Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Welcome back, everybody, to the House Committee on General Housing, and it's still Wednesday, May 6. So our next witness is Mary E. Weinberger, who's from Executive Chairperson of West Built Homes. Mihaly, we're setting the stage here. What we've been talking about for the last day are sort of two related issues. One is housing data. We got a housing data report from the Department of Taxes and from ADS, but we have also been looking carefully a little more deeply than we had at the housing targets and what is in them and what the effect of them is. And I just thought that you might have comment on those issues.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Well, Thank you, Chair Mihaly. Are you hearing me okay?

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

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I appreciate what the the effort in both of these topics, both looking into the data, looking into specifically how we're doing with respect to the location and volume targets that the state set in recent years. And, you know, more generally, the attention to the implementation of efforts, I think it's a great effort that you're taking on. So I have tried to put together quickly in response to the to the request a slide deck. I'll try to bring it up now if let's let's see. Here we go. Alright. That's working, right? You're seeing my screen? Yes. Although I've got the date wrong. May 6, not May 5. So I guess I did sort of put together a little just quick sort of general sense of kind of how things are going with housing. I'm not sure this is squarely on, but here's some data I'm not sure if you've seen. I think there is some reason for there's some good news in Chittenden County within the last couple of years after an exceedingly low vacancy rate for many years after a record year of housing production in 2024, and then another fairly significant 2025, and 2023 was a pretty good year too. The vacancy rate in Chittenden County has ticked up substantially. This is from last June, and I have not seen a more recent number than this. Your point about data, I do think there's work to do still as a state that would help us with our policy and implementation efforts if we had, you know, through continued attention to data. But from this private report, we've had access to the the chiefs.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Chiefs, please.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: This is from Allen and Brooks, which is a Chittenden County real estate firm. They do market studies, appraisals. And so that's good. And it's getting in the direction of where you would want the market to be. I one thing just to point out here, though, I I think there's a reason for for some hope and optimism. It's not a reason to think that we're done and that we've, won here. I've kind of been through this experience before. When I was the mayor of Burlington, had early on in my time as mayor, we had one really big year, in particular, one big project to open in the downtown. And we saw a real shift in the climate. You suddenly had much more competition among property owners for tenants. We heard from property owners, and I was happy to hear this, that they're having a harder time filling their units than they had in years. Were offering discounts. But it didn't last. It was a And when we got to the pandemic and we had a surge in demand, we were back worse than we'd ever been. So that's my message here, it's not clear yet that this represents sort of a sustained, new, high level pipeline. And in fact, there's reasons to be concerned that a lot of the units that came online in the last couple of years, even coming on now, were financed before the surge in interest rates, before the tariffs, before some of the surge in construction costs. And so it's not at all clear that these trends are going to continue, and we need to keep paying attention to it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Why did why was there a surge in COVID in Burlington? Was it people moving from out of state?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yeah. I mean, that's my understanding of kind of what happened. For two years in a row, we had the greatest in migration of any state, I believe. Basically, anyone who ever thought of moving to Vermont did during the pandemic. We did such a good job as Vermonters, as a state, as municipalities focusing on virus control. We were one of the safest places to be in the country throughout the pandemic. And when people were sort of shut out of their normal lives, I think there was a big influx of people moving here. We sort of temporarily masked over the supply challenges by overnight, essentially creating hundreds, thousands of new homes through the temporary motel program. But as we came out of that, as we've been coming out of that, is that federal money has dried up. I think we've been in just an extraordinarily challenging situation where there had been this in migration, and then we essentially lost those temporarily created units. And that's my understanding why we're facing record high homelessness rates. You combine that with our decades of restrictive housing policies that put us in such a vulnerable supply constrained situation, it was sort of that combination of factors led to the major challenges over the last couple of years.