Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: No, let him sit there. I

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: don't know.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: I'm a spectator. Saw her last night. Welcome

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: everybody to House General and Housing on a Friday afternoon, apparently people are decked out, but seriously.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Fully Friday with the reason. I locked in.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, and we have a subject matter of, luckily, of interest to the committee because it means that no matter how interesting or boring he is, the committee will be all ears. And it is the February 13 still.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Oh, Friday the thirteenth.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Friday the thirteenth. Oh. Yes. A lucky day. It is. Lucky day. So, mister Gilpin, would you please tell us your name for the record and take it away? There is a lot of general curiosity about what's happening with Needham.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Absolutely, well thank you all on this auspicious date. My name is Sean Gilpin, I am the housing director of the housing division, part of the Department of Housing and Community Development, which falls under the Agency of Commerce. And you've already heckled my commissioner out of the chair, so I guess I'm here to answer questions about VHIP. I will say I've also invited, thanks to your committee assistance, my colleague Erin Aguayo, who's on the screen behind me or will be when she's called a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Hello Erin, she's actually there. There you are.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: I do want to point out Erin is VHIP right now, and we frankly should call it VHIPs, plural, because it's really a singular name for a number of programs that we have run based on different funding sources, trying to get at the same aim for the last five years since the onset of the COVID-nineteen pandemic and trying to frankly evacuate homeless shelters and make sure that folks who are on the precipice of losing their housing, whether it was because of overcrowding or other things during the pandemic, were able to find a place to call themselves home and stay healthy. This program has evolved over a number of years, but I would love to, it pleases the chair and the committee, to allow Erin to introduce herself.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Please Erin, tell us your name just for the record and then you both can both talk at the same time even if you want.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: We're good at that. I am Erin Caroaguaio. The VHIP grants management specialist and happy to be here today. To back Sean up, I will unvideo myself in a second. I'm here for statistical support largely. So thanks for having me.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You should be aware that I would say a very substantial number of our witnesses appear by video and your face is at least as large as his.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: On the screen.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Fair enough. And I removed the hair to, you know, shrink it down. I don't think I don't think it

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: helps. Yes,

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: indeed. So I'd love actually to hear, I know that VHIP, as I said, it's been a program that's been going on for the better part of five years that would make this our quintennial year in case anyone is curious. But would love to go through at any level that you folks are looking for me to dive deep into, suspect a broad overview maybe of health, but perhaps you all have been delving into this for

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a while now. We have been delving into it for a while, but we have ideas here.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Well, I feel very comfortable maybe asking questions for another member of our committee who is not here, who I think was really the precipice of having a more in-depth conversation about BHIP. Rev Burrows has been really interested in understanding, I think it was last year when we added the additional $20,000 in making units accessible, and just understanding, maybe statistically, how many projects actually use that additional 20,000, what that looks like, what are you running into?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I would add a couple of things. I mean, yeah, we're familiar. We've been through this several times, but I think another thing, I think a quick review of the breadth of the programs and what's really going on in them right now would be great. I mean, while you're here, and we actually have a little time, this is an important point. Another thing is So, another is a little bit about why it is really that you need a little more detail on why it's so important that you be base as opposed to what kind. I mean, we've had some testimony at an admirable level of generality, but it would be nice if you would like to provide more detail. That wouldn't hurt. Also, we've had an assertion by your superior that a rather surprising number of current landlords in the program whose five years are up, have elected to continue the status quo. Now this is an important, you know, continue to basically renting at the same level, the same sort of people. This is such a counterintuitive result, in my view, that it is really important. I mean, when something like this happens, it's important. And so I think it would be good if you would drill down and tell us what you think about that number. Why you think that's the case, and do you think it will last? Or is it like just, yeah, this year and next year, but after that, not? I mean, we just want your instincts on that, even if they're just instincts. I mean, it's a chance. What else?

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: And while you're jotting down what we want to know, my question was when we had the presentation was about outreach for the survey. How does that work? Do we Yeah,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: should we believe it?

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: How did I remember that? I don't want to take notes myself, but somehow it just jogged in, and that was one of the questions we wanted to know more about how that was offered. Anyway, yeah,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: it's now 01:15. We think you can do that.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: That's enough. Five minutes? Alright. Perfect.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Actually, floor is yours.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: And truly though, how much time, my wife, do you want to be wary?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We don't have anything else this afternoon, and everybody wants to get out of here reasonable and the reasonable before mid afternoon, but so we have to some time. Alright. So it's yours to I mean, yours

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Right before recess, perfect. At least everybody had lunch. So this actually, the line of questioning speaks volumes to the amount of interest and the amount of attention that this program has received, and I really just want to start off by applauding you all for keeping track of this. For me, it has been almost a legacy program. I've been at state for almost twelve years now, and this is probably one of the most significant along with the manufactured housing improvement repair program that been able to push out. And it's great to see this level of interest and support. So the breadth of the program, happy to say we have VHIP properties in every one of the 14 counties, multiples in fact, we don't have any one offs. I know that was an issue in the kingdom for a while, but we've worked greatly with our partners up there. Just to give an idea of the structure of the program, so we as in the Department of Housing and Community Development are the overall administrators of this program. However, it would not be possible without really deep collaboration with the five home ownership centers throughout the state, Rural Edge, Champlain Housing Trust, Downstreet, formerly Northwest Vermont, now they're Cornerstone, or yeah, Western Vermont, anyway, Cornerstone and Windham Windsor Housing Trust. So covering all five counties through those entities. We have, as we speak right now, well, I shouldn't say as we speak, as of February 3, or at least the data that went out February 3, we have completed over eight forty four units throughout the state at an average cost of public dollars, and I stress public dollars of $40,000 per unit.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The Let me interrupt you. Do you Of course. Tell us about the trend. I mean, is it I'm assuming the I'm assuming that I'll tell you what I'm assuming, and you tell me if I'm wrong. I'm assuming the cost is slowly rising. I'm assuming partly that's because construction costs are going up in materials, but also because I wonder if some of it isn't, we kind of, there was low hanging fruit to start that was really cheap, and there's less of that now, and does that mean like we're reaching the end of the program, or are we going to have to start upping the limit to a higher number or what? Of

