Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think welcome, everybody. Today is, in case you're wondering, Wednesday, May. And this, in case you're wondering, is the House Committee on General and House. And what we have been doing for the last day is looking at housing data, what's happening on the ground and housing targets, particularly trying to understand what went into the housing targets, how are they formulated, how are they working and how are communities responding to them, particularly given that very often the targets, which are admittedly aspirational in some respect, are not what they're seeing on the ground right now. So, we have a number of witnesses, one of them is Catherine Demetriuk, who's Executive Director of the Northwest Regional Planning Commission. Catherine, want to introduce, I think, have you been here in person? I have. Once. Yeah, I'm just used to seeing you on. Okay, take Thank it

[Catherine Demetriuk]: you very much for having me. I planning today to talk about the Northwest Region and our regional plan and how we incorporated the housing targets into the regional plan and what that means for communities and what happens next. Perfect. So first, a little context about the region. Franklin and Grand Isle Counties were immediately adjacent to Chittenden County. So oftentimes for data purposes like housing, we get lumped in with Chittenden County. If you look at fair market rents from HUD or other data like that, median income, all of the affordable housing data that's used by HUD and our state affordable housing agencies, our data is lumped in with Chittenden County. So it kind of skews our numbers a little bit when you look at affordable housing data. So I just wanted to point out a couple of things about our region that we've got about over 57,000 people that live in the two counties. We have anywhere between 7,009 people a day that commute from the region into Chittenden County or even Central Vermont for employment. Our wages tend to be lower than Vermont as a whole. So Franklin County is just below the state median wage, and Grand Isle County is significantly below. We are a region that actually has been experiencing housing growth. So the chart on the right of the screen does show housing growth in our region. We have had housing growth, but you can see it's really concentrated, as you might expect, on the interstate corridor communities. St. Albans Town, Fairfax has been a high growth area due to its proximity to Essex and it's east to get to the rest of Chittenden County. Swanton, Georgia also are on the interstate corridor. We have 23 municipalities in our region, ranging from 400 people in Isle Of LaMont up to 8,000 in St. Albans Town and City Each. So the regional plan encompasses a lot of areas. It encompasses the economics of the region, the social structure of the region, the physical region, including transportation, natural resources, disaster resilience, and infrastructure, water and sewer infrastructure, which is key to this conversation. And all together, it really creates a picture of how our communities can work together to create vibrant communities and vibrant region moving forward. We do an eight year plan. So we just adopted our plan, the board adopted it in March, and it's now before the Land Use Review Board. If it's approved, it will be the first plan approved under the new framework. As part of our update to our regional plan, we did do considerable collaboration with select boards and planning commissions in addition to the general public. In our region alone, we attended over 60 planning commission and select board meetings to talk about not just the future land use maps, but the housing targets. And what's been interesting is all of the regions across the state are moving at different speeds. So you may have a select board, say, in CALIS, who's heard nothing about housing targets yet, even though all the communities in Northwest Region had already heard about them just because of the timing at which their regions were moving forward on their regional plans. So we did present the housing targets as part of this conversation to planning commissions and select boards. And I would say it was met with a mix of reactions, some shock, some fear, some laughter. And you

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: said that you presented the housing targets. Were the targets you presented already disaggregated by town? Already disaggregated by town. So you who who did that disaggregation?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I'm gonna tell

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: you about how we did

[Catherine Demetriuk]: that just a minute. Yeah.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't wanna interrupt

[Catherine Demetriuk]: your No. That's alright. It's a great question, and I will talk I'll I'll show you the I'll lift the curtain and show you how we did the work in just a minute. But we did talk about this with our communities and we really talked about it as this is a planning tool. This is something to think about when you think about if Vermont's housing market were to be fixed, what would be your share? And not that you were going get out the hammers as the slug board and planning commission and build the houses, but what are the things you can control that you can create to make your community welcome for housing? So housing targets. I think you heard from Deputy Commissioner yesterday about the background of the housing targets and how they were developed at the statewide and regional level with BHFA and DHCD and that whole process. So I won't go into it. But in general, what we show you here is all of the targets by region and for the 2025 to 2030 and the 2050 targets, there's both a low and an upper number. So the low number is basically to meet the unmet need that exists. And the upper number is if we were to have a vibrant housing market where new people could move here and find an available place to live, where children could stop living with their parents, where there was more choice for people, and it could be a driver of economic opportunity. That's the upper end. So all the regions were then required to take these regional numbers and disaggregate them. So take them and divide them out into their towns. All regions took a slightly different but generally similar approach. I'm going to explain our approach, and that's shown here. So the statute requires us to plan for growth areas. So in our future land use maps, we have the centers and we have the planned growth areas around them and the village areas around them. We have to plan those so that a substantial majority of the housing targets can fit there. So that is the foundation that we are starting with. So to accommodate that and how we disaggregate it, we said, okay, 60% of our regional housing targets are going to be built in those communities that have centers and planned growth areas and have water and sewer infrastructure to accommodate high density growth. And then the other 40% of the targets would be spread in the rural areas of those communities and in the rest of our rural communities. So, that's how we approach taking the targets. For the 20 And the planned growth areas,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: were those created bottom up?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: They were created bottom up, statute down, integrated altogether into the research.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But I mean, a community, you couldn't have a planned growth area in a community if they never wanted it. Absolutely. So it's communities that want growth. Or they say, if we're gonna have it, here's where we wanna have it.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yeah, and in fact, you can't even have a planned growth area unless you have a municipal plan. And so regional planning commissions would use those municipal plans as a starting point for drawing these growth areas. Like here's a municipal plan, shows where we want growth. So we use that as a starting point. So yes. Just to put out there, there's also situations where towns want a planned growth area in October, no, about regional bank locations. There were instances like that in our region too, where we had requests from communities to make those areas larger, but because of the language in the statute, we weren't able to fully accommodate the request. I think, at least in our region and many that I'm aware of, the regional planning commissions tried to accommodate those to the extent we could within the language and the law.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So, was that in 01/1981?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: That was in 01/1981. I think S-three 25 includes some language which will help give us more flexibility there.

