Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Welcome

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: everybody to the House Committee on General and Housing. Today is Tuesday, April 28, all day. I'm going to set the stage a little bit, before I do that, since Matthew, is it is it Latell? Yes. Has not been here before, I'm gonna ask members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting with

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: you. Gayle Pezzo, Chittenden 20, Holchester, welcome.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Hi, I'm Elizabeth Burrows, I represent Windsor 1, which is Heartland, West Windsor, and Windsor. And just so you know where I fit in, Tim Cornell is my brother.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Hi. I represent Lamoille,

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Washington District, which is more sound, Elmore, Worcester, Woodbury and a small part of scope.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And I'm Marc Mihaly, and I represent Callis Plainfield and Marshfield, which are three towns north of Montpelier.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Ashley Bartley. I represent Fairfax and Georgia.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Leonora Dodge, Essex Town and City Of Essex Junction.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Hi. Tom Charlton, Athens, Chester, Grafton, and Lubbock.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Representative Debbie Dolgin. I represent Saint John's Pray, Concord, and Kirby.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So why don't the three of you just introduce yourselves? My name

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: is Chris Godfrey, I'm the Director of Community Planning and Rehabilitation and I work for the Department of Housing and Community Development.

[Jeff Duby (Community Planner and Project Manager, VT DHCD)]: Jeff Duby, I'm in Chris's division. I'm a community planner and project manager.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Matt,

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: I'm do you live at Matthew Patel. I'm a principal at UTL. We are a regionally based planning and architecture firm with offices in Boston, Burlington, and Providence, Rhode Island.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Great. Thanks a lot. So here's where we are. As part of our analysis of a Senate housing bill, but also independent of that, we have undertaken in the last few of our sessions, our committee meetings, a hard look at the term universal design and what's involved, and we've had a good bit of testimony and it's been really enlightening. One the issues that has come out of that testimony is, it's pretty clear, we've been introduced to terms like adaptability, visitability, accessibility, etcetera. We understand, we've had testimony about universal design as a way of thinking, as a process, and rather than a simple list, we've had some testimony on eight zero two homes. The testimony that we've had so far indicates that multi family housing in Vermont has, it has a visitability requirements, and if it's over a certain number of units, it has adaptability requirements. Single family houses, as we all know all too well in this committee, we don't have a uniform building code in Vermont for single family houses, and so requirements are generally not mandated, which we know that of the 10 designs in eight zero two Home, eight are multifamily, and so would be subject to the multifamily requirement. We really don't know much yet about either the two units that are, or the two prototypes, single family. Nor, and I think we would benefit from that, understanding that in some detail, but also your thinking generally on how you will approach visitability, adaptability, accessibility in eight zero two homes, given that eventually there is going to be more than 10. So that's as best I can to sort of frame the issue and I guess gentlemen, I'm addressing you together, take it away.

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: Yeah, on math governance, I was recommending that you go first. I think it'd be helpful to kind of walk through what we discussed and just show them the different designs and I think we can absolutely answer that question. Great.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: I'm gonna share my screen. And are you all seeing that?

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: Yes. We do. Okay.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: So it it sounds like you're familiar with the context. I just wanna remind everyone, what I thought I would do is give a little context to our approach for this phase, a little bit of an update about where we are in our process, and then talk specifically about how we're addressing accessibility more generally in the sort of current unit designs. Just a step back, a reminder, you're probably familiar that this grew out of Homes For All, which we worked with DCD on a year or two ago now, where we, in conjunction with certain pilot communities, developed sort of prototypical designs for missing middle or infill housing, and that was accompanied by a developer sort of toolkit that would provide technical assistance for development. This current phase really takes some of those designs and adds more, and is intended to take those designs to a point where they are kind of construction ready, if you will. So enough detail about structure, layout, everything that they can help facilitate their development by providing at least one very important step. So one of the big goals was to really deliver on that mission that was set up in the Homes For All process, which was developing flexible, adaptable, and Vermont appropriate housing types that could fit into a variety of infill conditions and other kinds of greenfield conditions in broader Vermont communities. During this process, one piece that has really come to the fore is the affordability. So we've been focused on designing in ways that these can be delivered through a variety of construction techniques, including modular or penalized, or what we call pods, which are prefabricated bathrooms and other elements. Also trying to Sorry. Deliver

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Could you repeat that word, Matthew? The last word. Oh, a pod. A pod. Okay. Pod. I just didn't hear