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: course, yes, yes, yes, yes, and perhaps. The cost of construction is going up everywhere, particularly with materials. We have hit a lot of the quote unquote low hanging fruit, Although I will say from my perch, I am surprised that cost has not risen faster than it has. I think people are being typical Yankee ingenuity, a lot of modest changes to program scope, recognizing cost of materials is going up, addressing things in more cost effective manners. We're seeing fewer large scale projects, a lot of small ones. Most of these, I will hopefully Erin can pull this up when she has a chance to speak, but we have, of those, we've funded over eleven seventy two units, and the number of actual landlords that that represents is actually pretty broad, and I think Wait.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Wait. Wait. You said 844. Was that projects?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Units. Units completed.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And eleven seventy two is?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Is units funded.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What's the difference?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: They're still in work. Swinging hammers right now.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, okay, all right.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: That represents a number of different landlords, and I think we're starting to see, we are seeing modest changes to program scope in order to make sure that things are being kept under the amounts that are allowed to be granted. So I should point out we have a two tiered system in the granting. Property owners can receive, and this is a per unit basis, not a per project basis, and I bring that up because oftentimes we're dealing with a project which might be a building that has multiple units that are being addressed, So units and project numbers might not necessarily align, but for any particular unit, up to two bedrooms is eligible for $30,000 grant maximum. More than two bedrooms is eligible for $50,000 in granting. And as the representative was mentioning, there's also a $20,000 rider, I will say, for units that are going to address all of the code enforcement requirements and address accessibility. And I'm going to take one step back and reiterate, and this actually goes to a question that Mr. Chair, you alluded to earlier about the five year, and I'll definitely get to that expiration and what we're seeing afterwards. These grants are meant specifically to address issues regarding health and safety and other code requirements in order to bring units back online. And I think that's an important to remember. This isn't money that goes to any property owner who is willing to rent at the rate that we've prescribed, which I'll get to in a second, but specifically must require that rental rate and only this money must go to making sure that that unit is brought up to code. So we're addressing vacant units, abandoned units, units where let's say I'm a property owner in let's say Bennington, I've got, for whatever reason, we had roof damage, there was a flood, what have you, I've got a property that is not up to code, I can't rent it right now. However, I'm also looking at what the common rental rates are in the area and that return on investment just isn't there. VHIP is meant to fill that gap. What it's meant to do is give private property owners a relatively modest amount of funding, and I know that $50,000 is not nothing, but

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: it's

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: not anywhere near what it typically costs to create a brand new unit. And that gives a little bit of a buffer for the property owner to bring that unit rental up saleability and requires that for at least five years up to ten years, depending on the tenancy, that unit needs to be rented at fair market rent. We required it's You

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: mean below fair market?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, it's

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: below At or below, forget it. HUD fair HUD fair market rent, yes, which federally is prescribed number. It's not a Craigslist average.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's generally lower than that.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: It's very much lower. Typically, if I were to oversimplify it, it's basically looking at this 60% of the units in that area are renting at that or lower, and that's what HUD considers quote unquote fair market rent. So that automatically bakes in 40% of the units in the area are not affordable for somebody with a voucher. So another simple way to say it is this is the rental rate that a Section eight voucher holder is allowed to rent at. So these are units that are rentable to people with vouchers. You guys have heard a lot about that situation right now, that's a huge rental assistance resource that we need from a federal government.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is to go back over this for a minute. What about, let's say I just want to build a brand new fourplex. Yep. Can I come to you or not? Now you can. Okay.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Not a sixplex, but a fourplex.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, so tell us, so new construction. Yes. I'm tearing down a place that's just a teardown.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Absolutely.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But a brand new fourplex. Okay, tell us what, tell us about that. Sure.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: We are now allowed to, and I don't know, Aaron can correct me on this, I don't know that we've actually granted, we're really focusing on rehab and existing structures. That's our priority. That's the priority of most of the home ownership centers to whom we give quite a bit of discretion because they are the people on the ground in their region that know what the needs are. Most, if not all of this funding has gone largely to rehabilitation of existing structures, especially in downtowns, which is another unwritten but acknowledged priority that we want these to be in areas where the people who live there have access to services, transportation,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: and the like.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: The program now allows for new construction of buildings that have fewer than five residential units. Why that? Good question. Four units or below are typically mortgaged or looked at from the financial perspective, from a bank's perspective as different than above four units. It's a difference between commercial lending versus residential lending. We've acknowledged that and are trying to make it easier for the people who apply for this program to fall into the sort of pots that they would in other industries, other realms that they're going to have to interact with in order to make this successful. A building of, let's say, the fourplex, you would be allowed to do that, you could apply for VHIP and it would still be, each one of those units would be maxed at $50,000

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So it becomes part of my capital stack. Absolutely. And then, you know, I get the rest of the money wherever I get it, right?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Indeed, and another reason why we use those numbers is that somebody who's building a fourplex is probably not going to seek out funding from some of the other major affordable housing sources, low income

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: tax You're not going tax credit.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: These are truly independent developers who are, they're not the large nonprofits. We really, the work that they do is essential. We wanted to make sure that VHIP was addressing a different niche than what those nonprofit funders are addressing. Did that answer that?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Since we don't have a lot of money in Vermont, one of the issues always is leverage. Yes. Am I right that if overall, sort of looking at your 40 k number, what do you think the ratio is between the state money that beat up inserts in a project and private money?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: It is more than a 100%.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So, it's kind of one to one plus, you have a hand up from your coworker behind you.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Aaron, please.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Sean is right, it is just over 100% leverage and that is an estimate that the property owner expects to spend projects are often running 10 or more percent above, so it's probably a little closer to about 110%. We have four thirty six unique property owners or landlords that have participated in the various versions of VHIP and are currently working with 43 new construction units.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Do you see

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a repetition just like landlords come back because they like the program, they know how to work it, or is it pretty much one off?

