's kind of a conundrum, which is what I think may have been behind your question is if you need the notice to get the help, then you wanna receive the notice. But now the notice is on your record so you don't want the notice. It's like, okay. So rent increase limits. So yeah, this is a slide I use in my workshops because I wanna emphasize people, I'm working with people who feel defeated, people who have lost hope and feel it's a personal failure because they can't find housing and take care of themselves. So I say, why is it so hard to rent in Vermont? There's low availability and it's awfully expensive. So these statistics just kind of speak for themselves. If somebody has to work 1.7 times full time job to afford a market rate rent, then vast numbers of people in Vermont need subsidized housing just at a time when it's starting to get rarer and scarcer and scarcer. So I do have a specific example about that. And I'm gonna read this because it's the tenant's actual testimony that he provided us. This is a Burlington resident who'd been renting in the same carriage house for twenty five years. And he recently moved out. Over the years, the rent fairly and slowly went up commensurate with the increases I assumed in property tax, water, plowing, etcetera, with a few improvements added by the landlord. When COVID hit, over three years, my rent went up an additional 60% due to, quote, all the crazy increased prices claimed to my landlord's son, who had recently taken over the financial affairs from the father. In the last two years, my house was broken into, and my car was broken into twice in my driveway. I paid for cameras and active security lights. The landlord never once even commiserated or offered to help cover the costs of increased security. This year I had had enough. I decided to leave the home I had loved and cared for for twenty five years and moved out of Burlington. I gave my notice in writing legally as I was informed to do so, but the landlord responded aggressively with multiple threatening texts. And I'll note that since the tenant moved out, the units remained unoccupied. It wasn't fit to be re rented. One of my colleagues puts it this way, if you haven't rented in Vermont in the last five years, you haven't rented. The market is different. The situation is different. I used to say going into workshops that if someone had resources and an advocate, I volunteer for organizations on the side and I go to viewings and help people find housing. And I used to have this idea that if we could just match everybody up with resources and an advocate, they'd find housing. That's not true anymore. So, I'll just say that people are struggling and some limit on rent basis would hugely help that situation. May I add to that?

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Yes. And also on our tenants helpline, we get calls every day from the people whose rents are increasing not by $20 or $30 but by $200 $300 $500 with very little change to the apartment. And that's just not affordable. Rents have already increased more than cost of living, more than incomes have increased. And then to have these really large increases that are done legally with proper notice makes housing situations totally untenable for working capitals.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Yeah, I'll just point out that I'm pretty good at handling my own emotions when I answer the hotline after doing it for a long time, but the calls that really get to me still are the older Vermonters on fixed income. Know, because other people, I can say, where can you find income? How can you increase income? We can work with that. But we have lot of folks on fixed income without the ability and the physical ability to continue their work. When you get these calls, do you know what can be shared housing, that rather than them have the burdens of such absorbent need rent, coupling them up. Yeah, parenting them up for both community and the companionship as well. So the program that I'm most familiar with that provides a pairing up is called Home Share. I cannot speak enough good about Home Share.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: If you

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: have an opportunity to support them, please do. What's that? We give them a proposal. Oh, keep it coming. I think it's a great program. I recommend them a lot because I think they do great work at parents. Typically, from my understanding, it's not two elders that they're putting together. It's more like someone who needs something in their home and has extra space and someone who can provide that something, service companionship. It could be

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: a wide variety of things. So One of my questions is when you

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: get these calls, do you offer that or ask them Yes, how they yes, yes, yes. The situations range a lot. The person, I'll give you one example. Older person who has a voucher. So the voucher can only be used for a single unit apartment. And there's limits on to what the rent can be. This person has lived his whole life in a particular community in Vermont. All his resources, his families, everything is there. Forget how old he is, but he's in his 70s. He cannot find a unit anywhere, anywhere close to his community. So his voucher is running out because there's a time limit on when he can use his voucher. He's asked for extensions. He's got a lot of support help looking. He can find a two bedroom, not a one bedroom. Doesn't meet the criteria. There's a lot of places where flexibility can be opened up. I did not ask that person. He's living with a friend right now. So he's actually living with a friend right now. I don't know, it'd be an interesting thing to explore. I have older people in my family and they would not want to live with other people, I can tell you that. So I don't know how many older people would want to live on the street either. Yeah, true. Oh, five minutes. Should we do this or do you want to do