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: it. Okay.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Yeah. Pod is the fancy kind of, like, industry term for, they're essentially like a preassembled bathroom or a preassembled kitchen that can reduce construction time, eliminate on-site complications. So we're we're trying to develop designs that are flexible to sort of receive all these potentially money saving construction strategies. But also affordability is manifest in the compactness. We're trying to develop homes that are dignified, useful, livable, but also efficient. And then with that comes with a sort of emphasis on designing homes that are filling, specifically filling gaps. In other words, not just following what the market wants, but addressing gaps in the housing supply that addresses certain parts of the population that are for whom the aging single family housing stock is not serving them well. So seniors, are a big part of this, but it also includes sort of single young adults who are just trying to move out of their parents' basement or young families with small budgets and other kinds of scenarios like that. So in terms of accessibility, we've had a real focus on including a large number of types that include fully accessible units, but also going above and beyond what the letter of the law is with regards to, accessibility, adaptability, or visitability. So, all the all plans are visible. We'll give you some detail. We're sort of meeting and exceeding really a lot of the requirements. But I say broadly speaking, intention was to not just meet and exceed those technical requirements, but through the engagement that we've been doing, incorporate much more nuanced and perhaps even in some cases more relevant sort of accessibility features that are both adaptable for people over time and address sort of what people's needs are at this particular moment. This is a summary of the sort of the types that we're proposing right now. What I'm going to show you today are the sort of schematic designs that we've been circulating. These are now being evolved to be improved, modified, and brought into further detail for ultimately sort of construction documents. But at a glance, what you'll see here is that we have a great variety of size and type, everything from one unit to two to four, up to six in some cases. You'll see where it says infill site type. We are addressing all kinds of different potential sites where these could be located. You'll see some narrow ones here for village infill conditions. You'll see some wider ones for shallow lots. And then in the middle, you'll see a bunch of sort of other sort of features. And I'd say it looks like half of our units, at least 10 of these models include a fully accessible Ground Floor unit. And I will expand on what that is in a minute. But suffice it to say, and we're calling them age in place units, although they could obviously, they serve more than just seniors. They serve anyone with disability or who has restricted mobility. But these are within a sort of constellation of, I think, really rich variety of types, everything from studios to two bedrooms, small, large, duplex, and flats. A quick summary of those units, of those what we call age in place units. They fall under certain, uniform federal accessibility standard requirements where they are for units or more. In most cases, we're not even meeting that that need, but, on a number of design fronts in terms of of how they are categorizing certain requirements, we're always meeting and in in many cases, sort of exceeding what those requirements are just because, we believe that some cases over those requirements are maybe insufficient, and we have the opportunity to do better, so we will.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Matthew, I'm not familiar with this UFAS. What who promulgated them? What what do they apply to as a matter of law?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: So they they typically they're sort of it's a set of design standards that's sort of governed at the federal level, but in Vermont, it applies to projects with four units or more. And depending on the configuration of the units, it requires a certain amount of accessibility. They break them down into type a and type b units. I don't wanna get too far in the weeds on it, but, basically, type b is, accessible ish and adaptable for future. Type a is the more sort of rigorous, you know, full size bathrooms, ready to move in kind of accessible. We've applied that standard, that higher standard to a bunch of, our types here that wouldn't even otherwise require it. And I can walk through a few of them. It sounds like you're familiar with some of them. So but I think this first one is maybe a nice response to you know, you you had some questions about what we were doing on the single family front. So this we call the railroad flat. It's it's particularly designed to be narrow, and it addresses accessibility, I think, on a number of levels that, you know, just the strict codes don't. First of all, it's not required to be anything beyond just visitable. But what we've done is to essentially create a kind of a, it's a sort of a quasi accessory dwelling unit. Its proportions are designed to perhaps fit on a parcel that has a little extra width, perhaps for an aging resident who wants to sort of downsize in place, if you will, perhaps allow younger family members to move into the original big house. It has a fully accessible bedroom, bathroom, washer dryers that are not stacked. This is an important thing and an important design decision because they take a lot of space. Again, this exceeds some of the requirements. And in this case, I'll dwell on this design just for a little bit here. This was, you'll see a grade in area that says consider carport. Through our engagement, we weren't hired to design garages, but it is something that we heard as being extremely relevant to seniors. Shoveling out of your car is no small task. And so based on that, what we've done is to essentially, we put in an extra door on the side, we reoriented the sort of front closet there, and we will be incorporating structural design to allow for that carport to be developed. But I think this is a nice example where not only is the type not even required to have any sort of really robust accessibility, the design itself is meant to address downsizing in place and also addresses some things outside the home that wouldn't normally address. I'll note that this unit also has a kind of half upper story, which could be for, a caregiver or, the grandchildren when they come to visit. These are other kinds of concerns that we spend a lot of time talking with, various residents about.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So is this is this I just wanna make sure I understood what you said. The 1st Floor of this is a the entry door is, like, 36 inches or wide enough for for a wheelchair to get through, and the porch the idea is that I mean, does this thing and then there's room for a wheelchair to move around the whole unit?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Correct.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And the bathroom is is actually accessible as built, or is it adaptable?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: It's ex in this case, in in our quote, unquote age in place units, they are accessible as built. You'll see a kind of five foot radius circle