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: So of those 400 odd property owners, 60 are repeat participants and they are often very satisfied repeat participants and have participated in multiple versions of the program. When they are repeat, they average about three projects per participant for 175 of the projects of the 600 odd projects VHIP has done. They're an important part of the program.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Is the availability of funds for new construction something that is shared in the small developer workshops? So you guys are launching. Think the comments are

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Yes, you're referencing the homes for

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: all

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: workshops. We have yet, we're about to, later I think it's next week, yeah it's the first one in Montpelier, we'll definitely be speaking about. VHIP, I think works really well. I don't want to go too much into homes for all. We'd love to come back and speak about that, but we expect that many of the participants in that program would be very well served by VHIP and VHIP schools very well served by the graduates of that program. So we hope to have an integration for sure.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: All right, so I was about to talk about the match, but we've covered that, and before I jump into accessibility, I will say that we have just, as I mentioned, we're getting the five year anniversary for the very first units that came about, which were technically part of what we call the rehousing recovery program. It was funded with CARES Act funds back in those days before ARPA even came about. The requirement for that program was actually dramatically less in terms of addressing homeless populations. Folks very much, well, folks only needed to receive a certain number of referrals from a coordinated entry. We graduated up that requirement as the program moved on and we received more funding to really target people who are exiting homelessness. However, those participants are graduating out of the program at this point, they've hit their five year compliance period. Aaron has been doing yeoman's work in trying to track a lot of these people down because a lot has happened and it was just me running the show back then. So all the blame's on me for not having everybody's follow-up information and mail forwarding for the last five years, but we've tracked down almost all of those folks have received back surveys about what they anticipate doing going forward, namely about the fair market rent requirements. And I'll let Aaron speak to this in a moment, but by and large, we've basically seen nearly 100% of the units that have filled out the survey. 100% of the units for whom the survey has been filled out are continuing at HUD fair market rents. I believe one of them actually has an elderly person moving into the unit and is going to be renting up a larger unit, which is again one of the aging in place goals that we have for this program to be able to allow for that. Erin, could

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: you speak to

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: that for a second, those surveys and how we've done the outreach?

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Yes, in fact, I might just share my screen, think it would go faster.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Can we, do we have a way of, yeah.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: We're not.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No, no, please do, I'm just gonna, right now you're one third of the screen. We're gonna make you all of it. Share your screen and we'll amplify it.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Did just ask that I request to share my screen. So if anyone has an ability to

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's it's it's gonna happen.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Thanks, Erin. I put her on the spot this morning.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: I'm always ready to talk about VHIP. Let's see. All right. So after can everyone see this now?

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Not yet. Yes.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Okay. So after the requirement entered statute last summer to have statistics for VHIP and people exiting VHIP on recorded and ready, we decided the way to go was as people finish up their five years with the program, we send them this exit survey that we wrote that covers all of, we get a mailing address

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: from them. You know what? Aaron, could you let's see. Is there a way to get rid of the left bar there and

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Want me to

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: make it a little bigger? Yeah. Good. No. Yeah. Make it as that's good. Great. Okay. Okay. Some of us some of us have worse eyes and are further away

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: than Okay. Others of So this exit survey goes out to people as we send them a request for their information. We say, once we have your mailing address and your answer to this survey, we will issue you a discharge from this program. And people seem pretty motivated by that. About 70% of people have responded to the survey, and we are looking for the rest of them. Think we're working with some maybe property sales and email bounce backs. Wrong one. Oh, there we go. And we've only been discharging people for the last couple of months. The very first projects to leave the rehousing recovery program started exiting in October 2025. So our first collection of data, even I was surprised almost everyone who answered the survey, which was about 30 respondents so far, plan on keeping the units on the rental market and also keeping the rent at or below fair market rent. Almost all of them were satisfied with their current tenants. And of the people raising the rent, we asked them by how much two units are going up by $100 a month, and one is to market rent. Both of those landlords intend to keep their current tenants, and they've agreed on this new rent. And one gentleman is moving into his own unit to be able to age in place. So we do know that a few property owners in the future might plan on selling their properties on the market, but for the most part, these units are not only remaining in service, but remaining at affordable rates. And a number of them did serve homelessness despite varying requirements and availability of homeless tenants, and the number of tenants exiting homelessness into these units almost exactly mirrors the number of available housing vouchers. So it's something we're keeping a close eye on at VHIP because we are expecting a decrease in available vouchers, and it's really going to affect the ability of people to rent these units and be able to afford them.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Erin,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: what is your, or either of you, collectively, what's your instinct as to, did you ever ask people why? Why you're gonna stay with where you are, and why aren't you gonna go and charge true fair market rent? Or either ask them, or conversations, or anything that would give you a why? I say it because it is counterintuitive.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Well, so I speak with landlords quite frequently. I manage all these projects through the monitoring phase as well, and I talk to people who are having issues or when it's time to recertify their units. Fair market rent is not low rent, and it's something we try to stress to people when we present the program. Market rent is a fiftieth percentile rent, and then fair market rent is set at fortieth percentile, basically. When landlords are accepting fair market rent, yes, it is often less than they could take, but a lot of them seem very happy to have stable tenants who are able to pay the rent. A lot of them have really even surprised themselves, they've bought into, they are building a community. These are small developers who frequently live in the towns or even next door to these units. And they actually take great satisfaction out of providing them even when there are challenges, utilities spike or I don't know, there are some social services happening, but they seem to get a lot of personal satisfaction out of it in addition to stable rent. Know, people with vouchers pay the rent every month, it is situation that most of them seem to enjoy. A few people who do plan on raising the rent a little bit are having, you know, they might have a mortgage on the property and have more expenses associated with it. But it's, they as a group seem happy with it. Even when I'm talking to people having challenges, they aren't usually looking to leave the program or exit providing affordable housing.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Thank you, Erin. Erin has been as implied there or explicit there, you know, in contact with a lot of these folks. It's been really great to be involved on that level. I would also say, you know, in addition to sort of the social and perhaps moral imperatives that a lot of these folks have, I would point back to the goal of what the program is, is addressing code non compliance issues. So these funds are not going to, for lack of a better term, glitzing up an apartment. They're not putting in huge additional marketable amenities. We're looking at addressing the bare minimum to get units back online. And so despite the fact that a $50,000 grant from a state plus perhaps 100 plus additional match from a property owner, dollars 100,000 sounds like a lot, but when you're talking about rehabilitation of particularly older housing stock, we're really looking at modest investments to bring these back onto their feet. We're not creating luxury condos out of these that are going to be marketable at a high level after the five year compliance period is over. And frankly, I would say this bears out, I would say in Chittenden County, where we actually have had per capita the least aggressive participation in this program because I would pause it in large part, if you're going to put 50 ks into a unit in Chittenden County, you're to be putting it into amenities that are going to be marketable at much higher levels than that. These funds are really going to areas that otherwise wouldn't see this level of investment and have this level of vulnerable population in need. So I'm not one toot my own horn, but I think our team has done a really good job over the last five years, really honing this in to make sure that the parameters on this program are flexible enough that we can be functional, but are thoughtful enough that they are actually hitting the areas that we need the housing the most and this type of housing.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is just a basic question. So when you get an application in, does the application, how much detail do you require as to what the funds are going to be used for?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Aaron, I don't know if you want to pick this one up. It does, we do have a standard application. There is, I would say, a varying level of, again, can't shout out enough our homeownership center partners. These are the folks who are actually receiving the applications, meeting with property owners. Oftentimes they know they might have an inkling of awareness of different people in the area. That's why we really rely on these boots on the ground folks. There is a various level of handholding. Some of these projects, you know, might be in a really ideal location, but with a very inexperienced property owner might need an awful lot of person hours to really shepherd it across the line. Other times, it's a pretty well sophisticated, and I'm sure you've heard some of the names of folks who are really making a name for themselves doing this type of infill development around Vermont. I won't speak them out loud right now, lest I forget anybody, but some of the more sophisticated developers are using this program very effectively as well, maybe a little bit less. But as far as the level of detail, Aaron, do you wanna speak to that?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, but Aaron, what's, well, I guess I'm wondering is, I'm assuming you have more applicants than you can fund. So are you saying, well, no, you know, we're not gonna give you money for your gold plated sink. You know, at what level either you or your partners are making sure what the money goes for?