[Doug (Committee Member)]: So, part one, two.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, is this, so, did that happen much?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: In our region, would say, let's see, there's one, two, three. There were three communities where they requested the areas to be a little bit larger, and we were able to accommodate most of it, but not all of it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You think under $3.25, you could accommodate more?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I think under three twenty five we could have accommodated a little bit more of that, yes. And is there a process whereby that could happen in the future? Yes, because three twenty five includes an easier amendment process for regional plans, where we have one public hearing, we can send it to the Land Use Review Board. So yes, if that passes, there'll be a very simple amendment process.

[Unknown Committee Member (Northeast Kingdom)]: I just have these thoughts that I can't get out of my head. When you have a target at 2050 I mean, at the end of the baby boomers, they'll be 85 in 2045. So, I mean, lot of housing will be coming available. That's one thing that just goes to my head. And the other thing is the ability to build. I mean, in our area, Northeast Kingdom, it's basically the nonprofit, like rural ledge. It's the only one that can afford because they can you know, they have unlimited funds, so to speak, but they're the only ones that can afford to follow the lead laws, the building codes. Mean, I'm trying to explain to even people that are doing renovations in their house, you can't do that. You have to follow lead safe practices, which means you have to have a firm and the whole shebang. I mean, you can do it, you can create that for yourself, but those are just the thoughts that go on in my head that it's almost like we prevent building, make it not affordable, but then we want it to happen, so we have to depend on our nonprofits to do it. So those are the thoughts that go in my head.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: And I don't I don't know

[Unknown Committee Member (Northeast Kingdom)]: where they fit in.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I definitely, and I think you're gonna hear from my economist later in your morning, but there are so many pieces of what goes into the cost of housing that are beyond the control of Vermont that I think we should do everything we can within our control and those areas that we can make a difference. And whether it's working on water and wastewater rules and providing flexibility there, or whether it's looking at Act two fifty, which has happened or is happening, I don't think the things that are within our control, we should be doing everything we can. Because we can't control cost of labor,

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: we can't control cost of materials, so yeah. We can control our blood loss.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: That's beyond my area of expertise.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So, 60% went to planned growth areas.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Okay. And then the rest of the 40% was divided based on the community's proportionate share of housing units now. Based on what? Their proportional share of the housing units that currently exist. So if you're in the town of Sheldon and you currently have 8% of the region's housing units, then 8% of the target went to your community. So that was for 2050. For 2030, because it's so close, we did some fine tuning adjustments to account for the current growth rates, just because things aren't going to completely turn around between now and 2030 in terms of communities' growth rates.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So we

[Catherine Demetriuk]: did some fine tuning adjustments. But the 2050 is really based on the idea that 60% will go in these planned growth areas that have the infrastructure to hopefully help the cost be a little bit less, and also the remainder goes into the rest of the municipalities. Do most of the planned growth areas have infrastructure? All of them. All of the planned growth areas have infrastructure. The other land use category village areas can have either infrastructure or soils that are suitable for

[Doug (Committee Member)]: So, did you factor in employment opportunities in the towns, even if you have a municipality with water and sewer and it's a planned growth area, but everyone in that community travels for work? Did you take that into account?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: We did not take that into account because when we talked about that, we assumed that the general commuting patterns that exist now would continue. So if you already have enough demand for that percentage of housing needs to be in that community, as the whole region's population grows, your population will grow a bit too. So we just assume the same commuting patterns would continue. Okay.

[Doug (Committee Member)]: I was just thinking just of from a aging population, there's a lot of community centers with people that don't have to travel and people that that's the only option if they do have to work.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yeah. And really So

[Doug (Committee Member)]: the numbers can fluctuate and skew towards people that live there and don't have to travel because they're retired Mhmm. Than the people that do have to travel. And now we're trying to jack up a whole bunch of people that now need to travel.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yep. I do understand that we have Because of the way our reach, the geography of our region, the majority of the communities that are planned for growth are on the interstate corridor where the commuting already exists and where there is a transit opportunity to commute into Chittenden County. So there's only two communities that are farther out that have the infrastructure for the water and sewer for the high density growth. Those have their own employment centers within the communities. So maybe we're a little bit lucky in terms of the geography of our region in particular. I can't say if other regions took that into account, because each region fine tuned this analysis based on the conditions in their region. Like if you have a particular employment driver, like a ski area, I'm sure there were some adjustments. One other sorry. Last thing last just a comment would be and this is for your area in our area. I

[Doug (Committee Member)]: have heard stories that our our job opportunity and growth centers were factored into the fact that everyone works in New Hampshire. So we use New Hampshire's Mhmm. Employment and job opportunities as that were. We'll build somewhat close so they can drive to