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: it from patients? Do you want to do this quickly? I'll jump in. We're going go a little bit out of order just because we want to make sure. We've to make sure that we touch on some of these other key topics, application fees, rental registry, right to counsel, and the election record confidentiality, which we spoke to already. I do want to

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It does sound, by the way, one of our bills has a lengthy confidentiality provision, where it becomes confidential until judgment. But you do raise an interesting issue, which is you're saying somehow we ought to be able to reach back, I'm not sure how, and deal with the notice to vacate not being available to credit reporting agencies. In other words, you need a judgement. I'm just raising that issue. I'm not sure what the language would be, but I hear you.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: And the one to check out to start with seems to be RealPage. I don't know if it's a matter of contacting them and asking them to

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, we have other state statutes that deal with reporting agencies. Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. It's true we're kind of getting to where we'll have to wrap up.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: So one thing I want to point out is that there's a really important link between education, information and communication, and housing sustainability So and the policy is really important, and we also need the support so that people can be successful in their homes and can actually

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: put the policy

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: in good use. And so because of this,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: because

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: of my experience working with tenants, working with landlords, we support several appropriations to increase the capacity of service providers so that whatever the policy is can be understood by both renters and landlords and so that the support system can help people be successful. Some of these asks are part of the Vermont Community Action Partnership's broader asks, but we're supporting funding for landlord tenant education for financial coaches at all five cap agencies around the state. As Carrie was mentioning before, if someone has no way to increase their income, there's no way they can afford increasing rent. So having that financial capability, training and support is critical to success. Also the landlord liaison positions, were started up during the one time COVID money, proved to be really effective in forming these connections between landlords and tenants, improving communication and building relationship, the problem solver that Karen mentioned earlier. And so as part of the Vermont Community Action Partnership task, there's $600,000 distributed among the cap agencies for these important bridge building positions. So we just wanted to get that plug in as part of our broader testimony. And now we can go backwards for a couple minutes and touch on any of these other items that we have time for.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: I think the one that I didn't get to that there was already a question about, so maybe I'll just point to the just cause eviction protections. And this does get at the difference between no cause and for cause. And so the idea here is that if a tenant is being a model tenant and doing everything right, that they can feel secure in their housing, that they will be given a no cause termination and asked to leave unless there's specific criteria involved. This seems to be quite popular around the state. Several communities have asked local ordinances to this effect. In Burlington, it passed a 63 to 37 margin, which is pretty good, I'd say. And I do have one short, I'll try to have a short example of that. I had a call from a woman who lived in a rural part of the state. She and her husband and four kids rented for 14 years. They had a lease the first year and then they were month to month after that. They put in a garden, kids were embedded in the schools, the whole lanyards they had their life. Good relationship with the landlord, excellent. He gave them proper notice, no cause, sixty days to find another home. And I lost touch with that family and I gave them all the resources I could, but a family of six uprooted from their community and everything they knew. And I have no idea why the landlord didn't share with them why they didn't. So, it seems to be very popular and I believe it would have very good effect on folks in our community. Guess that's it. Thank you very much. Have other question,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: yes? I don't have a plethora,

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: I just want to thank you for coming in and for your testimony. I stand on board of Brock. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. And I'm dining in a very complimentary of your organization. Oh, do so much. Providing food, eating all the training, and if you need help with your ankle pads, and I have called upon them several times for my constituents, and they have been just amazing. So thank you. Thank you for all I'm talking to reach out staff statewide next week and I'll be on a panel with a person from Brock. Oh, great, great, thank you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you so much.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today, and we welcome further questions.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Can I just get one As more far as the sealed records portion of it, is that a blanket thing or more of a it shouldn't be on your record if you just can't pay your rent? Like, like, as you said, like, being poor should be criminal. I see. Like, do you also feel that way about criminal activity or other things, the damaging of the unit? Could that be sealed as a third?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: I haven't really thought about that. That's a good question. It's question. A really I do know that criminal activity, even those records can be expunged on the Vermont Law website. You can meet up on that. I refer people because I do have people who are like, this gentleman I was in a workshop with the other day, he was in his 40s and he had a DUI and some other things from when he was 20. So he was hoping to get that off the record. So I think if it's non violent and non sexual crime, sex registry related, that there are mechanisms for that. So I would say, yeah, if it's open to criminal records, then an eviction based on that should be open as well. Thank you. Thank you. Our