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: I think what's happening really with property owners putting in more than 100% match of funds received, they're often making decisions that might be higher quality than the most bare bones decision. There is a lot of restoration of hardwood floors or quality items that might last a longer period of time. But people have their own financial incentives. Like Sean was saying, 50,000 towards a gut rehab of an older Vermont home is definitely not going to get you your gold plated toilet. But it does go a long way. The homeownership centers request permits, deeds, basic work plans, contractor information if a contractor's involved. They might request extended financial information to be sure the project is financially viable because frequently these are going to cost more than VHIP is providing towards the construction phase. Then if they sense that someone might need a little more assistance, this is really a bespoke service through the homeownership centers. They put forth a great amount of effort and knowledge of construction and project management towards these since so many of our property owners are first time or very small or new developers. They will go through work plans, they will assess whether timelines are realistic, really whatever people need. Some of our people are more experienced and don't need that level of detail submitted to the home ownership center. I do get all the final photos and files and I don't see a lot of what I would think of as excessive amenities or wasteful spending. It's pretty easy to spend these funds on insulation and systems and permits and sewer and so on. So we've seen very careful choices as to spending and monitoring of that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But like how do you choose amongst various applicants or the homeowners? What criteria decides who gets funded and who doesn't?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: It is differentiated between the homeownership centers. As I mentioned before, we give them a good deal of discretion because they are the experts in their own communities. Oftentimes things like location, past experience, if property owner has past experience with this program or with housing vulnerable populations in the past, if they've engaged with other agency human services programs, they're often looked at with a positive

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: eye. Can I

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: ask a question? Of course. Is that a question on the application or is it just like someone says, I've done this before?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: There is a question about past experience with this program and with other programs. I think it's a checkbox. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it comes down to a lot of feasibility. What's the timeline? How quick can we get this on? Because this is meant to be a rapid rehousing program, really. So programs or projects that have a shorter timeline are going to be looked at possibly, projects that are again close to services, close to transportation looked at positively. Projects that have other feasibility concerns are going to be probably looked at with a little more scrutiny. A lot of times we've got relatively inexperienced developers here, so if it seems like the project proposal is a bit high in the sky or if they're looking at rosy glasses, that's going to get some scrutiny. I would encourage everyone to go to our program website, which is accd.vermont.gov/vhip. There's a ton of information on there about what people should be thinking about before they even apply, and then how to go about reaching out to the home ownership centers. It is not a straight up checklist where if you meet a certain score, you're definitely going to get funding. There's a lot of scrutiny put on these and there is a lot of, there's a, I would say, a reasonable amount of subjectivity based on the experience of the HOCs.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What are we talking about in terms of however you want to tell us in terms of the application pool versus who you can take? I mean, we taking almost everybody or almost nobody? I mean, where are we in terms of

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: That's a great question. It's hard to know who doesn't apply.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But I mean, of your applicants.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: I expect that we are currently addressing 20% or less of the overall need.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But?

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Of the applicants, the applications you've done. Potential applications, yes. Of potential or actual?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: It's hard to say actual. Some folks call up the HOCs don't have an application but put their name on a list. We haven't done a, we have, I imagine, based on our experience over the past five years and given the level of applications we've received during that time and what is purported to be in sort of the pipeline, I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that we could administer with current staff. Well, generally with the resources we have administratively, probably there's a demand of about $20,000,000 here.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's what I was gonna ask. In other words, if you could just write your check. Which we can't. Understood.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: I think I think that gets us from from from my perspective, I think that gets us at a bit of a plateau. We could probably fund more pro more projects than that, but we would need significantly more staff to keep track of all this. Scattered It's site program, it's high touch. So I would say between 15 or 20,000,000 we could administer in a year if money was no object, which wouldn't we

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: all love? Do you have a question?

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: do. Can you just confirm that one of the best ways to keep staff is moving this money to base funding?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: That is exactly. So yes, to the question, I know I still haven't addressed accessibility, which was brought up, but the reason We

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: have time, we will not let you go.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: All right, the reason to move, I don't want

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to keep everybody on Friday afternoon.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: The reason to move to, yeah, you still have quorum.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Just have quorum.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: All right.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: You just have to start out

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: with The the

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: reason to move to base is exactly that, it's continuity, both for these projects, but more essentially for the staff that's there as has been, I mean, I hope we're not breaking the head of this drum here, but the HOCs are absolutely pivotal for this. They have for the past five years, they have really doubled down on existing staff and moved a lot of staff priority towards away from what was their regular work towards making sure that this program is successful. That can only be sustained if we know that we're not gonna have to, We can't have this be a question mark every year as are we gonna keep doing this? Because they really just can't, organizationally cannot sustain the uncertainty of that. We can't either. Erin is, as I said, she is Bhip. The other staff member, Jamie Bauer, an incredibly helpful team member on our housing division team is also tasked with some BHIIP, but she has honestly been pulled away to other largely legislatively directed efforts that our department is doing. Both of those people are limited service, their contract ends this year. You're looking at a third, 33% of the housing division that has a permanent position in the Department of Housing and Community. Yes, you mean you? Me, yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And As