[Unknown Committee Member]: New Hampshire to work, which is

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: troublesome. Elizabeth? Thank you, Marc. Did you take into account anything about public opinion and also both perceived and real possibility for school consolidation under Act 73?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: We did not seek into account potential school consolidation. That was a question we were asked about, and it just seemed so unknown that it was hard to understand how to take that into account. Because you can argue on the one hand that Vermont communities without their own school could be less attractive for people to want to move to. On the other hand, we have fewer and fewer households with children. So how much does that matter? And so there's a lot of just unknowns. And when you're talking about the scale at which we're doing this analysis, you could factor in lots of things that might adjust the numbers by a percent or two, one way or the other. But when you're talking about 70 units over twenty years, that level of fine tuning seems to not scale well with the amount of housing units we're talking about, if that makes sense.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yeah, thanks.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I do have a question. What do you do with a town, how do I describe this, let's say a town, I guess I'm asking about this for both planned growth areas and the other areas, but I can see it more in the other areas, I don't know. So, you have a town which has had a rather large percentage of total growth, But, that was before everybody understood, or before climate change, and everybody understood that flooding means that you can't build where we did, and in fact, are trying to even think about relocating like playing field, so that the land that's available isn't available because it's in a flood zone. Is there any way to take you could take that into account?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yes. Absolutely. And I think that is where the mapping of the future land use areas feeds into the housing target. So mapping of the future land use areas does allow for drawing new areas for growth that are away from flood zones. So for example, with Plainfield, or with Johnson, or with Brookfield, those communities that are actively planning to either partially or entirely relocate portions of their village, that future land use mapping does allow for us to map those areas as growth areas where they plan to relocate the villages or their downtowns. And so because of that, we are able to take that into account. And certainly, a region would not want to have a really high housing target for a community that really doesn't have a place to grow because of flooding concerns.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is that a process? I guess what I'm asking is, is this a dynamic process? Are the numbers that are the targets for a town going to evolve as the town decides what growth areas there are, makes adjustments, etcetera? Is that through an amendment, how would that happen?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: That would happen through a regional plan amendment in terms of what's shown in the regional plan, at least for our region, because housing is dynamic. Every year there are new housing units built. We can see how we're doing against the targets. We plan on doing an annual indicator report that does include showing how we're doing both as a region and within our communities to meet these housing targets. And so this is what's included in our regional plan, is the result of that analysis. And that will stay the same unless or until we amend the regional plan, that's what will be in there. But that doesn't mean we can't talk about the shifts and targets and the shifts and where housing is happening. So I wanted to show the results of the disaggregation that we did. There's a lot of numbers here. But what I really wanted to highlight is overall, if you look at 2030, pretty much every community in the region would be looking at doubling their growth rate from 2000 to 2020, they look at almost a doubling of that growth rate. But for 2030, for most communities, it's the same or lower. For 2050, it's the same or lower than the historic growth rate. So I've just highlighted the communities. The communities in Yellow, Petersburg, Alamont, North Harrow, Richford, South Harrow, St. Albans, Citytown, and Swanton. Those are the communities that would see for 2050 a real increase in their historic growth rates in order to meet the housing targets. Except for Isle Of LaMont and North Hero, all of those communities have water and sewer, have employment centers. They're located on the interstate corridor. So those are really our communities that are primed for growth anyway. And I would say that with the changes to F-two 50 jurisdiction in these growth areas, as well as the new CHIP program, I have been hearing about multiple large housing projects that are in the conversation and the getting ready to go phase that will be eventually built, especially in the communities of St. Albans City, Town, Swanton. And so I really think that we are starting to see momentum toward new housing growth, especially in those communities that do have infrastructure. The community of Fairfax, which has been our other high growth community in the region, we do anticipate that that growth will continue and that will help meet the housing targets, but they're not expected to have an increase in the housing growth rate because they already grew at such a high rate. So,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: why? So why, not Fairfax, why your major point here is, while 2030, which is like now, requires much more growth to get there than we've had, 2050 doesn't, why?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I think because it does require additional growth in the communities that I've highlighted. And if you leave out North Hero and Isle Of LaMont, because they're just anomalies because they're small island towns and one project can change the whole trajectory of the percentages. If you leave those out, the communities that are left are the communities that I talked about earlier. Those are planned growth areas with infrastructure where 60% of the housing targets are landing. So overall, what we're saying is this: housing growth in rural areas, if it continues at the same pace that's happened, and even with a slight increase, that's great. That's going to help meet the targets. That additional housing that we need, those additional housing units, we have allocated to these communities that have the planned growth areas that have the infrastructure. So we expect those communities to not only grow at the rate they have been growing, but at a slightly higher rate in order to help meet the targets. So it's not no growth in the rural areas. It's please keep growing in the rural areas, keep growing at the way you've been doing it. And we need additional housing growth, we want to target it in these communities that have the infrastructure, that have the capacity to do that high density growth that hopefully results in lower commuting times and commuting distances and are closer to employment centers. So that's why. Does that help?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think so. Okay. Let's see, if we look at Enisberg. Yes. I'm less interested in 2030 than 2050, just because 2030 is now. Okay, April, if I see it right, can you make it a little bigger or not? Maybe not.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Can, but then Good. Can't Okay,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: so that, now you moved it off the chart, can you slide it over? Yeah. Okay. So it's $4.00 9 to $7.67. Yeah. It's got 1,200 and some units already. That's a hell of a lot of units. It is a heck of

[Catherine Demetriuk]: a lot of units, yep.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Are you saying, so what are we, so is Ennisburg got any growth areas, or is that the 40%?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: They do, yeah, Ennisburg, Village, and Midtown have growth areas. They have a downtown as well as areas outside of the downtown that are available for growth. They have water and sewer, they actually have an electric company as well. So they have industrial. They do have some job centers. So, yeah, they

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So the percentage per year necessary to get there in Ennisburg Falls is actually a lot more than it has grown.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yes, it's tripling of their growth rate.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is this, if I went down the whole list, would I find this to be the case, or if I just picked the worst case here?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I think you've picked among the worst cases in terms of the tripling, But also, if you look, it's a tripling of the growth rate, but the numbers we're talking about are not huge. If you think about 400 new units between now and 2050, that's not a huge number. And one or two large developments could set the growth rate on a different trajectory. Ennisburg, in the same time period, had a downtown fire that destroyed a part of the downtown and had to get rebuilt. Because the numbers that we're dealing with are so small and we disaggregate, there's a lot of factors that can impact growth rates one way or the other.

