Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Happy new week in Southern Economic Development Housing and General Affairs. And today is Tuesday, so it must be housing, and it is housing.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And we are going

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to welcome to kick off the week, Castielic and Pauli Major to, update us and both charge us with what our continued challenges are and how we might rise to meet this moment.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's entirely however you wanna do it. You're welcome to bring

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: up another chair if you wanna go together. Sure. I hope the rest of our community will join as they are able. Well, good morning, madam chair

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: and committee members. Good morning. For the record, Gus Sealy, executive director for the Ram Hausen and Conservation Board.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: And for the record,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Paul Major, director of policy special projects with

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: the Plum House and Conservation Board. And I can get a Zoom link.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I can share my screen. Oh, okay. Alright.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: Of them. So if you wanna start what we're getting off of Okay. The screen. Okay.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Well, let me begin by the handbook data and a lot of the software probably to begin with. Say a few things about our work in general. One, the governor has asked us to try to make transformational investments. And when I think about that, I think about what is the catalytic impact that we can have across the investments that we make. So the opening slide in your packet is from a project that we recently opened in West Rutland. And it was an area that had some light. And when we all heard the town manager that day that we were in West Rutland together, she was very clear that she had plans for joining the ops and more development, not necessarily more housing, that may be a more mix of our view as housing development, as supporters of housing development, it's great sites, supermarkets there and the rest of the village is far along. But I think it was that catalytic impact across the neighborhood that made that really appealing project that we wanted to be supportive of.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So I do want to tag on that. So David and I, we were with you, that was a really special day. And I got introduced to more of West Brooklyn and it's eating establishments, which was what was this? The company is better. The the question I have is, which tracks going forward now, how do we track the that impact? How do we track the transformational impact and the new things that arise and and how can we attribute some of the new development to that transformational investment? You know, don't

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: think we've got a great method for that. You've heard me say in particular as it relates to the TIF District in St. Watkins, we are invested think about 150 of the two seventy apartments and homes that have been built in that district. So I think if you were asking Don Cloud, did we have a positive catalytic impact by being the first developers in? I think he'd say yes. Similar with the town center in South Burlington, we invested in two buildings right off the bat with private developers we're working on. And then after those two affordable housing developments got going, they were able to attract UVM to invest in renting. UBM is not renting, but they did a deal with UBM and for their employees more buildings got built. So I think you're seeing that impact, but do we have an easy way to measure it? No.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I Easy. When I I just said,

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: do we have a way?

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: And I should say, you know, from my perspective, when I report to you on how many units we have funded, I don't report on units that we didn't put any money into, but they're there and I'm trying to tell you that story that the success of the St. Alban's tips tips their scripts with the new tab center St. Alban's or Cambria and Rising Burlington. Is it part related to the money coming in early and off of the first?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. No. I I completely appreciate it. It's just it's just you know, we said we said this we know in our hearts there's transformational change in all those communities in and around these these initial investments. Yeah.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Mean, there's a private developer we worked with in Morrisville on a turnkey basis. So and what I think he would say is that by flipping the first building, the first I can't remember twenty five or thirty minutes profit that freed up his capital and then he went on and built market rate apartments, which were permitted and planned for adjacent to it in that neighborhood. So, again, I I don't report to you and say, well, we built 60 units. We invested in 30, but that's indeed what exactly what happened. Thank you. So as we go through this proposal, we're gonna try to address the various issues, madam chair, that you just raised about what do we need to be thinking about, what what have we been doing, and what are the issues that are continuing to confront us with that. 'll go to the first slide here. And this will be the last thing I say for a few minutes. But this is from this is data from Zillow that I got when I attended the regional conference on housing issues. And what you see here is that the problem we had in the month problem is region wide and in fact I've seen some charts that tell you that the cost of homeownership across the whole United States has doubled from about 1,000 a month to 2,000 a month. Some of that due to the increase in interest rates and some of that due to the increase in real estate, but our problems are national in scope. Sometimes we think what's wrong with us in Vermont that we are struggling so much, but this is really a bigger problem than just Vermont. And the other thing I'd say about this first chart and all you may want to add to it is when people can't enter the home ownership market because the cost of home ownership has gotten so expensive. That's I think what's causing all the distress in the rent. One of the big things that's causing the distress in the rental market. It's not just that we have built less housing every decade for the last four. It's that people who might have become homeowners with a different set of economics cannot become homeowners today. And so the competition for that is what you're saying. The churn has been significant. There it is. Yeah. So,