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: opposed to Erin or

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Me and two other people, one of whom is actually a remote worker and we won't even get into that So we joke about punching above our weight all the time, but it is, despite my stature, is very true. A lot of energy going into a really important program. And basically, I mean, to say that we're running this by a shoestring would be an overstatement. We're running this by twine and scrap fishing line. But it is held together because of the incredible amount of, frankly, I hate to say this in sort of an objective setting, but it is the emotional wherewithal and the mentality and spirit of the folks that I'm working with on my team and in the HOCs that is keeping this program going. Without stability of funding, we can't keep it up on wishes and dreams anymore. And it would, in my personal opinion, be an awful loss to see such an effective program go by the wayside. I think the $4,000,000 that the governor has proposed in his budget is from my professional experience, the minimum that we need to make sure that it's actually effective and creating new units. But you all can take 4,000,000 and divide that by 40 to $50,000 and you can see how many units were gonna be producing less, a little bit of administrative funding. So to have this in base at all is a huge first step so that we can make sure that we're keeping the people staffed because I don't know if anybody around the table has been involved with hiring lately, but it is not the easiest thing and trying to get somebody up to speed on a program that requires a huge amount of personal interaction and a big, you know, a lot of touch points is, it's a six to eight month endeavor.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Ashley? I have a very Ashley, so very silly question. If it's catastrophic, me hips my program, like it is the hill I will die on. That being said, in a catastrophic scenario where VHIP goes away, what happens to the landlords who have entered into this five year program? What happens? Is somebody following that money? Is somebody following the requirements that they have to do to move forward?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: That is an excellent question, and every one of these units has a legally binding covenant that is filed with the land records that says that they shall commit to that level of, you know, that timeframe of compliance. If we had a little Thanos snap and my division went back to what it was, goodness forbid, pre COVID, but certainly what we are right now with just the permanent, that would probably be my primary job is keeping track of every single one of these. At that point, it'll be over a thousand different units. It is beyond untenable.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, tell us a little bit about your experience for Viveve with the $20,000 rider, as you call it.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Yes, and I will rely heavily again on Erin who has done an enormous amount of work. Frankly, even Justin, I understand that this, it was representative Burrows who a huge champion of accessibility. We have wanted these units to be largely accessible, especially if you're doing gut rehabs on places. There's no reason not to really address that. However, it has come to our attention during an awful lot of research and engagement on this topic that the idea of accessibility is still a bit of a shimmer up. There's a lot of different interpretations or understandings of what is accessible. There's a ton of different rules and regulations from the federal government right down to different state accessibility standards. So Erin has done, would be loath to even try to count the hours that she spent with our own division of fire safety, which is a huge and beneficial partner. Really need to call out Mike Derocher and his team have been exceptional resources on this. However, they too, I think are a bit stymied by the different requirements when it comes to accessibility. And I should point out as well that we're dealing with largely rehabilitation again of old Vermont homes. So the idea of widening a hallway or even a door frame can be particularly difficult. So would love to pass it off a bit to Erin to talk about sort of the three different standards we've done a bunch of research in and trying to implement, and then what the outcomes have been, which I will be the bearer of bad news. We have yet to have anybody take us up on this extra $20,000 The way that we set up the rider, the accessibility rider, was such that anybody who was eligible for a VHIP unit, so if your application went through the process, you were allowed to have up to $20,000 specifically for accessibility elements. So to put that another way, we weren't cutting $20,000 checks to everybody who said they were going to put grab bars on the showers. That's not how this was going to work. This was every accessibility element, and if you wanted to be eligible for it, you needed to get the entire unit up to an accessibility standard that we prescribed, and you would be refunded for those elements that brought you up to that standard. It a blanket 20 ks extra, it needed to go specifically towards those elements. We had a number of people who were interested in it and nobody actually came through. Aaron can probably speak a little bit more to those specific cases. And we continue to push this part of the program. It's in all of our applications, all of the HOCs have been instructed and have reported back that they have been advertising this to applicants who come into the program. So it's not for lack of information, but we are seeing a hesitance, I guess. And I think Erin and I spoke about this this morning. She has some thoughts on it. Tend to agree, I think. And I think a lot of it has to do with general uncertainty about what exactly the ultimate standard is.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes, please. So the extra $20,000 does the land owner also match that like they would the first 50?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: They do not, actually that's a very important, it is a, I don't wanna say free because it needs to be accounted for, but it is an unmatched additional $20,000 Thank you, that's an important distinction. Erin, I don't know if you want to speak to that.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Sure, I'm going to throw that application up here really quickly so I'm talking you can see a little bit of what people are. These applications are readily available to anyone interested in applying to VHIP. After looking at how to do this to encourage as many people as possible to participate, we decided instead of having application for accessibility, we would create it as a rider to any application. Any VHIP unit you apply for, if you'd also like to make it accessible, you could apply for this along with your application, you don't even need to be approved first. But the idea is that you are approved for up to an additional $20,000 and that's per unit that meets any of these accessibility standards. Extensive research, we realized there are different levels of accessibility. The statute that was presented to us last summer that helped us finish developing these was visible, which is an interesting one, and it doesn't necessarily require that you have an entryway to the unit, so we wanted to make sure that there were some options for more robust standards, so we also have adaptable and accessible options here. We've linked to the ADA accessibility manuals and the fire safety division websites to give people some background who are thinking about this. This is a shorter application since they've already applied, but the main requirement is which units do you want to make accessible, and then we're looking for a very clear work plan presented to the homeownership centers. Our main concern is that people might apply for this extra funding and not really understand what they're doing, and then we might end up after funding them without accessible units. So the homeownership centers expect that anyone applying for this will, if they are not already qualified to do this sort of construction, consult an accessibility consultant, architecture, engineering firm, or a qualified contractor that they can verify has done this sort of work before. If that all sounds good, they all sign it and they move on. We have had some interest in this, but it is limited. I did pull our homeownership centers prior to this meeting, and they said that about one in 30 applicants inquires about this as an option. I'll stop sharing that. That's being generous. Most of them quoted about two-three percent of applicants, and they do get quite a few applicants, but that means a literal handful of people around the state have seriously inquired about this as a writer to their accessibility or to their project to add accessibility features. When we asked them why people might not be taking them up on it, it usually came down to most of these are rehabs where the difficulty of knocking out hallways and stairwells and adding zero clearance entrances to raise first floors didn't seem it wasn't even the money, it didn't seem like something that they were interested in doing for their particular property. They quoted functionality periodically that the functionality of a property they felt would be compromised by these sorts of changes. Although that may or may not be accurate, we did have some projects we were hoping would take us up on this and add ramps and so on, and it just didn't end up working out. They decided they didn't want the extra funds for that sort of extra commitment.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Think Yes. What we're looking at

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Go ahead. Please go ahead. Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: Oh, no. I think we have does have a lot of small or first time developers that are doing unique rehab work. And this is a particularly challenging thing to add. Very few of them have experience doing this. These aren't large commercial developers who've memorized or have special consultants to make sure they have their ADA units completed. Even some of our home ownership centers were concerned about their inspectors being able to recognize whether a unit was actually going to qualify to pass for any of these particular levels of accessibility, which we would be happy to deal with once we got there. But so far, we haven't seen any uptake on this offer.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Debbie?