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, yeah, okay.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: And then, yes, so we're meeting and exceeding. You bring up a good point though, which is that all of these can be accessible from grade. There is a certain amount of this falls to whoever is actually building it. It may be that you need to grade up to the front door. It may be that you might need a ramp or a small ramp. But long story short, this is this is a flat, which can be excess from grade.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Elizabeth, did you know a question? He answered it. Yep. Go ahead.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Okay. So I'm starting now with the age in place types. So that was a sort of fairly compact one that addressed a particular kind of site condition, maybe a kind of downsizing family condition. This we call the intergenerational triple decker. And essentially it's designed around this idea that multiple generations from a single family could coexist in a single building. This is an idea, this is a kind of model, it was very common probably one hundred years ago, and we have some of the building types left from that. And it consists of a fairly comfortable downstairs, flat apartment here, which is, not only fully accessible, it has two fully accessible bedrooms, ample storage, a fully accessible bathroom. And then there is a kind of unit, call it a unit and a half above. Again, this could be the younger members of the family, maybe the young adult is sort of living in the half unit in the attic. But the idea here is that in contrast to some of these smaller units, this is a fairly sort of robust and comfortable sized unit.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is this set up I can't tell. Is this set up so that you can accept access the 2nd Or 3rd Floor without going into the 1st Floor?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Correct.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Uh-huh. It's that am I looking at the lower left a hall, sort of like the equivalent of a hall and a stairway? I see. Okay.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Exactly. So if you were going upstairs, you'd come in. There's a sort of mudroom entry condition, and then you would go upstairs to land in your living room. But the downstairs unit accesses has its own access direct. The Village fourplex comes from the Homes For All. It's a type that's sort of endured. It's intended to be a multifamily that sits comfortably within a kind of village context. It presents itself to the street as a single family, but in fact contains a series of townhouses and flats that sort of run along towards the back of the property. In this case, this type consists of two sort of mirrored two story sort of townhouse like units in the front and in the middle. And in the back, have two flats, the Ground Floor of which again, fully accessible. In this case, we're showing where a ramp might be located off the very rear, approximate to the parking. But again, it has those features, the fully accessible bathroom, bedroom, side by side laundry, and then a kind of fully accessible kitchen.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So the could you go back? Yeah. So the unit on the left on Floor 1, is that a two story unit? No.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: This this one yeah. That's a good question. This one is a is a flat.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. It's a flat. Alright.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: And so you you enter this one here. The unit above it is very similar, but it is also a flat, and you would access that through a stair that takes you directly up.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So is this So take us through the next two units or the next three. The next two, yeah.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: So these two units are they're kind of like townhouses, if you will, where you have a party wall separating the two units. This front unit is accessed directly, let's say we assume from the street. So it would sort of present itself as a single family. There's a fairly generous entry hall condition living, dining, kitchen. There is a downstairs powder room, again, sort of meeting and probably exceeding any visibility requirements. And then a stair takes you upstairs to two bedrooms and a bath. The one in the middle is quite similar. It's sort of mirrored, if you will. Again, an entry, but in this case an entry that's off the side.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Yep.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: This next one is also one that evolved from our previous work. It's inspired by a couple of structures, one that we observed in Montpelier. This is maybe a much tighter, smaller, more compact type where that consists of two one bedrooms and two studios. This is really aiming more at a kind of entry level sort of market sort of rental condition. We do on the Ground Floor have a fully accessible studio unit, which is quite sort of efficient, but you would enter maybe off of a ramp onto this porch. A very comfortable and maneuverable sort of front hall condition, even though the unit is modest, there is that nice flexible space. Again, the side by side washer dryer, the fully accessible bathroom and kitchen, and then a kind of studio living bedroom dining kind of configuration. The the other unit on the Ground Level