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: next witness, I guess, it's coming to us via electronically is Angela Zekowski, is director of the Vermont Landlord Association and also a practitioner in the field. Angela, do you want to state your name for the record and take it away?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: Sure. Good morning, everyone. My name is Angela Zykowski. I am the director of the Vermont Landlords Association. We're a statewide trade organization for housing providers. I'm also a practicing attorney, and I represent housing providers in primarily eviction cases at this point. I've been doing this since 2003, so I just did that math and I don't feel that old, but apparently that is the case these days. Thank you for the opportunity to come in to talk to the committee about all of these various housing bills. It seems to not sort of get into the specifics of individual bills that H-seven 72 has sort of pulled elements from a lot of the other bills that were on the list. And it appears to be in a proposal to sort of balance the needs of landlords and tenants. And I think that's sort of ultimately what we ask for in the legislature is to have some balance. And what I have seen out in the field, what I'm hearing reported from landlords is that our current system is not in balance. We have an eviction process that takes a very long period of time for housing providers who are bringing the process, for residents who are living in buildings with tenants who are not following the rules. It's a costly process, and it's creating impacts in the rental market, that I think are sort of we didn't intend. We want to have protections for renters. We want to have protections for landlords. But what we're seeing is given the length of this process and how expensive it is and what the financial impact is to landlords and other tenants in the property is that it's becoming harder for renters to find places to go because landlords are becoming more choosy as they're renting. They're spending more time screening. They're not taking risks on applicants because they know there is such a long process if there's a problem at the end. So one of the asks of the housing provider community is to have a faster and more efficient process for removing tenants if there's a problem, whether it's unpaid rent or some sort of lease violation, whether it's drugs, whether it's damaging the unit, whether it's noise violations, basically creating a not tenable living environment for other residents in a building or the neighbors to a rental property. Housing providers are asking for assistance in dealing with those folks after an eviction has happened. So what we're currently seeing is that a landlord can go through an eviction process, have a tenant removed from a property, and then have no way to prevent that person from coming back onto the property after the eviction is over. This is sort of what I have been referring to as the Decker Towers problem, which is that landlord was evicting tenants. They were being removed by the sheriff, then they were coming back to the property moving in with their neighbor, continuing with the same chaos that got them evicted the first time, then the next household had to be evicted out of the property. Because there is no good mechanism under the law currently for the housing provider to prevent that person who's been lawfully evicted through a court order from coming back to the property to create more chaos and more problems. So, those are sort of two asks of the landlord community, housing provider community. A couple pieces of information that I wanted to share. We hear a lot about vacancy rates in Vermont, low vacancy rates. For the first time in December, we saw vacancy rates, above 4%. So there has been a substantial increase, in the vacancy rate, which, means sort of an easing of the market, for renters. And it also means that I think we're seeing starting to see some of the impacts of all of the new units coming online, which is good, right? We're been talking about having housing crisis, not enough units for people to go to, to live in. And so that pretty significant jump in that vacancy rate shows that these things are working. Specifically, I wanted to provide some comments about the rent control provisions that are in H772. Rent control is a very challenging regulation for housing providers. It has not worked well in jurisdictions where it has been imposed. And it doesn't help with housing issues. It suppresses investment. It discourages investment in rental properties. It discourages people from improving rental properties. We generally see a degradation in the quality of rental properties in jurisdictions where rent control has been imposed because it limits the amount of money that the landlord has available to them to reinvest into that property. You know, this proposal has caps in it, you know, reasonable new owners are capped by 3%. We've seen double digit property tax increases over the last two or three years. And so those numbers don't match. And realistically, for the most part, rents are increased to match increase in operating expenses. You know, we will see properties where an owner has sort of stabilized. Maybe they don't have a mortgage. They've owned the property for a long term and they keep their rents relatively low. Maybe to the detriment of those tenants because when that property gets sold, many times those tenants see a large increase because the new owner coming in whether it's an investor or whether it's a mom and pop or whether it's somebody coming in to buy their first property that happens to be a duplex or a triplex, we see rents having to be adjusted so folks can meet their obligations. So I think generally, I had put together a sort of interesting look at what eviction processes look like in other states. And this had never, I don't think had been done before. And one of the things that I found was that it's sort of hard to compare these apples to apples because most other states have some form of a summary eviction process that does not necessarily look like what we have here in Vermont. So what is consistent across many jurisdictions including Vermont is that evictions tend to be a two step process, which is step one, a tenant is sent