Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Good morning everybody. It's Thursday, 02/12/2026, and today, and this is the general and housing. And today we're going to start, one of the things we're doing, as I think I've mentioned in previous sessions, is we're taking evidence on the state of the housing budget with respect to various different housing agencies, in part because it's not that we control their budgets, appropriations controls the budget, but appropriations relies on the committees, the policy committees, and so we're going to be sending a letter next week to House Appropriations in terms of our view of the housing budget and the budget of agencies that relate to housing. So in that regard, we today are going to hear from two witnesses, Chris Donnelly from Champlain Housing Trust and Chittenden Simmons. So, and then we're going to return to landlord tenant for much of the afternoon with counsel going over the various bills in front of us. And finally, we're going to end up taking testimony on the AFL CIO housing investment trust. The AFL CIO has a trust fund that they use to invest in housing, and we're just going to learn a little more about that, what it does, and under what circumstances the money from the trust is available. So that's our day to day, and we'll start now with Chris Donnelly, who's Director of Community Relations at CHT, Champlain House of Trust. Chris, welcome back.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Chris Donnelly with Champlain House of Trust. I appreciate the time, just wanted to chat with you, and I really appreciate all the work that you've been doing on balance policy, but also over the years in supporting funding for affordable housing. So I just want to, I have a couple of things, so these are posted online, but I wanted to pass out some paper. This is This was shared with you, a version of this was shared with you, I believe in

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: the first or second movement of

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: the session. These are the priorities from the housing nonprofits to develop and manage housing. We're part of the housing development and science combined. You'll hear from Chad in a little bit. Think there's overlap on some of their priorities. So I just wanted to point you to the last one, this bottom E. This is what you've done already, so thank you. You've supported the Vermont, the public housing authorities in the state for the budget adjustment. I think that's working its way through the Senate.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You are aware that the Senate took it out.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: They took it out, I did not know that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: They said it should be up to the e board. Okay,

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: I did not know that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So Well, thank you. And so it's really it's gonna be up to the conference committee. I think my I think it was a reaction to the fact that the TUD indicated that they would advance more funds than it's feared. What I think is people are confusing underlying purpose of the 5,000,000. So I think it's important that our confreys fully understand that.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Well, maybe that's something that you could include in your budget letter for that's PS.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that's too late. That's too late, yeah. Budget letter is for due Friday, and I think the conference committee convenes this coming week, early in the week.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for letting me know, but thanks to this body for advancing to that. Know you're moving up the list, you're working on, the tenant, community safety, C, addressing costs, you have some components, another bill that you're addressing, but I really wanted to focus this morning on the top two. So in the governor's budget, we have full statutory share for the Vermont Housing Conservation Board, it's fantastic, thank him for that, as well as base funding for Vermont Housing Improvement Program, BHIPS, for $4,000,000 and we support that too. A, we support what the Governor has put in the budget, B is really what I want to focus on today. And I'm gonna pass out two more things, but I'm gonna

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: do this separately so I can pour it We have them. Yeah. You have those, you've printed out already. No, Matt, it's near him. I wouldn't have

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the first version, so I

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: didn't want the first copy. Oh, don't have it in front of you?

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: No. Are sure?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I mean, I've seen it online.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: No, we won't have the first copy.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Okay, it is the line.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: There's just one. Oh. People asked for a copy. I

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: didn't. This first chart that's housing production and preservation fiscal year 2026. Chris, did you produce this? I produced this. Okay. This was shared with you by Michael Monty in the first week of the session. What this demonstrates is the investments that you have made when there was a significant amount of ARPA money, as well as general revenue surplus, the investments that you made in housing were funded projects or developments that created this number of units per year. This is the year that the developments were funded, not the year that they came online, the year that they were funded. And so you'll see that from fiscal year 'twenty through fiscal year 'twenty six, the extra investments that you've made have really allowed us to respond to the housing needs of folks, and we've been building a lot of housing, we have the capacity to do that. But what you'll see is starting in fiscal year 'twenty seven and the out years, what we're projecting without additional resources is quite a substantial drop off.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This assumes BASE, the BACB It seems