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Just just a second. I got a question here.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Go ahead. Are all the Ground Floor units accessible?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Yes. So that's an excellent question. This other unit is also accessible, but technically to a lower standard. You'll notice that it has a normal sized bathroom instead of the large one. I mentioned type A and type B. This more enhanced one on the left is type A. Type B really is about ensuring some of the basics about door swings, corridor widths, and that sort of thing. So this one is also accessible, but maybe more in the adaptable category. I think in this building type, there's no reason that this unit here couldn't be the same level of accessibility as the one on the left, but it comes at the cost of being a one bedroom versus a studio. So we're making sort of trade offs, if you will, in a lot of these cases about keeping the sort of unit types as diverse as we can.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Forgive me, but I have a very very basic question. That is, what does let's see. What does a what does the dotted line indicate?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Ah, that's an excellent question. It is indicating if this were built in a factory as what we call volumetric or modular construction, it's where the boxes would be sort of separated. So for instance, so you can imagine that these would be maybe a long single box, and then the two boxes would arrive and they would be sort of married along that dash blue line.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So there is there I was thinking about a bit sort of a deeper dive over the weekend into adaptability

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Yeah.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Including, you know, not having hallways and also having low bearing walls in different places than one might otherwise consider. And so I was thinking that the the dotted line would seem to indicate that that could be a wall that could be taken out, but it is

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: the opposite of that. I

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: think it would be the opposite.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yes. When because I looked at some of the universal design, you know, really dense and complicated and long documents that are out there or catalogs that are out there, Some of them say, you you could tilt a bedroom this way and have it open out into the living room so that it's even more kind of adaptable if you wanna just knock down the wall between the bedroom and living room to make it easier for somebody.

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: Yeah. Do

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: do you have any any, like, designs that are like that?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: I have one a little bit further down where there is a space that is not a bedroom, but it could be. We're trying to design these to be as adaptable as possible without having to adapt. In other words, adaptation for us is okay, maybe the kitchen cabinets might need to be lowered at some point, right? Or you put in handrails in the bathroom to blocking that's already been provided there, right?

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: Yeah. But

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: we're not anticipating the need or relying on the need to break down any structural walls or anything of that nature. Most of our plans are actually fairly open.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: That's exactly what I was wondering. Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Yeah. But I point out we have one example of adaptability I'll get to. And then this is a type that was proof of concept, something we became familiar with in Hartford. It's a fairly efficient and sort of large type. We call it the stackable because it's essentially consists of two units that are sort of mirrored, and they could be stacked either two stories or even three stories up to six units. As a four unit, they come sort of automatically with the technically required ground floor accessible units. Again, we're sort of already exceeding that in terms of whether it's type A or type B. And this, like one of our other units, is a fairly generous accessible unit where not one, but two full bedrooms are accessible, a full and very comfortable bathroom. And again, to this point of openness, fairly open living, dining, kitchen area that is quite sort of ample. Okay, so those are the types that officially have a sort of fully accessible Ground Floor unit in them. I want to go through some of the other ones that are kind of have units that are either more adaptable or just explain a little bit about what our approach is to this, let's call it this other standard of visitability. So, visitability is sort of vaguely defined. It covers things like the size of the entry doors, the size of ground floor interior doors, hallway widths, in wall blocking for future grab bar installation, and the control, access to thermostats and fuse panels and things like that. I'd say in all case, the entry doors we're meeting is 36 inches And pretty much all these other kind of categories, which are really not very stringent, to be honest, we are comfortably exceeding them. I'll note that hallway width requirements are 36 inches. We just think that's not really livable for anyone, even someone without any disabilities. This one we call the back to back duplex. We've seen a lot of nice models for this, And it consists of a larger unit upfront and a kind of second unit. In the back, this one we consider to be adaptable. I didn't sort of highlight it as an agent place unit back here, but it could be. So this Ground Floor area of this two story unit back here could be an accessible sort of studio like space for someone to live, again, leaving that sort of upstairs area for storage or grandkids or caregivers. This probably already needs the type B accessibility. Again, if we were to sort of refine this to show a kind of example where a bedroom would fit in. This was one you asked about adaptability. And again, we are trying to design these so that as little future adaptability is required as possible. But here's an instance where if we redirected the entry through the living, dining room and redirected the entry to the basement, this dining room could become a Ground Floor bedroom. This one already has three upstairs bedrooms, but this is a kind of example of where you might do that. I'll confess we have not sort of optimized this unit for that, but based on your question, it's exactly the kind of thing we're doing now as we are refining these designs and understanding a little bit more detail about how the structure works. Okay, you asked about the single family. This is our second sort of pure single family type. The single families, I will admit, were not a huge emphasis in the homes for all phase of this project. It was really focused on what we call missing middle two to four units. What we have heard through our engagement is this focus on affordability and particularly in what we call the starter home category. So based on again some very inspiring precedents, This is very compact, efficient four bedroom unit, or is it it's three, I think. Very efficient on its foundations, very efficient in its framing, very expandable. One can imagine adding an addition later off of any portion of this to add maybe a downstairs bedroom or a den or something of that nature. This one, again, you would need to have a ramp or rather sort of make sure that your front door is accessible. But again, quite visible, if you will, fairly open plan corridor spaces that are well wider than 36 inches and 36 inches doors everywhere. So again, exceeding all those sort of visitability standards. And then I think maybe this is