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Thank you. Wonder, can you go back to the last slide for a minute, please?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I will try. Let me see if I can. There we go.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Excellent. So with the addition of these, however many of that is, upwards of 2,000 units, do you think that that will have an impact on the affordability of rent in Chittenden County?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I think it clearly already is, is my my sense. I mean, there has the the I I don't have good precise data on this, but my general sense, I mean, that is a precise figure as of June 2025 for vacancy rate. It's much higher than we'd seen in recent years. Similarly, there has been a flattening. There's not been the in the last couple of years, the big increases year over year in rents. And, you know, I continue sort of anecdotally, I will say we hear from property owners that they are having to work harder to fill their units and that, you know, that there is some sense of a a little bit of a loosening in the market. So yes, I think it is having an impact. It's not having the impact that you may have seen. There's been some big reports recently. Austin, Texas actually saw a 4% drop in rents after a surge of new home construction. We haven't seen that kind of impact yet, but that is exactly what we're rooting for.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair) — time-bound override]: Elizabeth, go ahead. Do you think that the property owners or landlords to whom you refer are having trouble filling those properties because the the market has flattened out or because of the cost of the units?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Am a major believer that the increase in supply is doing exactly what sort of classic economic theory would suggest it would do, that the with the increase in supply, you it is putting pressure on existing property owners, owners of apartment buildings, owners of rental units to to compete on price or compete in other ways to secure those tenants. Tenants. And that's exactly what our goal is. And sometimes that surprises. I think it's important to note that sometimes sort of developers and property owners sort of get looped in the sort of same block and people think that that's sort of like a monolithic stakeholder. And it's really not. In some ways, new units getting developed represent new competition for existing property owners. And we think that competition is good, and we want to strengthen it in every way we can.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'm I'm wondering, Moreau, and I'm just curious what your reaction is. Following up on what you just said, if there isn't really a financial difference between the situation in which owners of existing housing, rental housing, find themselves compared to owners of new housing, and then existing, I mean, it's obviously dependent on the individual, but existing housing, there's downward flexibility because they don't have the built in cost structure, whereas new housing, I mean, you know, your mortgage is your mortgage and your development cost is your development cost, and I'm just not, you know, sure that you can see downward pressure, but with a renter, I mean, with existing rental housing, know, you'll have a lower mortgage and lower built in cost. Do you think that that's possible?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I think I agree with as I'm understanding your question, chair Mihaly, I I I think I agree with your analysis that in many cases, it's hard to completely generalize, right? Each property has some specific details and things could have happened with an older property in terms of refinancing or new investment, new capital expenditures that could limit their constraints, that can constrain them in new ways. But certainly some older properties have a different level of flexibility because they've paid down debt that got the project built initially. They may have some additional flexibility in terms of the management of that project versus a brand new project that has been has borrowed as much as they could in order to get the project built and that has locked in higher interest rates now than projects we were seeing a few years ago. It's quite complicated. It's a little hard for me to generalize exactly to your question. But do think our what we are seeing here should be seen as a story of supply, new supply having the positive impact that we want it to. It is not guaranteed to stay that way if we do not keep moving and working in this direction and keep the pipeline open.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, go ahead.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: There's a bunch of, I had intended for this to be a fairly, I wasn't even sure this was on point with what you wanted. Should I