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: It's a silly question.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: I mean, if you go for the 20,000, it's like, I feel like, are

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: you going to be more limited about who can get into that place?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Like, do you

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: have to have somebody that needs that kind of facility or could you be opening it up to anybody?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: So the answer is, the legal answer is no. An accessible unit, it's not per fair housing loss unless it's involved in a HUD based program or something like that. These units would not be limited. However, I think there is a marketability aspect considering that folks with mobility challenges are inherently a smaller part of the population. Would it behoove somebody to do that extra effort for the marketability? I think that's something that we ought to try to figure out how we can encourage more of that. But no, creating an accessible unit does not limit you to renting.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: So, and then the timeline is

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: gonna be longer to bring on because it sounds like you're gonna have more renovations.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: That is a factor and it should be noted that historically in this program, because of the nature of the federal funding, we have had timelines on the number and currently we actually have in our administrative policy that any unit should be completed within eighteen months of an approved application. Now that we're moving away from federal funding, we're wrapping up our ARPA and moving to the general funds that have been administered and goodness willing will continue to be administered in this budget cycle, but we could readdress that eighteen months timeline that was an internally prescribed deadline. And so if a timeline function is the prohibiting factor for accessibility, I would love to address that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Leonora, you had a question?

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah, so I'm hearing that the 20,000 has to be a rider alongside you've qualified for the 50. What is it again? 50?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: It's up to 50 depending Do on the

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I have that right? Rather than it being an alternate, you

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: can be applying for the 20,000 solo.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Right, yes, this is, it needs to be of the HIP eligible unit. So you need you need to be eligible for the VHIP grants generally before you can receive and adhere to those rental, you know, the compliance period.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right, in terms of like income, multiple, and rental rates. So I just wanted to clarify that. And then you said that you can use VHIP, a property owner can use VHIP to build new units. Correct. And so that kind of again flies in the face of like, there's no uptake because all of the properties are rentals.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: They don't have much experience with that yet.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Right, we've had very few brand new construction. I think Erin spoke to, we a couple, but very few. And we also consider new units to be, so if you took a, for instance, eight bedroom Victorian and split that into a couple, those are still considered new units because it's new on the new unit on the rental market, it's not a new building. Right. Or conversion of commercial. We've seen a couple of those. Frankly, we've seen some sugar shacks get turned into, you know, accessory dwelling units that were vegan. So when we talk about new units, that doesn't necessarily mean a new structure, but we've definitely seen very low numbers of new structures to date. That's in part, I would say there's a number of factors going into that. The first being we've been inherently focused on existing structures just because of the nature of what we try to do, but also on that timeline for the ARPA, for first CARES Act and then ARPA deadlines, we're dealing with even less than eighteen months. So the idea of going through an entire blank slate, know, blank parcel It

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: would never get done anytime.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Eighteen months, it stays unlikely.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's a couple of questions here. First is, it sounds like unfamiliarity with the whole process combined with the difficulty is probably the major contributor, people simply not taking it up on this. This is discouraging. What is your thinking about what next steps you could take that might change this reality or is it just basically something that is not resolved?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Well, I'm a romantic optimist, I guess. I hope something that's resolvable. But I would say, and I would love to hear Erin's thoughts about this, probably has good insight as well. I think there's definitely been, I mean, there's been more of a focus on this generally, and rightfully so. I think there is a desire to move forward, especially as we see it in increasingly aging population, more mobility issues. Also, you know, there's a lot of other things that can go into accessibility, including, you know, eyes, ears and cognitive issues. So I think it is a nut that we ought to really be trying to open up a little bit. I think we've had great interaction with Division of Fire Safety. They outrightly so are, I would not want to see a lot of things are being put on them now in terms of inspecting buildings beyond fire safety, I think we need to be really cognizant of that. I think there's some great work going on with Kirsten Murphy and her crew in the Institute of Human Services for, you know, about aging and independent living and particularly adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. I think there's an opportunity for, I think more clear guidance really is what it comes down to. What do we want it to be? What do we want accessibility to mean in Vermont? I mean, one of the things that as Erin alluded to, visitable according to the Americans with Disabilities Act does not actually require a no step entrance, which to a lay person, that's the first part of visitable is getting into the home that you're trying to visit. Yet that's not even part of the criteria. So I think just having some wraparounds understanding of what it is where exactly, what are we prescribing on a very tangible level, what we mean when we talk about accessible, I think is a huge first step because there's a lot different ideas about what that actually means.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Here's just to lay out a hesitancy I have. What I've been, I mean, we're very familiar with the view that we need to define better what these terms mean, because we put it in our housing bill last year as a task force to make this, and it never made it out. Yeah. But when I, and so yeah, I mean, we were all supportive of trying to define this better, but on the other hand, what I'm hearing today from you is it really wouldn't make any difference, because nobody wants to do any of it, because they can't it's too hard and they're not familiar with it. So why would we bother defining I'm just being playing devil's advocate Why would we bother pointing to the effort again to try to put together a whole task force to define what visitable means if no one wants to do it anyway. Won't say it's valid.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Don't know that those two statements are entirely separable though. I think some of the difficulty comes from that lack of understanding of what it is to actually be accessible. I also, from my perspective, and this is, I'm told not to speculate while I'm sitting here, but here we are.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's either you speculate or we speculate.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: You know, I'm not gonna respond. I think from where I sit, I think there's a lack of marketability, and I think some of that lack of marketability is not because of, it's oddly not because of a demand, but rather the ability to find units. I don't think it's easy for somebody to be able to market a unit as accessible and have that be understood, and so there's no market value in that. Also, I think there's, and not necessarily Can

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: you just repeat that sentence one more time?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Sure, so I don't think there's a great way for people to, what I said was advertise and I want to refine that a little bit. I don't think there's a great way to connect. There's not a great system right now in the state of Vermont to connect people who are seeking accessible units to the people who are providing accessible units. So it seems to me like there's a value boss there because somebody who is creating an accessible unit might not necessarily even have any value in creating that in a sense that they can't connect to the person they're trying to serve. I think that's part of an issue and I think, I don't know, I swear I had another really great thought here. But I also, yeah, I guess I'll I'll

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'm sorry. Do you have another question?

