Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Ashley Bartley]: Great, thank you. All right, we are back. It's still Wednesday, not November, February 18, and we will be talking about H-seven 75 and act relating to creating tools for housing production. Specifically, we asked Commissioner Farrell to come in and talk to us about the housing target language we discussed yesterday. Windham, Commissioner Farrell, please join us.

[Alex Farrell]: Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Alex Farrell, Commissioner at the Department of Housing and Community Development. So as I understand it, while the language is not in the most recent draft, it may be added to the next draft, page seven seventy four.

[Ashley Bartley]: It is currently being added. We just

[Alex Farrell]: don't have updated yet. Okay, great. Well, I've walked through this language in concept with this group before. And again, the goal of the housing targets and the language currently exists in H. Six zero two. I've consulted with other representatives, Mihaly and Bartley, who have considered making some adjustments to clarify the language, to clean it up. We're absolutely on the same page, I think, on ways to make it easier to understand. I'll walk through the language, but happy to take questions along the way. I think everybody here understands the concept. The concept is we want towns to look at their housing targets. We want evidence in their municipal plan that they've looked at the housing targets and that they've, I'll use the term analyzed loosely, they at least put some thought into whether or not they can accommodate the housing targets. And if they don't think they can accommodate the housing targets, they need to document blindness. It's H602, section 11, and housing targets. I don't need to go line by line since I know you likely don't have the language in front of you. I can walk through what's in the sections and just keep it high logic. So it starts with that exact logic. The municipality shall identify and analyze the existing and projected housing needs for the projected population of the jurisdiction and provide regulations. And there's also a reference in here that the jurisdiction may use another regional or statewide analysis. The point of that language is to say, municipality, you don't have to go and do your own neighborhood housing needs assessment. We're telling you, use the tools we're giving you. The department's gonna publish a housing needs assessment and housing targets, and your region has disaggregated those for you. So basically, that's giving the municipality permission to just use that work. Don't go do this work all over again by yourself. It then goes on to give more specificity. So quantify the projected housing types, age, location, condition, again, things that would be included in the housing needs assessment, inventory of sites, the zoning, where our buildings are utilized, etcetera. So again, just sort of giving the municipality an outline of here's what could be included in this section of the municipal plan. And you'll see at the very end of this, we essentially give the municipality permission to include as much or as little detail as they want, so long as it's clear that they've put some thought to it. This next subsection is an important one. It shall include an analysis of any constraints to housing development, including zoning, development standards, infrastructure, any market based incentives that are needed in order to encourage development. So this is the opportunity to say what would prevent you all from reaching your housing targets. And then it goes on to invite a description of what actions the jurisdiction could take to enable the House of Americans. And it goes on to be more specific, such as specific zoning updates or infrastructure improvements. I suspect we're going to hear from a lot of communities that they don't have capacity in their infrastructure or they don't have the infrastructure. And what they're going to say, many communities is, we need funds to support infrastructure, we need improvements to our infrastructure, we need access to DEC's Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund. These are things we've heard before, but it's great to get this feedback from the municipalities. Again, I've said this in here before, but we make a lot of policy decisions because of what we at the state level think is best for our municipality, and that's always rooted in evidence. But anytime we can align our planning based on what the municipalities say they need, that's more evidence that we can use crafting policy. Moving through this, so that again, that was the list of here's what the municipality may identify in their sort of current need and current constraints. Some more detail on what the housing section is shall include in the municipalities plan. It may incorporate any reference to policies identified in a housing needs assessment. So again, it's tying back to use what you've been given by your region, use what been given by the Department of Housing and Community Development, and you can reference that.

[Mary E. Howard]: Let me get to the end here.

[Alex Farrell]: So this is where the language gets a little repetitive, but we've discussed some cleanup that I think in the draft you'll see will not be as repetitive, but

[Ashley Bartley]: And just real quick, Miriam is having at least section 11 of six zero two printed. While there will be changes that we see that Cameron's made at least it's the kind of foundation of what we're talking about. So they'll be grabbing that shortly.