a termination notice for some reason. So, you know, landlord says this is what the issue is and the various jurisdictions have requirements for how long those have to be. So on the left here, I've listed out what those various notices are. This column here for Vermont is what we currently have under our current law. I pulled in what seven seventy two is proposing to change these dates to. And then it sort of tracks through other jurisdictions. So we have New Hampshire which has a seven day non payment notice, thirty day breach notice and a seven day serious violations notice. We have Maine which has a seven day non payment notice wasn't clear. So some of these I was trying to pull the best I can. So if there's blanks, it's because I couldn't find the information out available online. So I pulled all this information from Maine, New Hampshire, outside of New York City because New York City sort of has its own, system that it uses that's quite a bit different. I pulled New Jersey. Massachusetts, I pulled Washington State, and I pulled California because these are many jurisdictions that, tenant advocates talk about, when they're trying to compare Vermont and systems. So I looked at notice timeframes, and I provided this electronically so you can look at it. It's a big spreadsheet. It doesn't print well, so I apologize for that. In all of these jurisdictions after the termination notice is sent, the notice is enforced in court. So in none of these jurisdictions is there no court action. So there's always a court action of some form. Some states have housing courts, where these these are handled. But I wanted to look to see, you know, what are how are we comparing, with other states in terms of length of time, you know, what the processes are. And what I have found is that all the way at the bottom, there's a court process timing. So we're seeing Vermont is roughly on average four to six months for a non jury type case. We can expect six to twelve months if the tenant asks for a jury trial.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Angela, this on this, I understand what you're about to do. Are you talking time from filing of the ejectment motion to judgment or effective, ejectment or what's the beginning and end that you're talking about?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: So when I was, calculating court process timing, I was calculating from court filing date to removal of tenant Okay. In that process. So sort of start to finish from the court. It does not include the notice time frames. I left that off. And focused specifically on how long the court part process, took itself. So, Vermont, we're seeing, you know, four to six months on average. The July proposal would, make that somewhere between forty and seventy ish days, depending on whether it was a non payment case or a substantial violation case. And then we see in a lot of these other jurisdictions, thirty to forty five days, one month, to several months depending on court schedule, two months, one to two months, three weeks, that's Washington State, thirty to forty five days. So even with this proposal, H772, we're still sort of at the longer end of all of these other jurisdictions and how they handle eviction cases and court process. So this is available. Didn't want to spend a huge amount of time on it, I just wanted to explain sort of how it's laid out and what the information is in there for everybody, because I think it's helpful to see what other places are doing.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Angela, I guess it's my job to ask difficult questions here. There's two questions that I'm sure are in people's minds. One is, okay. Let's assume for a moment that our time our overall time process is too long. Yep. What we've just heard is compelling testimony that so everything has to be shortened to get a shorter time period overall. What I've what we've just heard is compelling testimony that shortening an answer period to a week or less, five days in some of the bills, is just for many tenants not feasible for them to make, that we'd get defaults, unintended defaults, but yet we want to make it shorter. Thoughts as to how one bridges the gap between these two realities?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: So I think I have, yes, I I do. I think for every civil case that's filed in the state of Vermont, this is broader than landlord tenant. One of the pieces of paper that I am required to include in with the packet that the tenants get served on is a blank answer form.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: A blank answer form.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: Blank, blank answer form. So tenants are provided with the packet that they're served on by the sheriff everything they need to be able to respond to the paperwork. And in fact, I can show the committee what a blank answer form looks like. There is not sort of a specific, format. So this is what the tenants receive in their packet with the court documents. It is pretty straightforward. And realistically, all tenants have to do to not be defaulted is file even just a notice of appearance with the court saying, I'm here. I want to participate in this case. That is enough. There's no magic words that have to be said. There is no special format. In fact, you know, you could argue the special format is right here. This, this is all that needs to be filed and this is in the packet that tenants are served with as a part of an eviction.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: Is I part of have seen a lot less defaults, in landlordtenant cases since this form, has been required to be included. I believe that went into effect February 2022 or maybe 2023. They start to blur together after a little bit. So, this has been out there for a while. And I regularly see tenants send these back. Sometimes they use other forms. Sometimes they have contacted Legal Services Vermont or Vermont Legal Aid and those forms come in. And sometimes they handwrite out things that they file with the court. But I've definitely seen fewer defaults since this form has been provided in the packet.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Did you have a question? I was just going to say there's also instructions on how