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Yeah. I'm just I'm just trying to I'm trying to follow follow that. So it it's are you saying am I hearing you say that that there is no incentive for someone to create an accessible put it into me because they can't find a person who needs it?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Because they can't recover the extra price. It's not it's not figured into marketability and the real market doesn't value accessibility right now, even though it should. Okay.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah. So

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: yeah. Okay. So it's not marketable. You can't so okay. So there's no profit in putting an accessible unit. So don't make an accessible unit because there's

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: no profit in it. To

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: be clear, I am advocating for more accessible units. I'm trying to understand why it's not happening on its And I think that that is the case that it's you're not going to rent out, you know, any, you know, even a benevolent property owner is not going to get that return on investment because you, I mean, can't charge, you shouldn't be able to charge more, but you can't charge more for an accessible unit. It's not as though, I guess it might be mitigated to a certain extent if let's say I had a unit, I put in all the accessibility. If I knew that there was, you know, I could go on to a particular website app, what have you, and say affordable, accessible unit available, and I know that I've got a pipeline of folks because they're desperate to find, an accessible unit that they can move around in. That could be valuable even if it's not extra rent, but we don't have that right now.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Well, here's agencies that give you, and I'm only saying this because I just put out an ad for

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: a colleague in this building for an accessible unit and got a number of hits back. So that's why I'm trying to, that's why

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: I was just trying

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: to figure out, okay, so is it, is it because I'm just trying to

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: figure out like the, some marketing or advertising, but that was the wrong word of language. What I'm hearing is just that they can't get the return on investment of the additional cost.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: I think, and again, you know, going back to speculating here, think that that's a major part of the issue and we want to fill that gap because, and you know, only just successful, but also that adaptable piece. I mean, we really want to be pushing people to make sure that when you're doing these rehabilitations, make sure that you're setting yourself up for future success when it comes to supports for grab bars, that sort of things, or, you know, widening a door frame or, you know, even, you know, where you put the sink so that you can actually get the turning radius on a wheelchair in a bathroom. I mean, are these are types of things that we ought to be thinking about irrespective of who's living in

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the county. So in the case of a forgivable loan, the amount of the loan that is forgiven any given year is income taxable. Yes. Which means if you do $70,000 loan, you're paying more income taxes on that than you would be just.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: That is also true. And that's something else that's worth worth mentioning about this program. One major evolution that we've had is we originally started out with issuing grants, lump sum, well, not lump sum, excuse me, take that back. These are all reimbursements and they come out on a reimbursement schedule. But because of that timeframe for which the units need to be available, they typically fell within a single tax year. So it's essentially a lump sum payment reimburse for the work that went into these units. We found in the first couple of years, people were getting surprise tax bills because if you get $50,000 in a given year, that's all considered Not taxable only are you being taxed on that income, that might even put you in a new bracket, so you're getting taxed more heavily on or taxed differently than you expected, I should say, on the rest of your income. So over the past few years and frankly, despite what we really hoped we could figure out a different mechanism because this has proved to be really labor intensive for my division. But what since been doing is issuing what we call forgivable loans. So there's 0% interest forgivable loans that are forgiven at a percentage proportionate to the amount of time that you're in compliance. So let's say for example, I have applied for a VHIP forgivable loan, I've committed to ten years, I complete the unit, I've been reimbursed, that reimbursement is forgiven 10% a year for every year that I'm in the program. So if I'm in the program for the full time, I walk away as if that was treated as a grant. If I'm in the program for less than ten years, I repay the proportion that I'm not in there for and that goes back into the fund. Funds are taxed as income per the percentage that's forgiven in that year. So instead of being taxed on $50,000 I'm being taxed on 10% of that each year And that has proven to be, again, difficult for our division because we have to figure out how to keep track of that, issuing ten ninety nine, all the rest of it, all the more reason for permanent staffing requirements. But that also means that folks are not seeing an enormous tax burden that they didn't expect. And that actually, frankly, probably makes it easier to maintain the unit without raising the rent on Is

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: there an option to change the idea from, I mean, were you at all tempted to say, okay, well, we're not gonna get the full package, whether it's visitable, adaptable, accessible, we're not getting full package, but we'll just fund any element that you wanna do. Like, you wanna put grab bars in the shower? Yeah. You can do it. I'm just wondering if that is an option. I asked that because I think there's a class of people, I saw that being one, who can get in a building, but it's sure nice to have grab bars.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, it was absolutely considered and it was passed on largely because of the administrative burden. We have so few staff people who are able to actually keep track of these things. The idea of keeping track of every single receipt on a unit that otherwise might not fit the whole gamut was too difficult for us

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to give our heads about that response.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: And do you want, I have just a couple points here. But a lot of our landlords do put significant amounts of accessibility features into their units. There have been a number of fully ADA compliant ramps built into zero clearance units with zero clearance showers, like fully accessible, and they rolled that into their work plan. That was before these riders were available. Also, think there is a requirement for landlords to provide reasonable accommodations if someone needs grab bars in a shower. I believe they're expected by law to put those in for the tenant or a tenant is allowed to make reasonable accommodations on their own to units like that. All of these things are perfectly acceptable as part of a VHIP work plan. They're very flexible, and so the funding would cover that. It's possible that the applications we saw in the last round where these accessibility riders were available just weren't people looking to do those kinds of accommodations, and there might be a few more ramps in our future this year. But there's nothing about VHIP that would prevent anyone from doing and we have had quite a few accessibility improvements put in by landlords of their

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: own They they would not access the 20,000 to do it?

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: It was not available when they did I I would suspect they would, that they would have So

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: this is an evolution. Okay.