[Alex Farrell]: Thank you. This subsection lays out that after the analysis that you've performed, particularly in accordance with all the sort of steps that we just laid out there, if you're able to identify how far you'll come up short of your housing targets, what resources you need, the legislative body shall establish the minimum number of housing units that may be rebuilt. Essentially, us a sense of what you think you can reach. If it's not the target that's been set for you by the region, how

[Marc Mihaly]: many do you expect to accommodate?

[Alex Farrell]: And then what I'll say is there is a section in here that asks the municipality to report our progress. I will say that I'd be comfortable removing that section because the department really is taking that role on. We're stepping up our data capabilities and because of language changes that you all made last year to give us access to brandless data through the CAMA database, we essentially have that on the ground data. So that's a portion of this that I'd be comfortable removing and just saying the department will report on progress.

[Ashley Bartley]: I believe that in my request to Cameron, that was removed.

[Alex Farrell]: That's right. Think that's what we discussed yesterday. And then the final section just essentially says the amount of detail beyond sort of the minimum criteria is up to the municipality. So we lay out some baseline criteria for this report out to include in the municipal plan. If a municipality wants to produce something more robust, they're welcome to, but that's up to them. This is really just to establish a baseline. So that's the whole section.

[Marc Mihaly]: And there's no timeline, right?

[Alex Farrell]: There is no timeline. References a twenty year planning period for projection. Change that we've discussed that I think would be a good change is just the planning period. So the period of the municipal plan.

[Marc Mihaly]: But I mean, there's no timeline, like they don't have to do this by June 30 year or something like that.

[Alex Farrell]: That's right. It's whenever they update their plan to the next time.

[Ashley Bartley]: And we did take out the twenty year.

[Alex Farrell]: We did take that out. Capacity constraints are a concern, I think there is an opportunity to reference the regional planning commissions. Regional planning commissions shall assist in the analysis. You're going hear from RPC soon. I'll flag though that we did discuss this with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and they do not oppose. I don't know for sure that they I believe they support it, but I just don't want to speak for them. They certainly don't oppose this. And in part, the reason the LCT came around to be very comfortable is I shouldn't say come around, but they were great partners in this because we made it clear that this isn't you shall update your regulations to accommodate the housing targets or you shall reach the housing targets or there will be some punitive actions taken, but rather it's let us know, can you achieve these targets? If you can't, tell us why. If tier three is going to be an issue for your community, if road rule is going be an issue for community, if municipal water and wastewater, document that and create that feedback loop. So my understanding from talking

[Marc Mihaly]: to the league is that is the element of this that really got that to support. I do want to add that I've talked to the league too, and I think officially their position is it's okay. Number of conversations have been made, because they're enthusiastic for the reasons that the votes are private, I mean, not private, but they were individual conversations, for the reasons you just said. We did request the league to testify. The problem is, as of yesterday, they told me that they have 21 requests to testify in the next few days, and so I'm a little concerned that they might not get to us, but I asked them to give us a paragraph if they could, but I don't know if they'll be able to, it's just they're backed up.

[Ashley Bartley]: Okay, Leonora, did you have a question?

[Leonora Dodge]: No, I was just trying to clarify,

[Mary E. Howard]: just I had I this

[Leonora Dodge]: was all I found, printouts of or any information about six zero two. And so I was just trying to find my way in this from what you were talking about. Now I realize that you were so you were just talking about the section 11 Section 11. Which was just, like, on one page of this printout. Right? Of this. Okay. But this is going more in detail. Thanks.

[Ashley Bartley]: Thank you so much, Commissioner Farrell. We have Catherine Demetra who will be coming in at 11:30. She's currently in Commerce. So are there any other last year for the commissioner? Can I ask a question? So in our conversation and in the language that I had requested from, we said, and I'm sure we'll hear from Catherine, the RPCs shall. So they need to help our municipalities with this. Do you think even if our RPCs are out straight, they've got a lot going on, do you think these requirements could be completed by a municipality regardless of help from the RPCs?