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: to fill it out

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that are included with the answer form.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: Correct. And the summons, which is sort of the legal document that gets included that says, here's what you have to do and here's the timing for the answer, provides the address and contact information for the court and it provides the address and contact information for the landlord's attorney or the landlord if they're representing themselves. So it's all right there in pretty large font. There's certain things that are bolded. Like it's a form that the judiciary uses that we all have incorporated that lays out all this information in very plain English. It's not legalese at all. So I think what we have seen, or I have seen, and I think one of the advantages of having been a practitioner for so long is you sort of see these cycles of things. And a number of years ago, housing providers came to the legislature and said, We're having this problem where after an eviction, tenants are just leaving all of their personal property in the rental unit. And there's not clear guidance under the law what we're supposed to do with this personal property. So we came to legislature and requested a change. You know, allow us to get rid of property that's left behind. And many of the same arguments that I'm hearing today from tenant advocates happened at that time. Tenants are going to lose all of their personal property. It's going to be chaos. They don't have enough time to get their stuff out. They don't, you know, it's everything that could go wrong. What I will can report to the legislature is maybe the first couple of evictions after this law went into effect, we had a few of those hiccups where the information hadn't gotten out to tenants that they needed to get their things out of rental properties at the end of an eviction. But in the time since, tenants are removing their property from rental properties after they get served with a writ of possession because they know it doesn't have to be stored. So, what we see is that people are able to conform to changes when they are aware of them. But the changes don't necessarily make it worse. They just change the expectations. And so, when people understand what those expectations are, they're able to navigate and work within those systems.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Under current law, there are notice provisions, are there not? In other words, you have to tell the tenant, you gotta come get your stuff by such and such a date.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: That that is true if you're treating the property as abandoned. So, at the end of an eviction, there is not a notice provision. It is when you get possession of the property and if a certain number of days have passed, you're not obligated to store that property. Most landlords I work with are willing to work with tenants about removal as long as there's a plan, to have things removed post eviction. So

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Angela, can I ask a question about your members and the landlords that you work with?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: Absolutely. If