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Going back, Matthew, is the starter home are the bathrooms either accessible or adaptable?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: This is, not sort of what you call a fully accessible half bath. It's adaptable insofar as, we will have blocking for grab bars and that sort of thing. On the 2nd Floor of a single family, you wouldn't have an accessible bathroom. Sorry, I'm just moving the window out of the way so I can see something here. I will say that this bathroom, so again, won't see that turning radius in here, but it is a fairly ample bathroom. Should someone who lives upstairs with a disability need a bathroom with some room to maneuver that they could. You'll see it's almost the size of one of these sort of smaller bedrooms.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Can I ask a quick question? Yes.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah. Hi. So is the design the 1st Floor of the starter home is visible but not adaptable? Or is that bathroom adaptable because you could throw a tub in the closet?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: It's just dimensionally not designed to be to reach that sort of type a accessibility standard, which

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: would

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: require a, like, full five foot turning radius for a a wheelchair.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: So there's no way like, the even breaking like, if you were the walls don't come down or you it's not designed to reconfigure into a five foot radius?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: No. And to be honest, I just think that this this type is really compact. I don't think there's room in it. I think this brings up a broader, very important point, which is across all the types that we have, we are trying to balance A, sort of maximizing opportunities for really good, robust, accessible, agent place type units, but also balancing those against one of our other key criterion, is affordability. And part of affordability is being compact where we can. And so is this particular single family sort of optimized for future heavy duty accessibility? Honestly, probably not. Again, it's completely visitable. It meets all, it exceeds all standards of visitability, but if not, for instance, the provision of a fully accessible bathroom on the Ground Floor would bump the whole footprint of the building out.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Go ahead, you've got Gayle and

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: then Elizabeth. So on the 1st Floor, did you say that the bathroom has 36 inch doorway?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Yes.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Okay. So that's what makes it visible. Yeah.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: In fact think And worth it. Yeah. Exactly. And then again, the the walls would have blocking. You could put grab bars and all those

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: And my other question is, is there a significant cost difference between building that let's not necessarily this particular floor plan, but any of the others that you showed us. Is there a big difference between making it accessible and it just being standard?

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: I think the cost is not so much in like the equipment. It's really kind of opportunity cost of where you're allocating space. Right? So for instance, this unit has a stacked washer and dryer, which is saving a certain amount of floor space, right? A fully accessible bathroom, it just has a bigger footprint. And so it's not that the fixtures are incredibly more expensive or something like that. It's really about where do we get our bang for the buck overall in terms of how we're using a limited amount of resources to build, you know, a limited amount of square footage.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So in this case, you're saying, yeah, you could make this accessible, but you'd have to bump the whole house out a couple of feet in order to make the bathroom big enough, and then you're adding square footage with so you went for optimizing price here.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: On this particular one, this is the full end. This is the, you know, again, the only other single family. The other one is is a fully accessible one.

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

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: This is the one where we really just cranked it down and the sort of the emphasis on this really was the the affordable starter home.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: By the way, guys, go ahead. But just just pop in. We have to we have fifteen more minutes.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Okay.