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: just It is. Keep

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: While you're getting questions, go ahead. I just, so you're specifically looking at like Chittenden County, and I think I'm thinking about Burlington as somebody who went to UVM. I know that those of us who've really been focusing on housing have tried to partner with UVM to work on the housing for students who may only be here for part of the year. Has UVM been a willing partner in that? Have you seen changes when it comes to student housing?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Has Trump had any impact?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: So, you know, I did have a kind of front row seat or, you know, more than I or I guess I was in the ring on this discussion. The city of Burlington, I was mayor, worked directly with with the university to attempt to lessen the impact that particularly off campus students had on the Burlington housing market. We had an explicit goal throughout much of my time as mayor of trying to build new housing either on campus or in sort of purpose built off campus housing that would house Hello?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Sorry. Real quick. You are still screen sharing.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: We're looking at your iPad.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: You're looking at my iPad.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Or your I don't know. There we go.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Oh, that's really weird. Sorry to interrupt.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: No. No. I thank you. I I it's always a little disconcerting with how this works. I I flipped over to try to get a better look at you to see who was talking, but I'll stay on this screen. So yes, the university and the city work on this regularly. It was a major topic right up until the day I left office with both UVM and Champlain College. There were hundreds of homes. We got about halfway towards that goal of housing, half of the off campus students in either new on campus housing or purpose built housing. Champlain College in particular built a lot during my time in office. I will say the former president Suresh Gharamella did have a very aggressive housing goal. Really I think he saw it as important to the future of the university, the growth of the university for more housing to be built. It was quite a fair amount, and I don't know the numbers exactly, but the university did partner with builders in South Burlington and part of the some of the new downtown that's being built there is being built through partnerships with UVM. So there has been some direct progress in that direction. I will say it was a disappointment that we were not able to create a new agreement between the city and the university before I left office. There was sort of one kind of teed up and ready to go, but it did not get it was not approved by the council when I left, and I don't I'm not seeing any substantial public update on it in the last two years. I do hear, you know, I'm not really involved in those discussions. I'm not certain of the status of them.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Okay. So I think now moving to an area that I think you've taken, I didn't get a chance to hear it directly, but I did get some texts with some updates. I think you've been looking a little bit at this question of the state's overall housing targets and specifically the locational targets. There's this language, I believe there was an Act 181 that said a substantial majority of the new housing growth should be in what I like to call these housing growth areas or these tier one areas. So as the debate over tier three and the well, two things happened early in this calendar year, really, as you as the session started going here is one, the tier one process was starting to get to the stage where the new land use review board was starting to review and make changes to the maps that the municipalities and RPCs had created. We were concerned about what we were seeing in that process in that, after going through this fairly daunting gauntlet to get a map in front of the land use review board that requires both RPC work and actual votes at local level to opt in to tier one eligibility. What we were seeing at the Land Use Review Board was that those maps that were getting there, which already, frankly, at an intuitive level felt small and constrained to us, they were getting cut back further substantially by 10 to 30%, the three maps that went before the land use review board. That was one thing that concerned us at the beginning of the session. The second thing is we, as I know you all were hearing real concern about tier three and the road rule. And we came to understand tier, let's build homes didn't exist when act 101 was passed two years ago, so we were not heavily involved. You know, as an organization, we're not at all involved in those discussions. As we started to really organizationally engage the issue this year, we grew increasingly concerned that those two new rules, which were about to be implemented, had the impact to affect housing everywhere outside, or if not totally everywhere, in many places outside of the tier one areas. And so we did this analysis that you're seeing an image of here to try to bring some facts to this discussion about how has Vermont's growth actually been happening with respect to housing growth areas. And on this map, we are using the interim housing areas. That's what you're seeing is the enclosed areas. Those are not exactly and they're not precisely what the future tier one areas will be, but they are very good proxy for them. Seen VAPTA give testimony suggesting that there's almost exactly the same percentage of land area, about 2% of the state's land areas within these interim housing areas as will be in the tier one areas. So taking the state's data from, you know, the housing community development dashboard, we were able to locate every project that has been built since 2021 on a map. And we were further able to determine whether it was inside an interim housing area, and those are the projects that you see in orange there. Those, and you can kind of see physically, right, how they are inside the interim housing areas. And you can see the number of units and the address for the project. This comes from, as my understanding, the kind of E911 database. And then the green projects are the same thing, but they are just outside the tier one areas. So when you aggregate all of that up, this is what we see is going back to 2021. And we only went to 2021 because the state's housing data is most robust since 2021. We think in the prior years, the data we had suggested very similar patterns were taking place, although perhaps a little bit less building within Orange area and large part is that housing, that surge in Chittenden County, you can kind of see reflected in the orange here. So like in 2024, where you see a bunch of orange in that bar graph, that lines up with that, what I said was that record year. So anyways, this what adds up to. Two big take homes from this. One, you can see that more than half of those bar graphs are green, meaning more than half of the housing. In fact, the next table I'll show you, 60% of the housing that has been documented, constructed and documented since 2021 is being built outside of the housing growth areas. And then what you see in the shaded area on the right, that's what our housing those are what our housing goals from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency needs assessment. That's where we're supposed to be. That's where our target is, right? And both in terms of that sort of the range of the goal, that's that the range is shown through that black line there. We've kind of illustrated the midpoint of the goal. And then the green is what VAPTA has said. They think we could get to a place where only 40% of the housing is being built outside growth areas. So, you know, you can see both in terms of the overall numbers and in the distribution, we're quite a ways from where we want to be. This table, if you want to dig into these numbers further, we do have this report posted on our website. That's where I get the sixtyforty number, 60% outside, 40% inside. A further interesting thing, not entirely surprising, but I think it has some implications as we think about our housing future. Almost everything happening, almost all of the multifamily housing, the great majority of the multifamily housing is happening in those housing growth areas. Very little single family housing is happening in those housing growth areas is the take home from this line.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Could you go back? Go back for a minute. Can I ask oh, sorry? Okay. Go ahead.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: It's Emilie, hello. Hey, Emilie. What up? I was recently on the radio and I got a question from a caller about single family homes about how can, is there a way to get more single family homes in these dense areas?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Like, what are