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: BASE, and

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: I'm not assuming BASE for BHIP because you haven't done that And this just includes the state tax credits, just the state sources that are year in and year out. And so what you'll see is that in the next few years, instead of producing 800,000 units per year through the Huffington profit network, we'll be doing 150 to 200. As a network with the capacity to really help the state meets its overall housing targets, we're talking about 30,000 homes over five years, the capacity to actually contribute to those goals, we will not be able to without additional resources. And that's just lot of fact. So that's why asking you to support additional one time or ongoing research needs in the state budget is really critical to us and people to contribute to these goals. This funding also allows us to address homelessness and reduce motel hotel spending. It allows us to move people up the streets, out of motel rooms and into permanent housing. We will just be hamstrung for that time. So I just wanted to lay that out. This is the reality that we are looking forward at.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I have a second chart here. Chris, is there I mean, think you asked Sealy testified yesterday as to the amount. They were asking, as I remember, 12,000,000 one time. I think they were asking

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: for 12 I million 1 believe they asked, they put in a budget recommendation or budget documents to the administration, dollars 12,000,000 at one time in addition.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Of which $3,000,000 was? Maybe set aside for purpose. Yeah, okay, but I think six of the 12 was just generally more housing and the rest was

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: So what I have in the second chart is the similar, Saudia needs a link. Thank you. Similar construct, but this is if you, and this is

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: what the community housing groups have requested, is $45,000,000

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: investment, five to the end, and then this is just doing some modeling, the second one, is if you put, if we incorporated 30,000,000 to VHCb and 10,000,000 to the Modern Housing Finance Agency's middle income home ownership development program. So those are just some of I've put into a model just to give you a sense of what could be produced if we wanted to produce a variety of different types of housing. And you'll see that we get up to more than 500 to $6,506 100 with that kind of investment. That certainly is not going to address all the needs that we have, but we know that we need to have more of a sustained approach to housing developments than we currently have. So when you communicate with your friends in the appropriations committee, I hope you'll encourage them to look for additional resources put towards housing productions. So this is just modeling that uphill based on a variety of factors.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Question? Go ahead Debbie. Well I see that you have a sitting about a potential to be protected about non cause evictions, so are you saying that you're supporting children cause evictions?

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yes. My CEO was here last week. Support of the bill was described.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: So no, there's examples of how the show cause doesn't work. I can give you examples.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Well, no, we can, we operate under a just cause of fiction and our shop, and our problem is that we can't move people out fast enough. It's really about the court system.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Well, that's why you want no cause of issues.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: We also feel strongly that lieutenants have rights too.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Landlords And do too.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You got

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: No, I know, we're sitting right in the middle of, let's do it.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: Chris, what is farm worker housing? So it's five different

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: housing program that's funded through H2B, and the Chippen Housing Trust operates it. And so we provide loans to farmers to improve their on farm housing that is substandard, often just dangerous conditions for workers that are there. And so we provide a loan that's forgivable over time.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: So once you do assist with that, is there an oversight to make sure? Okay, thanks.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yep, it has to be used as worker housing, it has to stay up to code. We've helped the farmer bring the housing up to code and it's annually.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: Thank you.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: There was a report done several years ago that said that we need about 600, we need investment into, I think it's 600 homes, and I think when I do the math, when I look at the end of fiscal year 'thirty, we'll reach 600. Thank you. Think that's the whole universe, but that's what the story is.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This is something I don't know if you can comment on at this point, but I've been thinking about it a lot because of our hey. Good morning, Saudia. Can you hear us?

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: I can. Can can you hear me?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yep. Good. Just checking. Okay. So what you're showing with this modeling, just to make it clear, is that Without additional resources, assuming the base for VHCV, we're talking about something like 175 students a year, less than, certainly less than 200. And with the resources in this particular rerun, which would involve 45,000,000. We're at 500 units a year.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: What I'll add to that, I think was a question that was following. A member of the other body asked me to do some modeling, what it would take to actually beat the target, so we have a target of 30,000 homes over five years. Two thirds of those would need to be subsidized in some way with state resources to make them affordable to the people that need them. That's what BHFA is. So roughly 4,000 homes per year would need to be subsidized to meet the need that PHP is outlined. Member of the other body asked me to find out how much money that would cost, and it's upwards of 400,000,000. So, you know, I'm not here asking for that, but that's what the need is and if we just turn around and do nothing, then we're not doing anything, we're stuck in the sand.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: When you say that, are you talking about section eight vouchers or just

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: No, this is all the housing production, this is not vouchers, this is the subsidy for the production of housing.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: Oh, don't forget, So I know that term gets used a lot in Yeah. Is.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Does that that means that you well, to follow-up on that good question. So let's say with either one of these, the housing is produced,

[Unidentified committee member or staff (primary assignment for mixed diarization)]: then you have the problem of subsidizing the rent. That's separate, that's a separate project. Gotcha. Can I follow-up on that? Please. Morning, sorry I