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: I think Jason Webster mentioned this as well, there's this constant trade off between, oh, there's two feet here, where am I, what's gonna be enough? So, yeah, this is maximized, like, smaller it is, the more affordable it is, and that's really the point we're trying to make these buildings affordable by design, so they don't need.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: I can quickly go through the rest. This is a more traditional side by side duplex we call the paired starter. Again, this is fully visitable, but again, it's a two story unit, so it doesn't have sort of accommodations for full accessibility, but the circulation is sort of more than ample to allow somebody to come through. Again, they would need a ramp to get up to that porch. And this is a fairly compact side by side. Again, very similar. We're meeting, exceeding all these standards. There's a very open floor plan here, 36 inches doors, all the same kinds of features that we showed in some of the other units. And then finally the townhouse. This is the most kind of in progress of all that we've shown you. So in full disclosure, I'm showing you a sort of first iteration. But like the other two story unit types, we have a kind of visitable Ground Floor layout, but again, the bedrooms and the main bath are upstairs. Just want to quickly, just so we have time for more questions if we need to, what's going on. We are continuing to develop these designs in more details and refining them, particularly refining some of them with respect to how the accessibility aspects overlap with structural detailing and other kinds of efficiencies. I'll also mention that AARP has put in a grant for us to do additional engagement with older Vermonters, veterans, individuals with mobility challenges. That would be a kind of second layer of engagement to go even maybe a little bit more deep into some of the sort of details that people actually care about over and above and beyond, obviously, the checklist that comes with certain sort of universal design standards. So I think if that were to come to pass, that would be this summer, and we would be incorporating that finer grain level of feedback into the ongoing design development.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: When do you find out, Saud?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Midway. Midway.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Oh, yeah. Right.

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: We we talked with we've worked closely with AARP, they've been working projects together with them for the past fifteen years. And we did check-in with Kelly this morning just to get up to speed on this conversation and where we were, and she couldn't tell us anything about the grant but said we scored very well.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: And Oh

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: if we get the grant, what's going to be is focus groups. Focus groups in a couple of different markets in the state, we're looking to detailed feedback on the financing. Deborah, thanks.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I just had a question on like the Foursquare, that one

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: has basement. I mean, are putting, know, doing a foundation of that compared to a pad, I mean what's the cost difference between them?

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: They all can be built on a slab or a basement.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: But it has some mechanical. So for

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: the modular construction, learned that they really need a full foundation. You can probably do it with all space, but they make all of their connections once the boxes are dropped And and made in the then the other thing we heard in the feedback from the community is it's like, these are great, these are superficial, where's my stuff gonna go? And so we really wanted to make sure that people, when they saw these plans, there's a place to put your stuff, really, it's gonna be okay. This

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: unit also has room for an attic.

[Jeff Duby (Community Planner and Project Manager, VT DHCD)]: Just to jump back to Chris's point, clearly we've put a lot of thought into accessibility and universal design plans, but it's really a partnership that's been working for decades with folks on AARP, the Department of Disability, Aging, and Independent Living, and Astron Vermont. I currently sit on the housing subcommittee and present them with regular updates to the eight zero two Homes program and how it meets older Vermonters' needs. So it's been a long conversation and we're excited to be here at this point.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I was just going to ask about

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: going all your questions.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Know. Agent Place is part of

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: it too, but the chair seems to injure his arm. You really appreciate accessible options when you are injured, and they just make it more livable for everybody. And to me, putting aside our work with AARP and AHS on this, it's based on the designs, but we want them to be marketable for monitors when we have a big aging population. And I think Matthew kind of mentioned this, one of my goals here, or one of our goals here is a lot of older people live in houses that are too big for their needs, like me. My wife and I live in a 3,000 square foot house and we don't need that space, but really there's no place for us to move and open up that house. So we wanted to make sure then for people my age or older, that we were designed even so we're attracted to them. There's needs because if somebody like me can move out of my house, another family can move into that house and use that space probably

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: better

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: than

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: we are right now. But

[Jeff Duby (Community Planner and Project Manager, VT DHCD)]: I think the counter to that is we need to make sure that the houses are affordable. So we can design a very good, accessible unit and structure. But if we're required to do it for all of them, it starts to tip requirements and to cost and complexity to build a safe starter home to a point where that project might just not happen. So we want to make sure that we're accommodating a wide variety of needs, whether it be age in place for older Vermonters or the younger families looking to start out with a starter home or smaller multifamily structures that could have both accessible and less accessible units within them.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I would also argue that accessibility or adaptability widens the market for a house. It makes it possible for anybody to buy it versus just able-bodied people. And secondly, I've also noticed or read several articles about how the housing market is changing, particularly in states like ours where a first time home actually, families that are looking to actually put money down on a home are looking to be able to stay in forever. So it's not just about providing for each age so that people can move from home to home as they age, but also providing homes where your family both expands and thrives. You totally agree.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That was one

[Jeff Duby (Community Planner and Project Manager, VT DHCD)]: of the things we heard from some of the design workshops, particularly around the start families. Concern about upfront affordability, but also how the structure can adapt over time, say, adding that ground level bedroom or expanding the bathroom to make sure it can be accessible at any exchange over time.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: One of the things that I have asked our committee is that we consider, if we are going to consider investing in manufactured housing or modular housing, that we explore weather, including adaptability and visitability, is affordable if you're looking at bulk purchase or mass production.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Go ahead. So, the alternative to the Foursquare that is currently not adaptable but is visitable What would be the next step up? In other words, do you have a general cost differential that if somebody was considering building it that they'd say, oh, I would, like in the menu of