[Alex Farrell]: I'll say that I do, but I also want to acknowledge that we have very small towns, no full time staff. In that event, we sought to make this language as broad as possible while also laying out a road map for the municipality so that they know what we're looking for. There's no penalty, right? There's really no penalty to not getting this. We're trying to encourage municipality to demonstrate that they're thinking about their hazard targets. So what I'd say is if Roxbury or another Alberg is only able to say the evidence we have suggests based on historical data that we will come up short. Our projection is that we'll meet about 50% of our target because we have major issue substantial wetlands in Albert, lack of water and wastewater capacity here at Roxbury. We don't have a developer. It could be somewhat bare bones, and that meets the statute. So it's a great question. It certainly was the first question that we raised internally. Do we think folks can meet this? I I think we crapped it in a way that's brought up and gives them the roadmap.

[Ashley Bartley]: Great. And for the communities that are inevitably gonna maybe hand you a binder of why they can't

[Alex Farrell]: meet their

[Ashley Bartley]: housing goals or even if say they're gonna meet their housing goals and they, is that information that you think would be helpful for the legislator, for your department?

[Alex Farrell]: It's incredibly helpful. I mean, in Act 181, or maybe it was in the Home Act, when the language was inserted to have DHCD not only establish housing targets, but actually report on them. There was an invitation created in that language to offer up if the state isn't able to meet these housing targets share in your report to the legislature what the constraints are, what would you recommend policy changes? So I want to offer that same chance to municipalities to basically say, Here, criticize us. And if a Middlebury or a South Burlington or Hartford, one of the larger towns has the time and resources and wants to document policy changes that they think we should undertake here and make recommendations, I think that's great, whether it's specific to them or statewide. I certainly invite that while recognizing 90 of towns likely won't avail themselves with that opportunity and that's okay too.

[Mary E. Howard]: Will that information be public?

[Alex Farrell]: I don't see why it wouldn't be. The municipal plan is a public document and so what this does, it requires that that information be included in there and so if they chose to do that, it would be included in the municipal plan, which is a document. Okay. Which could be a great resource for local legislators, for us. It would certainly be a resource we'd use.

[Leonora Dodge]: Do you have a sense that the school capture very local dynamics, like nasty appeal that prevented something that could have been a great increase in units built, that could have helped build.

[Alex Farrell]: I almost guarantee that municipalities will share those anecdotes, those stories. I mean, if this had been in place years ago, I'd almost guarantee that Putney would have included this in the report to say that we have 40 units that would have been online a year ago, yet we're still waiting on them because of this, waiting for this appeal to play out. So I think that's a great example of whether it's an appeal or a threat of appeal, and a great opportunity to stop what the constraints are and give us that feedback.

[Leonora Dodge]: And does the impetus for this approach come from a desire to be able to I feel as though we already have, already in our conscience have a broad array and understanding of the whole shenanigan spectrum and the real economic challenges and geographic challenges. So tell me more about why this needs this massive lift, because it feels like it's still going to be a lift, to document it at a point in time. Why do this now after we already kind of know that there are a lot of issues?

[Alex Farrell]: Yeah, it's a great question. And I'd say this is an alignment of what's what's been established at the statewide, now at a regional level. We want to align it at municipal level and carry all the way through to the municipal plans what we have started and what we're really basing policy off of now statewide, I also wanted to say that we're at a moment in time where essentially every municipality just knows built. We aren't building enough and we likely won't build enough. That is what likely every report would say now, this time around. I'm also thinking twenty years from now, as we get closer to 2050, we may find ourselves, I don't know, hopefully we find ourselves in a different housing dynamic where we can be more tactical about our growth, how much we need to grow. This might not be a report out on, we are so far behind, here's how much we're going to fall behind on, but it could, the 2040 municipal plan might say, we're hitting most of our economic targets, growth has been sufficient, we think we need to maintain or we think we need to increase by 5%. I'm really envisioning once this is in municipal plans the first time around or the next several years as folks update their municipal plan, this becomes a useful update. And since my team will continue to feed this data every five years, it's an opportunity to make sure that that's a living document. Again, we are glad that the housing needs assessment and now the housing targets are much more of a living document than they've been in the past. We've been doing these for decades. No one paid any attention to them. Now we are, and so we're trying to really embed it and grade it in all of our planning at all levels here in the state.