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: you have data for this, great. And it kind of goes into the rental registry idea. But when you work with landlords, would you say you work with the majority of very large corporations or more mom and pop, small, somebody has a house, a unit, and they want to help, they want to be a housing provider?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: I work with both, all. Have sort of wearing both hats, both in the association and also, through, the law firm. I have a wide range of owners that I work with. And I think what I have noticed among the housing provider community is that regardless of whether they're a big company or a big corporation or a small mom and pop or, you know, maybe they just have a handful of properties, they're in the business of renting units. They're not in the business of doing evictions. They're in the business of renting units. And they also understand that they're renting to humans. So they want to do the right thing. They try to do the right thing. They try to work with people. They don't always have that coming back to them. And realistically, an eviction is the only tool they have for dealing with tenants that are causing problems or not paying the rent. Like, this is the tool that they have. And in many cases, they're still attempting to work with the tenant through the court eviction process to see if there's a solution or finding avenues for tenants to make payments to get caught up. So it's not and I see this across the board. It's not something that just small landlords do or just large landlords or property managers do. It's sort of across the board.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Angela, you have about five minutes. If you want to emphasize anything in particular.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: I think there's some very great provisions in seven seventy two. I think all of the ones that are relating to streamlining this process for non payment situations and lease violation situations are going to be very beneficial, not only for helping with housing, but also in terms of protecting other tenants who are living in those buildings with these folks who aren't following the rules and will, I think, create a situation where landlords would be more willing to rent to folks who maybe don't quite meet their rental criteria or really on the cusp. I was giving a presentation to a roomful of landlords a couple of weeks ago and I asked the question. I said, if you knew you could have somebody out of your property in sixty days or less if there was a problem, would you be more willing to take a risk or take chances? And the answer across the board unanimously was yes.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Any questions of Angela? We may have additional questions and I'll make sure that your side by side analysis is distributed. It is partly just some of some people have it, I think, but

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: Certainly, and I am always more than willing to come back and answer other questions or talk more specifics about process and their proposals as the committee develops them.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We have, I think, may need that and also witnesses. We've asked witnesses to provide us detail. I know you have provided detailed proposals. Any last questions? In the last two minutes, I can't help myself but asking you another question you might find difficult. So, we've had, you know, we don't have a lot of data, so we have to make decisions on the basis of stories, and it's hard to know who to believe sometimes, because we get different stories. One set of stories on rent increases is that, well, they're due because of increased costs, increased taxes, investment in the property, other legitimate costs. Then we have stories of no, landlords just bumping the rent up because they think they can get a lot more in a rising market, and so they're throwing out less tenants who are able to pay less in favor of tenants who can pay more. How would you feel about do you think it's possible to bridge those two situations by limiting rent increases to plus legitimate plus?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: I so I I don't think so. And here here is my analogy, for you on this. So currently, we do have a type of rental property in the state of Vermont that is subject to rent control, and that is mobile home parks.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: And mobile home parks have had that for a number of years and they do have a mechanism for asking for increases for capital improvements that would make a larger rent increase than what's permitted under the statute. And I think, you know, what we have seen is we have seen non investment into these parks. In fact, when COVID money came through with money available for mobile home park improvements, those that money went quickly because park owners had access to funds to be able to make these improvements. You know, of course, there's costly improvements that need to happen in mobile home parks, septic water, roads, like they're not things that are inexpensive. We've also seen no new parks come online. We've seen parks sort of shuttering down. We've seen some transition to co ops where the tenants now are owner of the park. But it has really sort of stalled out that particular type of housing. And I think to the detriment of what is generally a very affordable type of housing for folks.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, we have a question. Go ahead.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Can I ask generally, what

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: would be like the

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: mean, not the average, but the mean? Generally, how long do landlords own a property that they are renting in your population?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: I see everything from the person who's owned a property for fifty years to owners who own for a few years and then sell or, you know, are constantly moving from one property to the next. It's a very different market and it depends on the person's personal sort of circumstances and, you know, why they're getting into rental properties. There is not a one size fits all model. I sort of have seen it all.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Okay. So, and it does it change by region by any chance?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: I don't, think Do see

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: a tendency in urban centers versus other more rural areas?

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: I don't think so. Mean, I will say I see more I inherited this from my mom and dad type landlords and maybe some of the rural areas than I do in sort of more the urban areas. But overall, no, I don't. I have not noticed any trends in ownership types around the state.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: And do you think that a regional or municipal approach that's like some municipalities that have wanted, for instance, just protections, do you see any path for those kinds of like, if a municipality wants to be able to ensure, well, the rules here are gonna be different because the pressures are different in this in this place, the tensions are different in this place. We should have the right to do that.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: I think what I've seen is that the tensions and the pressures are the same around the state. And they don't change by by municipality or jurisdiction. And I think what we need is a statewide housing policy. So we need a statewide system that is consistent throughout the state that people understand, that's easy to follow, and that isn't piecemeal from here to there where the rules change depending on where you live. So, I, you know, a landlord in Bennington and a tenant in Bennington struggle with the same things as somebody in St. Johnsbury or Essex County or Burlington. It may look slightly different, but it's they're all the same same issues.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Angela, thank you so much. Yes. Really appreciate it.