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: was late. But the assumption is that these would not necessarily have to be going to people with additional funding. You're trying to build housing that meets the workforce, the needs of our workforce population.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Some of the housing needs are also for people that would need a voucher, and so this modeling does not include that. I did, a couple years ago, do some modeling that included what we would need for subsidy as well, and that's not in this.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: So this modeling is based on a 45,000,000 above the base that would be for fiscal year twenty seven. Over ten years, we gave 45,000,000, we would maybe finally get to the 400,000,000 required for our eventual goals. I'm just sort of thinking, was that's a you know, like the big round numbers are all are like sometimes it's harder to to really dig drill down, but I feel like you've given us a really good picture. And I think that the more housing available, the fewer like, connecting to the vouchers, we will lose fewer vouchers. You know, we'll we'll fall less into that downward spiral if there are more homes available for people to use them. Make them look that you will be able to leverage more federal dollars.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. Is this, just for clarity, say, this takes us through thirty, which is one, two, three, four more fiscal years. Is the 30,000,000 plus five, plus 10 for all four? Yes, it's just

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: each year. Oh, each year,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: 45 per year. That's what I thought.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Oh, I didn't understand that. I thought

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: the 45 was was brought right back down.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. So, in other words, and also, I'm assuming that you are assuming with knowledge of some sort that there are projects that could absorb this money. That is, Viip is constrained now and could that there are units with landlords who are willing to renovate that would consume an extra 5,000,000, and that the HFA could use the money as well.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: I was thinking, and I'm pretty sure you've heard this from Krasnow, that every time there was money available, it means that the pipeline runs, because we have access to many more developments than we have funding.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: One of the things that we've heard is that we heard, even from mobile manufactured home providers that the down the the the banks and and also from the sellers of manufactured homes. The the down payment assistance program. It's very useful to them. Now you administer that, do, yeah. What is the funding situation for that? So that is funded through the

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Vermont State Affordable Housing Tax Credit, and it's 250,000 set aside each year in that credit for manufacturing homes for this program. They could do more if they wanted to, we had to pay it to improve more. That's a five year credit, so it generates about 1,200,000.0 of resources each year when we sell the credits. That's because we value the credits. We're subscribed for that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Presumably, if they wanted to, VHFA could allocate some of this 10,000,000 theoretical money to that, but that's not in this modeling. Tax credit was expanded a few years ago to have a different carve out

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: for manufactured home program. They could do more than the $2.50, that's the carve out, they could do more of that, but they've been using that for stick built home ownership.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: One thing that you might think about that I've been thinking about, but probably can't comment on today, we're in a situation where we don't have enough money. So, it's really one of the ways of thinking about all the different ways we spend money on housing, is which ones have the most leverage. So, for example, the HFA spends an average of $80,000 on a unit, that's a $500,000 unit, because there are other sources including an infinite supply of 4% tax credits. So, that's leverage. The I've asked myself, what's the leverage for VHIP? It seems to me it's about two to one. In other words, landlords who want to, potential landlords, owners who want to rehabilitate their units, testimony has been sort of end up putting in maybe half the money. So, that's a two to one leverage. The treasurer, in their 10%, maybe soon to be 12.5%, we'll see. For Vermont, they have a lot of leverage because they're just putting in soft loans, and then the rest of it, it's all paid back. So, one of the things I'm trying to figure out is if we had to quantify the leverage capability of each of these sources, what would it look like? Because theoretically, in a rational world, we would simply put our money where the most leverage was.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: What I will say to that is, in the first scenario, when there's just space money going ahead, we're leaving money on the table. Lots of money on today. Because you cannot access those tax credits.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're leaving the federal tax credits on the table. Are we leaving, what's the situation with the 9% tax credits? I know they're constrained, how constrained? Do we use all of We all them. We would use all of them in the first model.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yes, I think if there was not full base funding for the needs to be, then we may not be able to do so. We would probably figure out some way to do it, and so those are very valuable. Are $2 for every dollar we put in.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Any further questions of Chris? Yes, Mary. I don't know if

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: you can answer this, but do you know how much we're spending hotel, motel?

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: I forget what the number is, 30,000,000? I forget exactly what we're putting into, and I know it's been coming down, it's been trying to get limited, but I forget what's in the GEA budget.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's north of a it's north of a $100 a night. I know that.

[Chris Donnelly (Director of Community Relations, Champlain Housing Trust)]: To 80. I think. To

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: 80. To 80 plus wraparound service. Yeah. But Chad Chad would have an answer to that. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you, Chris. But we're gonna do we're expecting Chad at 09:45. Is that right? Let's take a break, go offline, and reconvene as soon as our witnesses arrive approximately at 09:40