[Unknown Committee Member (Northeast Kingdom)]: Is that the town that they have low electric rates? They get it from Canada, I think?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: They have their own. Plan, they get it from places, yeah.

[Unknown Committee Member (Northeast Kingdom)]: Yeah, so that makes it attractive.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: It does make it attractive. Yeah, we did have a large employer that announced closure in Enosburg, but we think that's going to be picked up and keeping going under a different bandage.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Why don't we go a little deeper into the table, pick another town. Okay. And this time you pick it instead of me. And pick one that you think is a little more typical that illustrates your point.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Okay. I'm going to pick St. Albans City and St. Albans Town, and we're going to take them together at the bottom, because this is our largest. When you put them together, this is by far. We're putting them together only for these purposes. I am not advocating merger on the city and town. The city and town very much function as one economic engine. And when we did our land use mapping, we have a St. Albans, Pangloaf area that encompasses the city as the center and the town surrounding it as the growth area. So the St. Albans City has water and sewer, which they make available to communities in St. Albans town and housing development in St. Albinstown. So if you look at the city, their historic growth rate February 2020 is 0.4%. We are looking at projecting 0.9 to 1.8 in order for them to meet the 50 housing target. And so that's slightly more than doubling. And we do think that's entirely possible. They've already, in some ways, begun to meet that by some of the new development that's already happening, some of the redevelopment. And so I think that that is a community worth highlighting. And then you have right below that St. Albans Town, which has a historic growth rate of 0.7%, but we're looking at almost tripling it by 2,050 with two to 4% housing growth. I also think that's possible and it's possible because the city and the town recently came to a water and sewer agreement, so the infrastructure is now available in town. The town is actively working with us and others to rezone portions of the community that used to be commercial only and make them multi use and include residential. And those are areas that are easy access to the interstate, easy access to employment. The CHIP program, I think will be well utilized in St. Albinstown. And the planned growth area that we grew that will give Act two fifty exemption for up to 50 housing units really incorporates some highly developable areas of the town. So I think the possibility of meeting that housing target in St. Albans Town is very high.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Couple of questions, big questions. One is, tell us a little bit about why, you seem to be a little bullish on Chitt. Do you wanna tell us why? I should tell you, first of all, do you have a time constraint? I don't wanna misuse Well, your it turns out that our next witness is coming tomorrow instead of today, so I just wanna let the committee know she's all ours. So, talk to us a little bit about CHIP. I mean, we're interested, obviously, because we worked on it last year. What makes you bullish about it? What evidence do you have that is anybody gonna really do anything with it?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I am bullish on it until proven otherwise, because to be a printer, you have to be an optimist. So first of all, that's just my nature. But I do think that it is something that Vermont has done to help impact the economic and the market forces around housing, which it's hard to do that as a government. And I think this is one way that Vermont has actually tried to impact the market forces. I think where it's going to be most successful are in those communities that welcome housing, obviously, because it does require the community support. And that's why I'm very bullish about it with St. Alvinstown. I've got somebody here who might want to speak to that eventually. But that's why I'm very bullish about it with St. Alvinstown, because they are welcomes housing, that's excited about new housing, and I think it's going be a strong partner for the CHIP program. I'm hearing from developers. I have got three developers who are planning to work in St. Albinstown who contact me regularly wanting to know when our regional plan will be approved so that the Act two fifty exemption will be in place and they can move forward on their projects. And I'm aware that all three of them hope to use chip. So that's why, just based on the experience and the conversations I'm hearing so far. And you do have someone in the room who's

[Corey Parent]: Corey Parent, I normally lobby for Let's Build Homes, but in this instance, I was the interim town manager for town of St. Albans over the summer and fall and still do some consulting work. I was in a meeting Monday with a 80 unit housing project that's looking to use CHIP. And then we have four other projects just in the town of St. Albans that represent about 400 homes that would like to use CHIP. That's just first blush, that's not this working out. So we're from that perspective, optimistic as the town of St. Albans there.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Elizabeth, thank you. This makes me confused about the purpose of Chitt versus the TIP, why would St. Albans use a series of CHIP programs and not?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: So the TIP that exists is in St. Albans City, in a portion of the downtown, and this conversation has been about St. Albans Town, which is outside of that, and they're not currently eligible for TIP programs. Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I guess my other question, and sort of a big one, one of the struggles that we've heard about is that it costs substantially more to build a unit than most Vermonters can afford to pay. And if that is the case, I mean, that's We've heard anecdotally stories of people in rural Vermont, where a developer has been offered free land, and yet still nothing happens because it doesn't pencil. What's happening in St. Albans and St. Albans Town that would allow this kind of development?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Well, I think in St. Albans Town, it's really the combination of three things, I would say. One is that the town is really working to make the local regulations as streamlined as possible for housing. Number two, Act two fifty changes that enable you to build 50 units without going through Act two fifty. And number three, the CHIP program, which helps to fill what would otherwise be gap in the stack of financing for our project. And I think you combine those with the availability of infrastructure that is a result of the city and town water sewer agreement, and you just have created a fantastic opportunity for housing in a place where there is high demand because it has good interstate access and because it's also job employment in St. Albans itself.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So even in St. Albans City and St. Albans Town, in 2030, we are looking at a substantial, well, I guess you're saying is, yes, we're seeing a doubling of rates, but even a tripling, but given various forces you've alluded to, you think it's quite possible that they'll be cheap?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I think it's quite possible to see in some of the communities. I'm not sure, I'm not going to predict that we're going to overall in the region meet the housing target for 2050. I think there's still many unknowns to be able to predict that far ahead. What I can say confidently and not just optimistically is I think that the trend is churning. So I think our next long term, when we look at this in a few years, I think we're going to be able to demonstrate that our housing growth rate has changed in a way that is going to help us meet these targets.