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: And we've seen interest from some of these landlords in the accessibility funds, but the landlords that expressed interest didn't apply in this last funding cycle. So this this rider has been available for six months, and we've had one round of applications in that time.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Mary? Thank you. I'm just surprised based on, we keep hearing about our demographics. So why isn't it automatic that grab bars would be put in showers? I mean, even in hotels, well, I mean, expensive are grab bars? I I have them in my shower, I put them, I personally didn't put them in, but, you know, friendly put them in for us. It's a safety feature, only for accessibility, for someone who really needs it, but for the average person. Even hotels and motels are putting them in now. I I don't understand why it's not just

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: normal to put them in.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: I think it is becoming more common. I wouldn't say ubiquitous,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: but definitely more common. But yeah, not a requirement. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm going to suggest looking, I'm simply reflecting the body language. I'm going to suggest that we set 02:30 as our time to try to adjourn. Is that are people okay with that? It's the last thing I would wanna do is prevent someone who wishes to ask questions from asking them. Yes, Leonora.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Okay. So I now I've also heard if we were to fund the permanency of the staffing. We are guaranteeing that the 1,000 or so units remaining, right, that are still in process, that it's kind of the only path forward to getting everything buttoned up nicely and then to be able to keep adding more. I think that's a great success rate for that money. Can we impose it on you guys in exchange that we come up with some more creativity and more investment of resources and attention to this issue. Just given that I'm hearing in part, well, it's hard to manage extra receipts for a grab bar or widening one doorway or whatever it is. I think the intent, if I'm not mistaken, I can't speak for Brett Burrows, but I feel like what I remember the intent behind this was to just help in Go ahead. What? To hope that in general, there are so many things that can be done that, you know, maybe because what you're the very thing you're saying, like, people aren't aware of the mark of the extra marketability, but increasingly, like, all like it when we have it. We might you know, it's we we don't realize we if we take for granted that something's gonna be there and and it's not, like, it's really nice. Like, if we could shrink this space a little bit enough for people to get behind our witnesses. You know, like all these little things that we take for granted that we're either just going to keep banging our heads, you know, or we try to make a more concerted effort on that point. Because I'm hearing a lot of almost conflicting situations of like, well, you know, it's got to be once you've also done the $50,000 well, do we look at it as something else? Then that's tough on staff, but if we're going to help with the staffing, could there be more attention to that? If it's not the right program for it, can you suggest, like, is this something that should be done through Agency on Aging or DHS or whatever other program? Because I think it's really important and it comes into our housing portfolio and it comes under our equity portfolio. And yeah, that's my script.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: In short, yes, I know that it needs to be imposed. Think we, I'll allude again to the earlier comment about us being very mission driven and us being very frankly soulful about the work that we're doing. I think that that continuous improvement is something we're committed to. It will be much easier once two things come to pass, once we have permanency and we know that we're committing to improving a system that's going to be sustained and maintained, you know, that adds a lot of motivation where, you know, it's otherwise might be seeming like a futile effort. And the second is that, you know, I said earlier this afternoon, VHIP is under one name now, but is essentially three different programs that we're simultaneously running all with their own funding reporting requirements, their own certificate, their own, they're through programs. We're wrapping all of that up in the next, well within this calendar year. And so once we're just dealing with state funds, I think it's going to be a lot easier for us to open up some time to do that type of connecting with Department of Aging and Independent Living. We have constantly throughout this program tried to connect people with other resources, whether it's weatherization, whether it is Gayle or other groups like that, to make sure that we're stacking. And we actually allow for other grant programs to be used as the matching funds if they're needed. We don't disallow for that. So we really do want to dovetail this with all of our state agencies and accessibility is one that I think we could with permanency could easily devote more time to.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: I just wanted to just, I was looking for the numbers, I was trying to figure it out. So I was sorry, I was trying to find some stuff from Brett Burrows. And he had mentioned that it was, I wanna say this on

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: the record, not less for you, but more for the watchers who may be

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: considering doing this, right? And including accessibility, but there's approximately more than ninety thousand Vermonters as of 2022

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: with

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: disabilities. And the number of units available as 2020, as of a report in 2024 was 2,713, accessibility events. So, it may not be marketable for income, but it's the

[Erin Aguayo (VHIP Grants Management Specialist, DHCD)]: right thing to do.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think that it's a comp it really is a combination. This is I think we should really think hard about how we I think a lot of this has to do with the lack of definition. A lot of it has to do I think what I'm hearing from you is that it's not the definition per se, but it's that the persuasion and the marketability, the ability to push and market and get more people used to it, is in part dependent on being clear about what it is. And then part of the problem is just that it's very expensive and difficult to convert small, old, rehabilitated places, and you're not going to do it with 50,000 or 20,000, that it's just, you're talking about gut jobs to make hallways bigger and do some of this stuff, it's just very difficult. But a lot of

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: the stuff is not requiring the whole gut, like that's

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, well then the question is, do we that's a policy question that's an interesting one for you, which is do you just say, okay, we're not going to make it, whatever it is, visible, accessible, whatever it is, are we going to say, we're just going to make 20,000 available to do whatever can be done, even, you know, even if you can't get in?

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Right. Yeah. If if a piecemeal approach is is what if we'd rather see something than nothing, that is, you know, that's an option, that's certainly something we can explore again. It is an even higher touch on a very high touch program. So I just want to be reasonable about what we're able to accomplish with

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that. Right. It's also, but thank you. What also is clear from what Aaron said is that really in the beginning of this year, you're you've only had one round with this money available for this purpose, and so we'll have It to see what might be that we'll get more people who are interested in the next round.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Absolutely, and not to sound flippant, but you know, over the past five years, we have absolutely been building this plane while we're flying it, and then been told it should be a fighter jet and not a bomber jet and then it needs to be a helicopter. So like we, it has been, the fact that this program has been as successful as it has truly comes down to really a, I mean, I can count on two hands, the number of staff people at the five HOCs and our department that have been instrumental for this program to address the needs of over 800 Vermont households to date and counting. So happy to always engage in these conversations and really looking forward to maybe a new dawn for VHIP now that we've been tested every which way. And hopefully, maybe one week, Aaron will not have to come up with a solution to a completely new problem that we've never anticipated because pretty much every year for 52 times that's come up, so.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Any parting questions or can we let these people go? Okay,

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Eric, Eric. Eric's happy to come back and you guys know how to find us.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, Sean, Erin, a thousand thank yous for taking your Friday afternoon with us, we've learned a lot.

[Sean Gilpin (Housing Director, VT Department of Housing & Community Development)]: Thanks so much. Okay,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: so I just want to say at this point, please look sometime, like Monday, check the website, but preliminarily when are we talking, we're talking about after the floor, right, on Tuesday?

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Tuesday, 1PM.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: 1PM, yeah, I mean the floor, I don't see us meeting at this point before the floor, but always check your for that. Check check on Monday. You know, go on the website, look at the agenda. And we are now, I think, safely adjourned. Mhmm. We