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: Stay tuned. We're still in preliminary prototyping of designs. Again, the goal is to make these as affordable as possible and juggle all these things that are intentioned to be the widest array of products we can get out of these 10 designs. Something that Nancy didn't mention is within our 10 designs, there's going to be an ability to mix and match. And these are all going to be driven by site constraints. What what lot showing the requirements are the communities gonna happen? What can you predict on that piece of that? So I think given the overall budget, we're being very creative and trying to be as flexible as possible so we can get as many iterations as we possibly can. So

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you. Curious. I

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: mean, is there a next 10 designs or next five designs or are you just gonna stay with these for now and test them out?

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: There was a proposal in the senate that supports some additional funding for additional designs that are tracking the budget. So I think it is needed. I think 10 designs, even in different iterations, is probably not going meet the needs of everybody. So I

[Jeff Duby (Community Planner and Project Manager, VT DHCD)]: think there is some additional work needed there. And to Chris's point, sorry to interrupt, he mentioned the ability to swap units. So that's really in, say, the Village four, if the site is dictating a narrower or, sorry, a shallower structure, we could essentially make maybe the two stacked flats in one of the townhomes rather than doing the full four. So that's really the customization that we're thinking of. But also other variations like the side by side duplex. At one point in time, that had a backpack, as we were referring to it. It was an accessible ADU up the back of the structure that could be added on to the structure if a developer wanted to go that route or not. So we think there's a couple of low hanging fruit that could be beneficial with additional funding, not necessarily full scale new designs, but flexibility that could be helpful for developers to meet this challenging site.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I can't help thinking that this is probably something that could be really attractive beyond our own borders, and that having a much bigger demand pool than just Vermont would make it so much easier to actually develop the bulk building, construction of this. And it feels almost like the 1920s often right now. So it just seems like a great time to bring back the Sears catalog home. Like the philosophy of this is just so similar, know, it's such God, even the designs are reminiscent, you know, minus the flourishes that, you know, you could add on or whatever, but so it just it just feels like it would be a great opportunity. So, yeah, that's exciting that In you're excited about

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: some, what I'm hearing is all at the moment, all 10 of these units are visible, and many of them are accessible. And many of them some of them could be made accessible without by combination permutation. But, actually, of the 10, only one is sort of a a starter single family house. And that one, at the moment, is visitable. And in fact, I suspect, just from listening to you guys, that if you were assigned the job of saying make us one start at home that's accessible, you wouldn't do it by taking that fork, that one and pushing the wall out, you might do a different design. Ahead. What's your hand up there? Since,

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: in practicality, when you live on a 2nd Floor and you have someone that can be beyond commentate that.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Why wouldn't you want

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: to just have the basics, like the doorframe, so that maybe it wouldn't qualify as being called visible, but why not just do the doorframe so that

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I think you saw all the door frames. It's visible,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: not adaptable. Door frames are they're all visible.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Even on the 2nd Floor, all all of them.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: What do you mean the 2nd Floor?

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: So Well, some of them have a 2nd Floor.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: They're not. But the Main Floor is always visible at least.

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: But somebody, you're not always living on a Main Floor when you have visitors. You could be living on a 2nd Floor and somebody's gonna bring your wheelchair up to you, but you can't go into the bathroom. So because they had said there's no cost, why wouldn't you just wanna have at least the door frames?

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: I believe they are all. 36? Yeah, think so Matthew.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: They are. At

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: least 34,

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: yep.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So all they're all.

[Jeff Duby (Community Planner and Project Manager, VT DHCD)]: And again, it's part of just livability of these things for everybody, right? Right. Moving furniture in and out, guests that are coming. So we're trying to do the