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: your thoughts on that? Like some people she was saying like, and it's true, like some people want, how can we make sure that we're also prioritizing single family homes too?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Great. I appreciate that question. I think that's exactly the question we've been asking ourselves. I think there are two answers. There's two clear, at least at least two, I'll say, ways I think we could and probably should try to get more single family homes built in the tier one areas. One is through the sort of better use of the land in these areas, right? More efficient use, smaller lot sizes, more gentle infill, if you will. Have a little bit later in the presentation, I have some more thinking on this. You look around the country and this discussion, some people call it kind of missing middle housing incremental It comes in all sorts of terms. And there are definitely places in the country, as I look out around, actually out here in Denver at a conference on exactly this kind of thing right now, that are kind of farther ahead of us in this discussion and are seeing more success than we are with that kind of development. I think that should create more home ownership opportunities, right? Not all of that will be home ownership, but some of it certainly should. When we certainly were, in Burlington in 2024, in my final city council meeting, we passed this thing called the neighborhood code. You look around the city, there's been at least a few examples, including my former chief of staff who's watching in. She lives on a property now where the former owner subdivided it and sold off the back end of the lot to a new duplex, right? So there's new homeowners and opportunities were created by that kind of reform. We think there's more opportunity for that. That's in addition, though, and I think this is particularly poignant when you look at the flood impacted communities in the state, I think we are going to need some green I think almost certainly we're going to need some greenfield development, especially in areas where the historic development patterns have been too close to our streams and rivers. We are going to need new tracts of land developed. And I think we need to find a way to capture those lands in tier one areas. I don't think that's currently happening very much. And I've got a little bit I got a slide for you later on that too. And but so those are the two those are two big implications, I think, of this data.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: That's really helpful. And, yeah, I'd love to continue to collaborate with you on those ideas as we move forward. Thank you.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Great. I'm going to keep moving unless stop me. This is just this is that language in statute. It says these areas should be planned so as to accommodate a substantial majority of housing needed to reach the housing targets developed for each region. So I think that's very important language if we're serious about it, and I hope we are serious about it. And let me keep going. So we this is one example of that kind of trimming of the tier one areas that took place at the Lurb. I think you guys are probably familiar with these maps now. Castleton and the Regional Planning Commission had proposed all of the areas you see pink and purple there, not the violet, but the pink and the kind of magenta, if you will. Those are the Tier one eligible colors. And this is the map they proposed to the Land Use Review Board. And almost all of this was cut out by the Land Use Review Board, is my understanding. Now, the bill that is moving, I think you guys are about to vote on S-three 25, does attempt to address this in some ways. VAPTA, the RPCs, you know, to their credit, they really worked hard for many months to articulate some language that they they believe will be more consistent with the legislature's intent and not constrain the land use review board of, you know, land review boards says, of course, that they've made these cuts because they have to by statute. This would change the changes in S-three 25 would, in particular, change the village area definition and I think the downtown development area definition such that it would loosen things up and make it possible for some of these areas to stay. Something we thought we proposed, and this hasn't really gotten much of a hearing so far, and, you know, I'm not clear as a route for it to get a hearing this session. We would like to see this go even further. Really, you know, if we have one of these municipalities around the state that has been able to kind of work through their local politics and say, Castleton did, know, we really want to grow in these new areas. We want to move away from rivers. We want we can't just be constrained to the historic development area exclusively. You know, we think there should be a lot of difference given to municipalities that do that. And there are other guardrails in Act 181 that would still give some level of assurance that there's proper regulation and oversight essentially of those areas, we would like to see the municipalities given more deference. I'll pause there if anyone has questions on that. Okay. If not, I'll keep going. If beyond the the tier one mapping, though, if, you know, if we're really gonna move the trajectory, keeping in mind, we really have to, we have to do quite a bit to get to our housing targets, right? We have to both shift, we have to increase by substantially. And I know you've taken some testimony on this, the amount of development happening in tier one areas. We've got to encourage some of that development that's been happening outside of it. To meet that substantial majority, we're probably talking about, we really need to make it easier to building these areas. I think they need to be bigger in the ways that I just described. But I think we need to think about other tools as well if we really want to hit these targets. Interestingly, the very beginning of the session, one of the ideas we put out there was that there should be some kind of one thing the state could do, you know, with the kind of stroke of a pen essentially would be to eliminate the sales tax on new construction in these tier one areas. That would reduce construction costs 3%, you know, as a rule of thumb just by that act. And interestingly, our neighbors to the south in Massachusetts are advancing a bill that would do that. This too has not really gotten a hard look this year, but as we look ahead to next session, Let's Build Homes is envisioning coming forward with a kind of package of reforms, including this one that would would both get these housing growth areas right sized and give them more tools to actually achieve the goals.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Ashley. So I had introduced a bill last year that would eliminate sales tax on construction material. Unfortunately, there was no traction there. I think it just got a pass by in ways and means just as a courtesy. But I've been watching Massachusetts and I'm hopeful that we can continue the conversation as other states around us also look at similar legislation. I think you know, building materials right now are absolutely part of the problem. I think, you know, the sales tax is most likely pretty de minimis compared to the permitting costs we're seeing for developers and some of the other issues that I see, but I think it's a great step forward and would love to continue that conversation.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: One of the things, I guess, as long as we're expressing opinions here, one of my problems that I always see is people wanna stimulate something by eliminating sales tax. I never see them see where they would increase revenue. And we are have a very constrained state budget with a lot of pressure on state services, and I worry about that. And I'm wondering whether there isn't some source, that let's build homes could support. I mean, if you wanna reduce sales taxes on housing, would you increase it on commercial? We can also look at Say, or something else. In other words, it's just hard, and one of the reasons it doesn't get any traction in the money committees is they're concerned about the budget, and if there were a proposal that if some if a pressure group were, and I say that positively, neuro, were actually to have affirmative sort of revenue neutral approach, it might really make it. Not that I have any brilliant ideas, but just letting you know. Do you