[Doug (Committee Member)]: Is your sense that CHIP is within reach of a community like

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Berkshire or

[Doug (Committee Member)]: see Sheldon, Franklin.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Not without a lot of help. And that's why we're we're trying to position our staff to be knowledgeable enough to help communities walk through it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Doug (Committee Member)]: Wilbur, is there enough technical assistance for these communities? I want you to fast track this. We're looking at exemption deadlines that are looming. Do you think they can get across the finish line?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I think so. Yeah. I

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: know

[Catherine Demetriuk]: that there's an extension. There's extensions to those deadlines that are moving their way through. And additionally, all of your regional plans are gonna be adopted by the end of calendar year, which is the permanent exemptions for those communities. So I do think that there is time. I think that it remains to be seen how accessible CHIP is going to be for the smaller communities. It would require outside technical assistance through the RPC, the RDC, or Vermont Legal Studies in towns, plus a really motivated developer that's willing to work with the town and have the patience that's needed when you work with a small volunteer government.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: One of the, we've been concerned here in the committee about small development and what we could do, and concerned, I think Tom is expressing a concern that SHIP may not be appropriate for very small developments in small towns because they'd still generate increment. Yeah, they don't. The two tools that we are aware of, one we postponed for internal reasons at the house, but we're still very interested in with the tax stabilization agreements, and the other is we have in S three twenty eight and H seven seventy five project to aggregate small units that will be off-site modular homes into larger orders that would then

[Catherine Demetriuk]: be

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: you have any thoughts about either of those? I are we are we marking up the wrong tree? Is this something that would you think would make any difference, or do you have any thoughts at all?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I do think that text stabilization simpler method than CHIP, could have some definite possibilities. I think that manufactured housing has a real future. And so anything Vermont can do to encourage that, especially if you build it into something like the eight zero two Homes Project and you really do something stream wide. I also think that VHIP has been very successful and is a tool that could always probably use more funding because it is available for the smaller units. It does address the affordability question, at least in the short, relative short term. So I do think that VHIP visit has been a successful tool that could be built upon as well. Did you testify before house environment? On which question? On anything. We did on S-three 25.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Other questions? Do you have more? Two. Good.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I want to talk more about housing target disaggregation. So, we were required not only to say where in the towns should these, which towns should these housing targets go in, but what types of housing are we talking about? Because the targets themselves are agnostic. If you have a target of 40 units, it doesn't matter if they're accessory dwelling units or if it's a 10,000 square foot second home, it still counts as a unit. But we were then taking these targets as a region and saying, okay, what's the mix of the things that we really need? Not that we're in charge of deciding what these are, but at least to say, based on the data, what do we need? So we can see five years from now, are we meeting any of these needs? And so we were looking at our housing needs analysis that we did in 2022 that showed that 60% of our new households in the region were single person households, but 70% of our housing growth were large single family homes. So the growth in households and the need for housing, it was a bit of a mismatch in terms of what was being built. So when we looked at looking ahead in our future, what we are thinking in terms of our housing units, we really think still single family units, single unit housing are going to be a very strong demand. People are very attractive on the market. So we estimated about 40% of our new housing target should be that. But really, the rest should be in other options, whether it's small multi unit developments, accessory dwelling units, mobile homes, or large multi unit developments.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Let's talk about this. I want to stop you and just slow down for a minute. Okay, because I have trouble seeing all of this, but I'm the furthest away other than probably.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Is that helpful?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: A little, yeah, okay. So, what you're selling us is, there was this big metric, 60% of the housing demand is for people who are going to be living alone. What kinds of housing units would they be?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Well, I think it's diverse as the people themselves. So, I think some people living alone prefer to live in single unit home. Some people would like to live in a multi unit apartment. Some need to be in congregate care. Some would prefer an apartment in a small building. I think it's a mix. Do think that if we're looking at an increase, especially as our population ages and people aren't having as many children, the single unit household will continue to grow, especially one and two. And so we can't meet all of our housing needs by just building single family homes.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yes. I know Fairfax is very excited about CHIP, but the potential for the commercial aspect of CHIP. We have really one area where we can grow commercially that makes sense, and the Select Board's very excited to kind of condense our development there, which, I mean, that's what we've been trying to push for in the Homes Act and 01/1981. But again, it's kind of this idea that the needs of a community ebb and flow. We have lots of very large, beautiful, old houses with one person who's living in there. I know we're starting to get more home shares actually in Fairfax right now. But I think this data is just phenomenal. I think I'd love for every single committee to see it.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I wanted to, while we're looking at this mix of homes here, I just wanted to touch on accessory dwelling units a little bit, and I'd love to come back maybe next session and talk more about accessory dwelling units. They are, I think, a really important part of our housing mix in the future, but they're really hard to build. That's what