[Ashley Bartley]: And I would just say, I think we've had the privilege of sitting in this committee where I think we do have a good understanding. There are definitely individuals within this building who I don't think, maybe they don't recognize, or maybe they don't appreciate kind of the crisis we're in. And I think this is just good proof and will provide data for all legislators regardless of where they live that, hey, this is where our municipalities are struggling.

[Alex Farrell]: We also like to point that we have very specific data on what our needs are, just sort of this large, vague, we need more.

[Mary E. Howard]: I have a question that's more to housing, especially in, Rutland. There are at least two or three hotels, motels for sale. Why is the state not taking advantage of that since the cost would be less than, for example, Cornerstone is in the process of obtaining the Beretta home, which has a limited number of rooms and bathrooms. Whereas the small child's hotels, it would be a lot cheaper. And I recently spoke to a developer and she has done a number of projects in Brooklyn. Very, very nice downtown projects. And she's in the process of doing another. She can do the project for a lot less than the state with a lot less employees, and the cost would just be so much better.

[Alex Farrell]: Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely a top priority. If you recall, I know it was a couple of years ago, we were successful in getting some language added to the exemptions of a list of things that a municipality may not regulate. One of those things is municipal zoning may not prevent conversion from hotel to hotel to full time residents. And so that was a change that we felt was important in order to make sure that both the market as well as state funded entities could react and take those opportunities.

[Mary E. Howard]: I do know that one or two of these hotels are located a downtown, which does not have cell phone. So

[Alex Farrell]: nothing would preclude that from being converted in that case.

[Mary E. Howard]: So, why isn't the state looking into that?

[Alex Farrell]: Yeah, as in through funding?

[Mary E. Howard]: Purchasing the motels.

[Alex Farrell]: Oh, for the state to become an owner of the property. The state, we haven't necessarily contemplated becoming landlords or developers ourselves. What we'd be more likely to do is through funding sources, allow

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: or

[Alex Farrell]: incentivize that to move forward. We certainly have been supportive of hotel and motel conversions, we've seen a number of them be successful, not all of them. Sometimes it is cost effective, sometimes it's less so. Yeah, the state hasn't necessarily taken on a direct developer or owner role in development of any property types.

[Leonora Dodge]: A good question for one of the state housing authorities, one of the housing authorities.

[Alex Farrell]: Yeah, so in that case, Cornerstone, that was called Cornerstone's jurisdiction, and PHCB certainly has prioritized funding for conversions when it pencils out.

[Mary E. Howard]: Thank you, Commissioner.

[Alex Farrell]: Thank you.

[Ashley Bartley]: We now have Catherine Demetra, who is Northwest Regional Planning Commission. She's the executive director, and she is the executive director of my RPC. Thank you so much, Katherine, for coming in. Oh, I forgot.

[Mary E. Howard]: I'll give you my notes to

[Ashley Bartley]: kind of understand the language changes. So just really briefly, this came about in a conversation with Chair Mihaly, myself, and Commissioner Farrell yesterday about adding housing target language from six zero two into our rural finance bill. So again, very crazy handwriting over there, but really kind of stating here's the mandate for municipalities. If they cannot reach that target, here's kind of the exemption and how they go about explaining. And then of course, it's the RPCCs shall assist with this. So yeah, the floor is yours. Okay. So thank you

[Catherine Dimitruk]: for having me here today. I'm sorry that I was unable to hear anything in writing, but