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: Thank you for having me.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Sure. What we're gonna do now for the next half hour, have a seat, Sophie, is transition to consideration of h five forty eight. H five forty eight is an act relating to adding a mediator position and possibly an attorney position to the office of the Vermont Labor Relations Board. What we're doing now is, remember, we had a markup session in which we asked our counsel to add certain provisions and redraft it. He's done that and will share it with us and we can discuss it, and we have it on our agenda for a possible vote. And our clerk has stepped out of us.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: We can find her.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We can find Mary, if we do that. Good morning.

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good morning. Sophie Dedatney for the Office of Legislative Council. The amendment is up on your website, but I did print out, highlighted copy showing the change.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: You've creeped.

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: As it's quite short, I mean, I'm happy to put it up on the screen, but do you want me to do that?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Maybe it would be good to put it up on the screen. Okay.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: You didn't have to. I could have gotten the original.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Sing starts to freeze.

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. So h five forty eight is to add a mediator to the office of the labor relations board. So this adds in, there was discussion last time around the language essentially limiting it to having the mediator work when the parties reach an impasse during collective bargaining, and our statutes, our labor relations statutes, mandate mediation as a necessary step in the process, but mediators are not required but are often used also for grievances and unfair labour practices. So subsection two here provides that if the mediator has capacity, the mediator may provide free mediation services to public and private sector collective bargaining units and employees on grievances and unfair labor practice charges as well. The other, and then in subsection three that's at the top of page two, was there was a concern around the mediation process is a confidential one, and it's really important giving faculty a successful mediation process, that both sides really trust the mediator and that the mediator is keeping the information that the mediator learns mediation confidential. So if the mediator is located in the voting relations board, there's a concern that information not be transmitted between the mediator and then the board members or the other staff members who are ultimately deciding if there's a dispute and it goes to a hearing, so that that information will be kept separate. So what this subsection does is requires the board to develop policies and procedures to ensure that all confidential mediation information is maintained separately and insulated from access by the members of the board or other members of the State Labor Relations Board, so as to protect the integrity of the mediation process. And then finally, in section two, this was to add in a classified staff attorney position. So this just provides for that the position of a full time permanent classified staff attorney is created in the office of the Vermont Labor Relations Board, and then it increases the amount for the salary and benefits for both positions from $115,000 up to $250,000 as the appropriation option.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Questions of Sophie? So, just to discuss process for a minute. What I'm gonna do is ask in a minute for any discussion, any thoughts on this, and then we'll go to a vote.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Do you want me to go find Mary?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, so I think maybe that's underway. Oh. Think she's trying, and what we'll do, just to clarify, if we if we were to vote it affirmatively, because this contains an appropriation, the person who would be the reporter

[Angela Zaikowski (Director, Vermont Landlords Association; Attorney)]: would

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: If it goes to appropriations, it's just she can do it. She'll just get up and say that. So, discussion. Yes, Debbie. So this amount is just for people. Right, the mediator and the attorney. We don't have a place to do the mediation, do we have that? Mediation would happen off-site.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: At the businesses or at the institution, they'll provide the space. That's generally what the feds used to do. I was going

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: say the original bill, as introduced on the floor, had language about placement, but I think through our conversation and from testimony, it seemed that that wasn't necessary. So

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: they don't have a dining home office? They do. They do. They do. The mediation I know the mediation is up, Jason. Yeah. But they have an office. They said, yes.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Have an office. Is it close by?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Somewhere here.

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Right down next to you again.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: It's right down around Beijing.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well Dogs? At least feel?