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: want to hear my brilliant ideas?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: What is it?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: We cut spending.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Oh yeah, right. Spending?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I mean, if we're sharing We don't have our Yeah, right.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We have a cost problem.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Oh, I heard

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that. Yeah. Alright.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Fair fair point.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: But, no, this is

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: good. I like advisement. I I do think a sophisticated analysis of this would show and I guess I do have, maybe this is more for an offline discussion. Don't know if this is something JFO could take on, if that's the way for it to be trusted, but certainly a stimulatory program like this that, you know, to agree any new investment that wouldn't happen otherwise is created, you know, this kind of program would more than pay for itself. And unlike that a lot of the other things that we do give tax breaks to, this has the potential to grow all sorts of state revenues.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Got it. Okay. I do think a sophisticated analysis like that would be good because traditionally, the analyses that are produced here internally assume zero, as you know.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Alright. I'm I'm adding it to the Let's Build Homes homework list to try to try to think about how how that how how to get that done. Especially, you know, I've I've you know? Alright. Great. So the questions that as we were sort of asked to prepare this testimony, we were asked to think about the types of different housing that is getting built and where we were meeting our goals, where we weren't, not just in the geographic sense, as I've been speaking to, but also sort of programmatically. And I do have several thoughts on that. I do want to kind of overarchingly say at some level, Let's Build Homes is for all housing. We say that very seriously in that we, and I've got a study to point to here that lays some of this out. We think we are in a, our diagnosis of situation is we are in acute housing shortage. The remedy for a shortage is the supply of new homes and almost all new homes, and there probably are some extreme exceptions we can think about, I'm not here to defend these palatial mansions being built on huge estates, but virtually all new homes, all new supply help with the shortage in one way or another. So, you know, at some level, we think keeping the conversation at the overall supply is a very healthy thing. That said, I will speak I want to speak to what's going on with affordable housing. I want to speak to this sort of gentle infill, smaller scale incremental development. Then that study I mentioned is my last thing, and then that'll be done. I'm worried I'm overstaying my welcome already. So with respect to affordable housing, I just want to, you know, compliment the work that I believe VHFA is trying to do, and it's not easy work to try to, you know, not rest on the incredible laurels that Vermont has. Vermont really has a great deal to be proud of in terms of the amount of and the amount and the quality of permanently affordable housing that we have built over decades. And I think it is healthy to always be asking ourselves, could we be doing even more? Could we be doing even better? And I see VHFA doing exactly that with looking for ways to address the questions that have arisen nationally. It's a big conversation nationally and within the state about whether various government rules or other things about the the income restricted affordable housing requirements are driving up costs in that area. Could we be getting more permanently affordable homes by addressing some of these expense and cost issues? And I think that's a really healthy conversation. We appreciate the VHFA is doing that. The other thing that you know, I think is a big conversation nationally, and again, this is something Vermont should has implications for Vermont, is have we made our affordable housing financing system too complex, too complicated? Certainly, I will tell you when I was a developer, an affordable housing developer, it absolutely kind of slows down and adds to the cost of the affordable housing units every time you add another source of housing that comes with its own rules and restrictions. There was a study in California suggesting that every additional funding source added about four months to the predevelopment time and $20,000 to each unit. That hasn't been, you know, we can't say definitively that's exactly what's going on here in Vermont, but I think it's a really healthy conversation to look at, and we applaud VHFA for doing that. Full disclosure, VHFA is an aligned organization with us. Their chair, Marc Collins, on our board, even on our executive committee, but we are an independent