[Ashley Bartley]: I can follow-up with some information So for Katie after

[Catherine Dimitruk]: I was asked specifically to come and talk about this planning for municipal housing targets and how this might be implemented at the local level. So as you probably know, the regional planning commissions provide technical assistance to our municipalities in a host of areas. One of them is in municipal plan creation. So very often we are the entity that works directly with the local volunteers to draft municipal plans. And so we're very involved in the work that it takes to create a municipal plan. Specifically, when I first read this, I understood the goal and the intent is to make sure municipalities really think through the actions that they're in control of, that they can do that can help encourage more housing in their communities. I am concerned that the level of analysis and the detail that's requested is out of the capacity and capability of our smaller communities for two reasons. One is just from a capacity perspective, this would add a significant amount of requirement to municipal plans that isn't required in any other area. And two, the data just isn't there. So to require a smaller municipality to look at some of this granular data, you're looking at data that doesn't exist and would need to be created because nothing that's tracked has a level of accuracy that can be relied upon. In terms of historically, we have new, more recent years data with planned housing data tracking that we're doing, but looking at past years, it could be a challenge. So I do think that there is definitely something worth adding here. And I understand there's work to try to adjust and amend this language. And I'll throw out a couple of ideas for you to think about. One is there's no answer to these so what question. So municipalities do all this work and so what? What if the analysis shows you can't do the housing? And what if they say we're going to do all these things and then they don't do any of them? Is there worth a so what? Is there worth an answer to that? Is there a consequence if a municipality has its plan and then they don't implement any of it and they're still not doing anything within their control to try to accommodate housing within your municipality? The other thing I think might be worth considering is only requiring the most detailed analysis by our urban towns, and that in statute is defined as towns of 5,000 people or greater. So in title 24, where this would be located, there's a definition of a urban town and that's 5,000 people or more. Only requiring this more detailed analysis of municipalities of that size where there is better data and there's often more capacity. Additionally, you might consider it only requiring more detailed analysis of those urban towns that don't opt in under Act 181 that are eligible to have the Act two fifty relaxation for housing in their communities, but choose not to. And so that might be like, oh, you're not gonna do that one thing for housing, well then tell us all the other things you're gonna do instead. So that might be something worth considering. And then having a more detailed than what's required now, but a little less than this for the other communities, the rural towns. So I think there is something worth considering and incorporating into the bill that you're doing from my perspective. I think that there could be some additional work, and I see the notes in China, sorry, digest right now. I think there can be some additional work to tweak that language, and I'm happy to continue to work with representative and the commissioner on some additional suggestions.

[Ashley Bartley]: Leonora, do you have a question?

[Leonora Dodge]: Yeah, I guess from the previous testimony, it seemed like this is really state sanctioned massive municipal survey, right? Like investigation to try to get really good statewide input on what actual and perceived maybe problems, you know, obstacles are in order to craft

[Ashley Bartley]: future approaches.

[Leonora Dodge]: And in that spirit, it's less so of a carrot or stick and more of an invitation. That hope from what you're saying is that it feels like it's going to be onerous and may not actually produce the data that we're looking for because it would require there is a better approach to establish a way to gather the data, is a better approach to or can that be I mean, in the new language, could that be simply the answer given? We actually can't tell you because we don't know if we can reach the target because we don't even know what is coming down the pipe because for whatever reason. When you're saying that the data might be hard to come by or isn't already gathered, that this is going to require new data gathering, can you paint that scenario like you're a small town somewhere, and

[Catherine Dimitruk]: this new law comes into effect? Absolutely. So I think of the community next to the one I live in, is Fletcher. Let's talk about Fletcher. Fletcher is a really tiny town in Franklin County, except for a little tiny corner, there's no state routes that travel through the town. Their housing growth tends to be in the three to seven units a year. They are eligible for tier 1B because they have zoning and subdivision regulations, but they chose not to opt in because they haven't seen an Act two fifty application in their town in about fifteen years. And so they didn't think it mattered one way or the other. Now I look at trying to figure out how do I quantify Fletcher's projected housing needs by location, age, condition, and occupancy. And how do I take three to seven units a year and translate that to condition occupancy location. I just think that for our smaller towns trying to translate the language, it just doesn't. So we'll end up just looking at it and saying, well,

[Ashley Bartley]: we don't really know, or

[Catherine Dimitruk]: it doesn't matter. It's gonna be some mix. And so I think about the housing elements already in regional plans have some projection of need and analysis of affordability and tend to be like eight to 10 pages as they are now. And I'm trying to figure out which pieces of these make sense for a rural community, because I think they can be beefed up and tied back into the housing targets. It's just not everything here really applies to the smallest towns in our state.