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: right thing. There's two questions on the floor that I wanted to answer before you guys disappear. As far as our next steps, we've been doing a lot of engagement around this with communities. We're actively talking to develop this to take a demonstration. So hopefully we'll have some good news to share. We have a meeting in Manchester Monday with a group of us from PLCT, the treasurer's office, DHCD and the Vermont Community Foundation are going down to look at a large 10 acre site with potential to build effectively a home in the neighborhood mixing and matching these designs. We're very excited about that. And what's cool about it is we want to match eight zero two Home Designs with Chip. So by combining those two programs, hope to drive down the cost without the there is a sub scheme there, but it's for the infrastructure. As to your point of like, do we do this regionally? It's something that I've been worrying about for a long, long time. I mean, we're building a New England coalition of states plus New York, because they've got scale and volume that we don't, to start the conversation about aligning our codes and standards so they're the same. So Vermont, by itself, innovative, we're nimble, we can get things done, but we don't have the scale really needed to drive down the cost. So we are working on that. We're pleased. I think you've heard from Jeffrey Bell as a witness. He works for the Urban Land Institute. He discussed some news about a month ago, think about a generous donor who wants to support building this network of New England states plus New York. We've already had great conversations with our counterparts in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. In a couple of weeks from now, we're going have a conversation with Maine and New Hampshire about, we all have these outside manufacturing facilities, but our standards are now aligned so we can human and function. It's a big market. Yes. I was just going

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: to say thank you. Well, couple of things. So I just want say thank you, one. And two, I feel like you all have taken into consideration

[Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: all of

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: the things that have been primarily some of my concerns around moving forward with addressing accessibility. My question is more of, they may be more for my understanding of the bill, because you all have gone above and beyond, and I don't know how much of the pilot is contingent on explicitly your program or other avenues. And so for me, it's less of mandating that every unit be adaptable or accessible, as more of it is to ensure that any project takes into consideration the level that you all have in incorporating these measures. And so I think that is where it stands for me. It's not because you all have gone above and beyond and you've demonstrated that. But I think going forward, if there were going to be alternatives, developers or programs coming from the pilot, how do you ensure that other programs factor in similar considerations?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think this is, we have scheduled committee time for discussion, and I think that it's exactly the same thing. Because I think what we're going to be doing is looking at ways of changing the wording to address so that there's flexibility, but yeah. We do have tests, a whole bunch of people coming in allegedly of two, I was hoping to give people a little break.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah, I just have a very quick question that I want to pose and then just let you get back to us. It's just if you had to put a price on what did it cost to do the work that you have done? And what would that AARP grant further enable you to do? But how much of a lift was it without a legislative obligation to do it necessarily, you went ahead and did it. I just, I think it would be important to hear like what was, you know, from being wonderful, thoughtful people,

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: you know, kind of like talented

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: and outstanding people

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: who can sing and

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: know, Tony award winning, know, kind of what drove you to think in those terms and what it actually cost to put your thoughts where your drawing hand is?

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: I have give you a price tag on what the contract was. I can answer that, but I think it's important to put it in context. This has been a long game conversation for us. We've been working at creating the lots that you can actually build on for about ten years. It started with a project called Zoning for Great Neighborhoods that we partnered with AARP Vermont, the realtor's association, the HDB to like, hey, we've come some things with our regulations that make it really hard to build the homes that everybody loves. Can't build them anymore because the zoning is hard. And every year we've done a policy change, major or minor, take us a step in that direction to get to the point now where we have buildable lots in areas with sewer and water, in the villages and our downtowns, that you actually can draw some basins like that. It's been an incremental long game that we played. This contract for these 10 designs was a $500,000 contract. The additional supplemental grant that we requested from is a $15,000 enhancement, again, just to do those focus groups. So we've got fully refined plans. Does this work for you? Does this meet your needs? We want to hear back from people who, from their lived experience. Yeah, I love this plan. This is going to work for me. And this is what we did in our communities. We're about to launch soon, we'll share it with you, a statewide visual preference survey to basically asking, we're working in our three pilot communities. We want to socialize this more broadly across the state. The questions were asking us, will this home fit in your neighborhood? Yes. What would you do if this home was built next to you? Do you like this home if it was built next to you? What was

[Jeff Duby (Community Planner and Project Manager, VT DHCD)]: that from the question? Would you live here?

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Would you live here? Yeah.

[Chris Godfrey (Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, VT DHCD)]: So, and again, this is a very different place where we were even ten years ago, where everybody's like, Fine, if you need to build houses, I just never want to see that. And we're facing worse in communities like we understand we need houses, but we understand these are the right places to develop. We need more people in our communities, for schools, for our tax base, for everything. It's just a very different place. And it's because we made these small Incremental.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah. So maybe now we can Thank

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: you so much. Much appreciated. Really. And, Matthew, thank you for your time.

[Matthew Littell (Principal, Utile)]: Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Members of the committee, we have five witnesses waiting to come in. Do we do we do it without a break, or do we take it and do a break afterwards?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I take it a break.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. Will. Would you please have it in here by