organization from them. And I say these things, you know, with that independent lens. And then finally, it has been a frustration of mine and I know many others for years that we do not we give back substantial federal 4% tax credit authority every year and have for a long time, which other supply constrained states like Vermont do a better job of that. And I think that's an area that really that could be a route to getting more affordable units built if we can figure out a way to crack that nut. It's not easy to address, but it's worth looking at, and I sense more serious conversation about that happening now than ever than in recent recent years. So that's what's going on in the affordable housing area. Gentle infill. Here, I think there's great opportunity, and it is unrealized opportunity as far as I can tell right now. You look out around the state and despite the Home Act, despite neighborhood code in Burlington and some other communities passing these zoning ordinances that should make it easier. You're not seeing a big uptick in this type of housing getting built. And I just wanted to introduce this chart from California to maybe give us hope and focus on this is that California in some ways, Chair Mihaly, you probably can speak to this better than I can, but in many ways there are at least a decade ahead of us, I think, in grappling with this housing supply And you can see, you know, they really wanted to build a lot more ADUs going back a long time, and they started passing statewide preemption reforms as early as 2012. And you can see in the early years that did almost nothing. There was a 2016 reform that did suddenly unlock an enormous increase, we say 15000% increase is the way I characterize it, in the permits being issued. And then there's a bit of a lag, but you can actually see that increase in permits is now leading to new ADUs being built. Report cut off in 2022, but my understanding is I think the growth has continued in the years since. So all that is to say we can unlock this type of supply. There's been growing examples around the country of it happening. It's going to require more policy innovation and implementation innovation, I think, to get it done. The good news is Vermont is doing quite a bit of this. But I think, you know, looking downfield for this committee and for the state, I think this is something that almost certainly is going to require further state action and is something I hope this committee will keep tabs on and find some sort of systematic way to keep working on. These are some examples of this kind of innovation and discussions that is happening already. So, you know, this is happening. I think it's good news, but it hasn't yielded the results we need it to yet. Then here, finally, this is just my I thought this was a very interesting study that really points to an issue that I think is not intuitive to a lot of people, but I think has real important implications for us, which is this in Hawaii, I've seen lots of studies that generally show that increase in supply, even, you know, market rate supply has a positive impact that Austin, Texas study I mentioned before that just said, you know, the overall, you had this surge, they built 10% new homes over a decade in Austin and they saw their rents drop 4%. A lot of studies have confirmed that kind of impact. But what this Hawaii study tried to do is actually at a granular level trace what happens when, in this case, this was a large high end condo project that came online, five twelve units. And I guess it wasn't all, it was not all, it was a mixture of incomes, but some of the units were quite expensive. They actually went through and were able to kind of trace what happened, who moved into those units, where were they coming from, what happened to the units that they were moving out of. And they were just able to lay out and really map, and there actually are some physical maps of this showing the kind of geographical catchment area that this one project impacted. And, you know, they found that it really did open up opportunity throughout the system, some at much lower pricing levels than the new projects that the new units were coming online. So, you know, this really speaks to this overarching value Let's Build Homes has that we want homes of all shapes and sizes for all of our neighbors. Certainly, need to keep pushing, you know, to get as much as match permanently affordable housing as we can, as I mentioned before. However, you know, we should not see it as a bad thing when a home comes online that allows that, you know, a doctor that the, you know, medical center in Randolph is, you know, Gifford is trying to recruit a doctor for if that doctor moves in there. And we should understand that that new unit not only is helping Gifford meet its recruitment and retention employee goals, and I hear that as being a major issue with hospitals and banks, you know, even for higher income earners, it also, that new unit is very likely opening up some opportunity elsewhere in the system.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Oh, Elizabeth. Forget it. Okay.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Okay. That's