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: we hear. They're very difficult. Say a bit more.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yes, and I would be happy to say a bit more. So we actually ran a program in our region, an accessory dwelling unit pilot program, where we provided homeowners with architectural services and up to $5,000 to contribute toward the construction and the design construction permitting at their ADU, and helps them go through the VHIP program to get funded through VHIP if they qualify. Of our 12 folks that ended up applying, only four continued through the process because eight of them dropped out because it became cost prohibitive to consider building the units. One of the big drivers for most of them was the water and wastewater rules. For many of them, it would have required a complete rebuilding of their septic system, because of how Vermont counts veterans. So I think there's an opportunity there to look at that and see how we might regulate EDUs a little differently.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Do you have any recommendations? Granted, it's the end of this session.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yeah, and I think others that have more expertise in this have looked at it more, but the recommendations I've seen relate to the flow assumptions and how do you count people. So Vermont's dollar assumptions are based on the number of people assumed per bedroom. And I think it's two for the first three bedrooms and then one for each bedroom after. So when you build an ADU, your bedroom count starts again. So even if you take a four bedroom home and turn it into a three bedroom home plus a one bedroom eating you, you're adding a person to the full calculation because you have to start your count again. So I think there's nuances like that that Vermont could really look at to, we wanna keep wastewater treatment safe, but do we have to have it be so prescriptive that we never ever, ever, ever have a failure? Or can we have a little bit, like what's our risk tolerance here? So I do think there's some work in there that can be done with water and wastewater rules. And I think that if there's work that can be done to streamline some of the fire safety rules to still keep people safe, streamline that. I think there's some work that can be done. Of our four folks that moved ahead with the accessory dwelling unit, three of them were for childcare reasons. So they were family accessory dwelling units where either the parents or the kids with the new baby were moving into the ADU and the parents were gonna be doing childcare. So they were people who were motivated for reasons other than building a housing unit, and that's what enabled them to stick with it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I've heard, I don't know when this came to us, people were talking about using a mobile home as an ADU, because it's there, it's cheap, it's easy to do, but people ran into size limitations, could you

[Catherine Demetriuk]: say more about that? Sure, so the statute right now, which says everybody can have an accessory dwelling unit, If you have a single family home, you can have an accessory dwelling unit. But accessory dwelling unit is defined as being owner occupied either in the ADU or the single family home. And the size limitation, I think it's 30% of the size of the main home or 900 square feet. Think it's 900 square feet is the limit without looking it up, that's based on memory. But those side limits are in statute. Towns can be more lenient, but most are not, especially because we now have duplexes required to deal out everywhere that we have single family homes allow.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is there, from a planner's perspective, is there any argument in favor of those limitations? In other words, what if I want to argue, I don't care if I have a cabin, a tiny home on my property, I ought to be able to put a second, an ADU that's a mobile home, why can't I?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: In my own personal and private opinion, I don't see the need for that anymore, especially now that we require communities to allow duplexes.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: In other words, the argument was, oh, if you don't have these size requirements, then it's really, you're just doubling the number of units. Which is now allowed.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: The only thing that the accessory dwelling unit gets you that a duplex doesn't is accessory dwelling unit, the state law allows you to do it either attached to the home or a pertinent to, like so an example of the mobile home where the duplex requirement, it has to be attached. So that's the distinction right now. So an ADU can be on the lot, but not? Not attached.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Not attached.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: And a duplex has to be attached. So that's really the remaining distinction in terms of the built environment. ADUs also require owner occupied in one or the other.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Yes. So if it's under 900 square feet, then it would be permitted on a manufactured home? Yes.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Small ones are. Yeah, there are small ones, I would definitely need one But,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: normally is a single wide, how big is a single wide normally? 120

[Unknown Committee Member]: square feet.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Single wide is 100.

[Unknown Committee Member]: A thousand. A thousand, yes,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: more than a 900.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: It's more like the park model, so that would make

[Unknown Committee Member]: Like a railroad style. Yeah. A 20.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, so it's more than the 900, yeah.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yeah, so there could be an argument of whether that number should be looked at if there's a standard size of what a single wide is. Yeah, because some

[Unknown Committee Member]: of them are 106. I'm sorry, that was six.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: 106, yeah. And so maybe there's a way to Yeah, try and align those two and then the other thing I would say for accessory dwelling units is there is a temporary Act two fifty exemption for accessory dwelling units that may be extended until 2028 or 2030, depending upon what happens. I would definitely advocate for making that permanent. So without that, if you have an underlying Act two fifty permit in the home that you live in and you want to build an accessory dwelling unit, you need to get an amendment to your Act two fifty permit to do that. So I would advocate making that permanent for next conversations that you're teeing up for next year.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Is that extension in S-three twenty five?