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Well,

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: I think, yeah,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that's important.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: I'm done.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We've heard how backed up the labor board is. They only have two people, I think, working, and so I would be in favor of this. Anything to help things along instead of back up would be, I think would be beneficial. I also support the bill for several reasons. We have, in the last several years, I think everybody's been struggling with the backup at the labor board, and we've, as I think I mentioned, we actually have on our wall some bills which would take things out of the labor board and allow them to be done by the parties, because just people are despairing of how long things take at the labor board. I thought that the mediator was mean, you know, the mediator is to try to backfill. It really doesn't address the main issue. It it backfills the loss of the federal mediator, probably one of many areas where we are going to have to pick up the loss of federal of the federal role, and the extra attorney would try to address the backlog. So I support the bill. Debbie? Is it ever gonna be addressed, like, if we get caught up and we find we don't need that that, you know, an extra person, like are we ever going to look at it again or, you know what I'm saying?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Depends for an office. I think

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that, first of all, I would guess that that is a highly unlikely scenario given the terrific backlog that they have. But I think that one of the functions that I'm hearing a lot about is the need for the legislature to examine the budget of agencies that they're responsible for, to make sure and to ask them, what are you doing with this program? What are you doing with that program? Because it is true, not so much in the small bureaucracies or tiny bureaucracies, like the LAOB or the Labor Relations Board, a few people, but in some of the huge agencies, I know that, for example, human rights, excuse me, what's it, HR?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Human rights,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: no, no, Teresa Wood's committee is Human Services, they have found millions of dollars. So that is part of our oversight. Okay. Yes. And I think, if I'm

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: not mistaken, the bill is appropriating for one year, Is it base funding, or is there anything in the bill that clarifies whether this is going

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to be in perpetuity? It does say prominent position. If there's a permanent position, it wouldn't be a limited service position. Let me tell you, permanent, I can tell you from my own experience on the Appropriations Committee, is that base funding, which is what it's called, is very hard to come by. And, I mean, this year I think, one time funding is going be hard to come by, but they make that decision.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: So, do we, if we, is it likely that we will be asked to prioritize one position over another, or is that unlikely?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Are we thinking eventually eventually. No. No. Eventually, we will have input. Somewhat strangely, the budget letter that I sent you all that is due the twentieth, and we're gonna have to get VHCb in here. We've got DHCds to come in, just, you know, and LAOB, asked them to submit a letter to us. I have been told yesterday by the chair of the budget committee that we really ought to focus on agencies and what's in their budget, not so much what our bills that we are passing out do, that we will have a chance to do that later. So the fact that this is not an agency request? Okay. I will be alerting the chair about this. I will alert the chair for each one of our bills what the possibility is of an expense to general fund.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: And can you remind us again the total? $2.50. Got it.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Further discussion?

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Would suggest that we adopt draft number 2.1 of H548. Second.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Second. Second. Okay, we have a second. Second. Madam Clerk, absent any further discussion, would you please call the roll? Representative

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Bartley? Yes.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Representative Burrows is absent. Representative Charlton?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Representative Dodge? Yes. Representative Dolgin? Yes. Representative Howard votes yes. Representative Krasnow?

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: Yes. Representative Lamoille?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Saudia?

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Yes.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Representative Parsons? No.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Representative Pezzo?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes. Representative Mihaly? Yes. 91.

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: 911.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You be the reporter of the film? Yeah. Okay, at the moment So, Right. If

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: you remember what happens.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think you simply write an email to the clerk. Nigel left

[Karen Ames (Housing Education Coordinator, Vermont Tenants Program, CVOEO)]: us a little reminder because we sucked about it. Right.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: So, I will

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: into the rules. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: And then we'll wait and then see what happens.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, Jill will refer it to.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Thanks, Sophie.

[Jess Simon (Associate Director, CVOEO Statewide Housing Advocacy Programs)]: Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: We voted a bill

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: out. He said it was,

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: it's freaking true. Oh, right, sorry.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes. My personal bill. Right. We're still live. At this point, I think we, unless there's any questions or concerns, we're going to adjourn for lunch, and we're going to return at 01:00 for committee discussion on four fifty nine, which is relates to parental and family leave, And then it's not set for a vote. And then we're gonna have return to seven seventy two, that is to landlord tenant, for more testimony.