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I do have a request. That's an interesting study. Can you send us the link to it? Like We to actually

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: were scurrying around with this slide deck right up until I came on, but we will email it over and we will include the link to the paper.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. I'd like to look at that study.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Marc likes to read the studies.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I mean, there's such debate over these issues. I'm I'm curious. Yeah.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yes.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Great. Okay. Any Moreau, a thousand thank yous.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: I have one more to close-up.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Questions.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: And then while you get back to your conference, speaking of which, so your organization, what's your now that, you know, we'll see where we landed in the legislature, wins, some losses, you guys were really helpful in pushing certain conversations and getting some stuff done. Obviously, many of us are disappointed in some of the things we did and didn't get. But what's over the, you know, policy kind of break, what's are you guys gonna continue going around Vermont meeting with people? Just kind of like, what, where does your organization plan to move forward during this break time and come back to us with a stellar package?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Well, thank you for that question. We are very focused, and we haven't talked about it this morning. We remain very focused on the community housing infrastructure program. We think what you've done with CHIP is sort of like what the federal government did with the Inflation Reduction Act, right? You created the potential for enormous progress in this area, in the way that the Biden administration created the potential for a lot of solar and wind infrastructure to get built and other electrification to happen. The ultimate impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, I think is ending up far less than people had hoped. And we want to make sure that doesn't happen with CHIP, basically. Want to make sure this is program that is well understood, is used by communities throughout the state, and we are convening on a regular basis, bankers and lawyers and municipalities and developers to make sure there's an understanding of how this, you know, frankly, technically complex program, how to make sure it works and how to specifically ensure that it makes good on the promise that was very important to, I believe, the legislature that even small communities can use it. I think there's a lot of reason. Certainly this program has the attention of communities large and small throughout the state. We don't know, it is still early days. The program's been open for about ninety days. I would love to come back and talk to you with a lot more data than we have now. Know, when the session starts or if you do another one of those fall check ins

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Oh, yeah.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Right. People know a lot more about how the program is going at that point.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Well, that's great. Thank you so much.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: That's one thing. We're also gonna stay very focused on the tier one discussion. I'd love to bring to you a package to kind of continue this conversation and share like, how do we actually realize goals for tier one?

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: No, that's great. Thank you. Please, don't be a stranger and stay in touch if you need anything in the off time. Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Any other questions? Thank you very much. Members of the committee? There he is.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: I know, right?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you, Burrows. Much appreciated and for a really nice presentation given the last Thanks.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Well, I really appreciate the opportunity. I hope there was something helpful there and yeah, excited to continue the conversation.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right.

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Take care. Members of the committee, Miriam, that's it, right? At So this point, you really should watch your, I mean, we have floor at one. Anybody walking out of the building now, or are people going to stay for the floor?

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: No, we have to be on the floor, it's a very important floor.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So Not of course, but I know, since folks, might be But anyway, I urge everybody to be here. Tomorrow, we have one interesting witness who maybe has a different take on the market and how it works, but when is that? So, nine is that when we'll start? Okay, so we'll start tomorrow at 09:30. We'll update. 09:30. 09:30. And then we'll play it by ear. I have been, just for the committee's information, in continuous discussions with various people in the Senate about the fate of our bills, I would say that the remark of the famous comedian Mort Saul, that the

[Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: I don't think anyone under future lies ahead. I don't think anyone under this area and you would Yeah. There's that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. I know. I'm sorry. Yeah. Alright. Yeah.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: You don't know? You do?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Under a famous pre baby boomer media, the future lies ahead. That's about all I can say.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Are you sure that's not Penny Yeoman?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Think it's Oh. So Moritzel. Okay, at this point, anything anyone wants to say before we adjourn? No. Alright, we are