[Unknown Committee Member]: Yeah, was going to say, as much as I'd love to talk more about what we can do on those things in here, those are more of a

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

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I think ADUs are

[Unknown Committee Member]: ADUs, yes.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, actually, I think there's Well, I think there's ways next session that we can initiate things. First of all, there's nothing to stop us from having a committee bill which goes up with it. True.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yeah, I support. Thank you.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: You're welcome.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't know, smiling monthly, Bartley.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: So moving on to the other way we broke out the targets is by affordability. So all of our data shows that affordable housing continues to be a need, and whether that's for the very affordable or whether that's simply workforce housing, it really is just a continuous need. Our last housing analysis showed up to 80% of our renters were in unaffordable situations. And that's partially due to the fact that our affordable rent for affordable housing is set by HUD, which is, as I noted at the very beginning, we're incorporated with Chittenden County for some of our data. And so you balance our incomes against the affordable housing rent that's set by the HUD data, and that creates a mismatch from the very beginning. But in addition, there just aren't enough privately owned, privately run places that are affordable. And then finally, we just did a rough breakdown of the different bedroom sizes that might make sense for future growth in our region. Yes. You please reiterate your target for affordable housing? Sure. So if you look at this breakdown, this one right here, this is how we consider that. So this is types of affordable housing. You have

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: an overall goal? I guess that's what I'm asking. Do you have an overall goal of percent of affordable housing of that which is built?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Well, we hope all housing is affordable. So when we talk about, say, affordable owner occupied housing, what we're saying is that regardless of the cost of the home, that the people who are living at it doesn't cost them more than 30% of their income.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yeah, no, I know what the definition of affordability

[Catherine Demetriuk]: So even break it down and say, based on our median household income, that means we need this many homes at this price. We didn't break it down to that level. Even though you said 80 percent of your current renters

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: are under water by that definition. Yes.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: When we do municipal plans, we go into that level of data where we'll say your median household price in your community is 400,000. Your average household cannot afford that, this is the price that your household could afford. And so we do break it down when we do the new school plans.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Do you break down into what your goal is for ratio of affordability?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: We have that data somewhere. We don't have that here in this chart that I'm showing you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So just to pile on. Sure. Those have been

[Catherine Demetriuk]: the questions. I a head of schedule. I

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: might take look. Questions.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Yeah. No.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This is I think, in other words, you don't say, of the 1,600 units that we want for this town, 14 of them have to be a 100 of them have to be affordable.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: We don't say a 100 of them have to cost less than $250,000. Right. We don't say that. Yep. But if you say we're building a thousand units, what our goal is 800 of them to be affordable by this income level. Yes. You do say that outright? Yeah. So if you look at the When we talk about rental in particular, this is where we address it. The affordable rental housing. So we would want 9% of our target units that are built to be affordable to those who are at 80% of the median household income. And for same with very affordable renting, we would want 18% of our new units to be affordable to those at 50% of the median household income. So when it comes to the rental affordable, we did break out specifically time into income. For the owner occupied, we didn't break it out because new owner occupied homes tend to be purchased by people who can afford to live in them because they can get the mortgage to purchase them. So it's, we didn't break it down to that extent.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do you see this? I mean, I've just been assuming without a lot of background that we have a real problem and that because of all the factors that you set forth the corridor, etcetera, there are gonna be a lot of houses built, but the people who occupy them won't be, they won't be at 80%, they'll be at 120 or 150 or two hundreds.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Potentially. And we can't, nor do I necessarily know that we want to control who ends up choosing to live in the places that are built. All we can do is hopefully adjust the market and the availability of homes in such a way so that they are more available. When it comes to the rental housing, the affordable and the very affordable, those tend to be created by our nonprofit housing developers, and they do manage who lives there and who accesses those. So in those cases, yes.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The tax credit money is still there. A lot of the other money isn't.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: And the VHIP does have some, VHIP has some rules about who lives there as well. Yeah, right. I think Vermont is trying.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I know we're trying. Okay, questions before she goes on? You hadn't been here, she went community by community. Okay, so you don't have questions about Fairfax in particular.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I feel very well informed about the town of Fairfax, and if not, I have somebody else that you dial.

[Doug (Committee Member)]: Yeah, okay.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Stonerates look good.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: You're a frequent, so I can't smell them. Them. Oh, you can. So I know you saw some of these yesterday, so I thought it would be fun to show you our region. So this is the state's housing data dashboard. And so I just highlighted our region to just show right now that we're not on pace to build our target. We're not even really close. But I do think that that tide is turning, as I talked about earlier. And I can only tell you that anecdotally because the permits haven't been applied for yet and the houses haven't been built, but I do think we are getting ready to shift that tide a little bit. So now, so our target is 2,100 by 2030, and we are on pace to build September. What's in

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the September? Are any of these helpful developers that Corey is referring to?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: No, they're not in here yet. They will be out very soon. Maybe even next year, we'll have permit applications for many of these, And we can tell you not just anecdotally, but for real.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Very similar to the question Marc asked. So I'm curious, is it mostly large development?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: That we're hearing about that's ready to commit? I think the ones I've heard about range from 30 to, as Corey mentioned, 80 units. And then there is lot, there's also more smaller type developments that I've been hearing about people considering. The time that Swanton just adjust their zoning regulations to allow even more dense development in the village. So I think we have yet to see the positive results of that, but that will come. What types of units? The ones that I've heard of that would be utilizing CHIP are a mix of starter homes, manufactured homes, and a couple of the smaller scale multi units, so the six to 10.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do you see much manufactured home interest?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: I think we're seeing more, as they get better and better.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Do you know much about the VHIP program? Know. I'm sorry. Oh. EmhIP. EmhIP. Yeah. It's a mobile, it's a manufactured home with infrastructure. And I think there's also tax, don't know if it's a chip, you don't know what it is. I don't

[Catherine Demetriuk]: know that, I'm not familiar with that.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So as the RPC,