[Ashley Bartley]: Can I maybe piggyback off and more of a request for you

[Leonora Dodge]: kind of homework?

[Ashley Bartley]: As you said, you were going to try and give us some written testimony. Do you think in your written testimony, you might be able to give recommendations of maybe what language could be less prescriptive versus the language that you think is adequate, or if that could be included in your request of rest of my own?

[Catherine Dimitruk]: Yes, started to do too.

[Ashley Bartley]: Perfect. I think that would be really helpful for the committee. We are trying, I think, to vote this out by Friday just because we know there are some there's others other committees it has to go to, but it will be a part of our conversation. And so if if you can get us that written testimony, think it'd be great for our committee discussions. Yes. I'd be happy to. Later this week.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Yeah. Great. Tom, do you have

[Alex Farrell]: a question? Partly an echo.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Yeah. You know, if there's if they're two different essentially the same questions, but a different level of detail for towns by a dozen more smaller municipalities. Even even general descriptions of the areas they're looking at are valuable because that we can you know, if we can even look at out of 251 municipalities, whatever it is now. Trust me. Right. Right. If 100 of them come back and say, hey. You know, we put out our request for proposals for Denny's and it's got a correct procedure to get any no contracts as you're interested or if we find out that there's a certain proportion, significant proportion that are just struggling with permitting questions or whatever, then that helps us focus the assistance that we can provide. Yes. And

[Catherine Dimitruk]: I think that's a valid point. I'm not sure that this change in statute is gonna get you that information in the timeframe in which you want it. Because it's gonna

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: take that.

[Catherine Dimitruk]: Right, unless you subsequently require all towns to update their town plans within a short timeframe, like a year or two after this passes, you're going to get it in drips and droughts because plans are only done every eight years. So if you're looking for that information sooner rather than later, I think that you would need to look to a different

[Ashley Bartley]: tool. Yeah.

[Catherine Dimitruk]: Or require all towns to update their plans, which please don't do. I mean, you can, that's your choice, but

[Ashley Bartley]: please don't. So I

[Catherine Dimitruk]: think that this could be that tool in the long run, but in the timeframe in which we're trying to make a shift in our housing situation, it's not gonna give you the answers you need or the time you want them.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Yeah. I don't know if it's even long range, like what it had to do at the same eight years that day. So maybe that's not the correct time. Okay. Thank you. Welcome.

[Ashley Bartley]: I think I'll use Fairfax as a great example. We're getting ready to kind of, I know you've already started the process, but looking back at our current town plan, there is this, you know, we're going to talk about housing, we're going to promote housing, and that has struggled in our town. And so I think something like this, and maybe it's a matter of changing some of the language, but just being able to say, hey, we've established this as part of our goals as a town. How can either, you know, if there is a barrier, how can we help that legislatively when it comes up? So one of the things we had done, currently the language is like a twenty year, we did take out the twenty year and it's just like the plan. So again, it doesn't I don't see this issue going away anytime soon, which I wish it would. But I think it's also there's long term effects that I think could be beneficial as well.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: What would it make sense? I know that the future land use mapping should be complete at end of the year Mhmm. Sometime. What if this was a follow-up on that process once they've had the opportunity to communicate all these different paths together? Would that be an appropriate moment to say, could you provide us this way? This simply.

[Catherine Dimitruk]: Yeah. Think you should ask the regional planning commissions to follow-up and say now that you have these targets, you have these new plans, you know, work with your towns to give us a you know, what are the barriers that towns are expressing?

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton]: Which would help us deal with the housing issues that we have now. Yeah.

[Mary E. Howard]: Did you notice that?

[Ashley Bartley]: Does anybody else have any other questions? Well, thank you so much for coming in so quickly and answering our call. It's always great to have you here. Yes, please. Please don't judge them. They're a little wacky. No, I thought we'd done. Yeah, that's good. Well, thank you so much. I need to adjourn and say when we're back, sorry. We will be coming back at 1PM today to talk about H-four 59 and accolating to parental and family leave.