[Unknown Committee Member]: if there is

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: a town that overperforms on their goal, do you take credit for that across your RPC? Do you adjust the other towns, or do you just keep that town as an outlier? And do you keep that town's numbers as part of the RPC goal, or do you keep that town's numbers as the town's numbers?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: So I don't know the answer yet to whether we'll adjust the targets because we're just starting this process. So we haven't come to that decision point and that discussion. We do plan on reporting progress to meet the targets, both on the municipal level and on the regional level. So if a municipality is meeting or exceeding the targets, we will be definitely highlighting and celebrating that. And then that will go into the overall account for how the region as a whole is meeting the regional target. But I don't know that we're gonna give them more homework because they got theirs done early. I don't know if we're gonna do that approach yet, or I think if a fluke, we'd want to adjust the housing targets, but if it's a real trend that shows progress and the community is saying they want to continue, then I think we would want to adjust them. Have you ever had housing targets before? Yeah. This is all And it's great, we've never, before this, when we did our housing needs analysis in 2022, it showed we needed 7,600 housing units for our region. That was the first time we had any sort of target. So then we were like, okay, what do we do with this? And now that we do have these statewide targets and we have these regional targets, it really just gives us a way to say, not just say, we need housing, but how much and where and how are

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: we

[Catherine Demetriuk]: doing? We have a measuring stick which we haven't had before.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Did you? No. Maybe. Yes, maybe.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: So,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: two questions. But first, if someone asked, well, okay, we've to put all this work into these housing targets, what for? In other words, what's changed? Has anything changed, or is anything going to change because these housing targets are there or is it simply the towns that want growth are gonna grow and the towns that don't aren't? And I guess I have to, in fairness, put the second half of the question is, and what about the fear that the targets will become mandates, or coupled with financial incentives that will make it expensive for a town that doesn't comply?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: So I'll take the second question first, because my answer to that is that it's up to you. So the only way that the housing targets are going to become other than a planning tool is if the law is changed. So I think you are the ones best suited to answer that question rather than me. What we have told towns when they've asked that question is that we have not heard legislators talking about wanting to change it from a target to a requirement. And if we do hear if we can see it in the bill or we hear about it happening, would make sure they know about it and work with their legislators on that question. In terms of why bother, what does this matter, is this going to change anything? One of the big impediments to building more housing is community sentiment. And even though that's not one of the criteria in a zoning bylaw application, community sentiment matters, and it matters in terms of how municipalities permit, plan for, and accommodate housing. Housing. I think that housing targets make a difference in terms of community sentiment because it quantifies the need in a way that is understandable. And when you have a community, in our region, have a mix of communities from those who are welcoming new housing to those who take two years to approve a five lot subdivision, because there's a lot of controversy over it. We have that full range in our region. The housing targets, we're able to come to them and say, when you're looking at these local projects, when you're looking at your zoning regulations, think about this. If you want your community to continue to thrive, if you want your children to be able to live here, if you want your employers to be able to hire employees, you have to be part of the solution too. And this is what it looks like if you're part of the solution. And so take that five lot subdivision and put it in context of this overall question, or look at your zoning regulations and see, like they did in Swanton, can we add even more flexibility? And so I think it's one more tool to help shift community sentiment and to help municipal leaders in their decision making. It's not gonna build houses though.

[Unknown Committee Member (Northeast Kingdom)]: Do you have a question?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I've got a couple questions. Doug?

[Doug (Committee Member)]: As far as, sounds like St. Albans and things like that, are you seeing that these housing targets are driving development or the change in

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: regulatory?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: That's a good question. I think it's all part of the same picture. I think St. Augustine was already on the way before the housing targets were developed. They were already moving in the direction of wanting to encourage more housing. And I think the housing targets just gave one more reason to argue in favor of that. I don't think it was

[Doug (Committee Member)]: Actually, I'm sorry. I was just thinking actually building.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Actually buildings the products. I don't think I think the market is more the driver of actually building the homes. I don't think a developer is looking at the housing targets and say, Oh, I should be up here. It's the changes. It's the changes. Policy, yeah. You have a developer in the room too, so they can answer that question, but I don't think you make your decision based on the housing targets.

[Corey Parent]: No, but Corey Perrin again speaking, as someone who builds, I wasn't able to build the products, but right now it's Allan City until Act 2081, other stuff prior to that. That's great. So I'm converting a home that was vacant for two years right now into a four unit. It should be done another six weeks. That would not have been eligible under the old zoning regime.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Can I use you to be hit for that?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Nope. That's

[Unknown Committee Member]: so great to hear. Sometimes we talk about everything we're not doing, but it's nice to hear success stories from stuff that we're doing in the legislature. Thanks for sharing that, Corey.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Amy, anything else you've got you want to share with us?

[Catherine Demetriuk]: Last thing I want to share is we also, on our website, before the state built their housing dashboard, we had one we were building to track new housing growth because there wasn't a way to count new housing growth. So we have a staff person who goes and meets with all of our zoning administrators every year and updates this data. And so we'll keep this accurate for one more year just while the state is continuing to build theirs. And then we'll stop doing the work to do that. But one of the things we are going to do is we track by affordability, by the value based on the blisters value of the new home. So we do track that. And then we are also going to be tracking location. So how much of the new units are built within these growth areas? Are we targeted 60%? How much are actually getting built in those growth areas? Is it even close to 60% of the new units? And so we'll be tracking that in the next year, and then working with the state to incorporate our data into theirs.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Any final questions? The work continues.

[Catherine Demetriuk]: The work continues, but I do think that the targets are helpful. We have something to measure against. What an innovative idea.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Members of the committee, we have a witness coming at 10:30. Would you like to take a break until then?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I would.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Alright. So let's go we're gonna adjourn until 10:30 and reconvene. Catherine, a thousand.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Thank you.