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: if I could, so, the 67% increase for the amount of loans, sterling, is it offset by wages increasing a set? Mean, it's a little bit.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I'm sure a little bit, but I guess what I would say to you, Senator, is if you just think about eight years ago being able to borrow at 3% or a little above and now having to borrow at around six, along with price increases, that's Sure, no I get that. But but, yes, there there's some offset. And and, again, my main point here is that this is a problem across the lanes and not just the Vermont problem. Mhmm. But but you do that. There's some progress that we just go up for people. But what we've seen across the state is that the number of renters who can afford to buy in this market has dropped drastically.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: And I believe we have a we have a dataset on wage versus housing growth, but I won't go back and confirm that we have it, but I can follow-up with you. What that's telling us. To zoom in on the rental market and to zoom in more in on Vermont, we know this is one of the areas where supply is most constrained across our housing market and where the challenge of accessing housing is is felt most acutely. And what

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: this presentation what we're gonna do is this presentation is talk about some of the

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: population and housing needs and how they contribute to our housing targets and goals in the state, and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: then dive into some of

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: the tools that BHCD has at our disposal to address them and what challenges we see moving forward. So I think these two numbers here on the left are really striking that average renter wage in Vermont is $17 an hour. So the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: wage you need to afford a

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: two bedroom apartment, so if you're a single caregiver with a child or another family member, you need to have a wage of $29 an hour to afford a fair apartment at fair market rent with two bedrooms. And that gap is what's squeezing households and making them make really hard choices in terms of renting apartments that they can't afford or giving or cutting back on other costs such as medication or or food. The next chart that you see here, affordable available homes for 100 renters households in Vermont, is really looking at where our supply is most out of line with our population. So each bar represents a different economic slice of the Vermont rental population and says how many homes are available to someone making that amount who's searching for a home. So if you take a 100 households that are extremely low income, 30% AMI and less, and we can get into what that means. Sorry. That was the the tiny, tiny, unthinkable thing is? Tiny. Yes. So for every 100 households that are extremely low income, there's only 47 apartments that they can afford out there when they're searching.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That really shifts as you

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: get to a more median wage in the state, or every 100 households looking for an apartment at median wage, there's 101 apartments theoretically available. This doesn't go into, are they in the right spot? Yeah. So well, what this does so we know we're supply constrained across the spectrum, but that supply

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: constrained is most severe at

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: the lower end of the economic spectrum, and that's translated into the final graph here

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of rent burden

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: where you see because there's constrained supply at the low end of the economic spectrum, people are renting apartments that they can't afford, paying over 30, mostly over 50% of their income towards housing and that has devastating effects on their ability to participate in society. Do you want to wait till the end?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Have, I believe, about an hour until 10:45 so if you need yeah. Okay, well this exact

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: problem is one they've kind of been gazing at right and it's you know the hourly wage you need keeps going up and up and up. Gus particularly you've been doing this a long time, you've seen the vacancy rate fluctuate, you've seen the market fluctuate. This is a metric that I don't think we can claim success until we start seeing the cost of rent come down. Not just for a certain subset of the population, but across the board, I take it as a sign of success that some of our private assessors are saying like Chittenden County is cooling off, you're not going to get the rents you want. That's when I want us to really good step on the gap because I don't think we can claim success until rents start to go down. They are, you know, way above what people can afford. So I just want to know if you have, you know, experience in past decades of having that conversation, you know, that now the data is very clear. The more units of housing we build, especially densely developed, single family homes, we should see rents not only stabilize, but start to decrease and homelessness rates go down. And I don't want the market to start to tell us, woah, woah, woah, like people are gonna stop building housing because now they can't get premium rent prices. So

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: over the decades I've done this, we have seen fluctuations in the market. We've seen higher markets and cooler markets, and you're right about that. There and certainly for market rate housing, when you meet demand, then you're gonna see some cooling off. In terms of affordable housing, there's some basic costs built in to what it costs to rent a unit like property taxes, like insurance that whether you're a socially motivated landlord or a private sector landlord, you can't go below the cost of maintenance and management. So if you're asking, will we see rents go down so much that problem of homelessness would be alleviated? It's hard to imagine that without more intervention in the market and we'll talk a little later about the importance of rental assistance to But I have heard from, for instance, Alan Buck, who was the long time director of the housing finance agency, I think, putting more than twenty years as a small landlord of growth and he's reporting what you reporting, which is a year ago. You know, he had people lining up when he had a vacancy and it's it's fluid than it was. So I think it's gonna have some impact on the market, but in terms of people who make not very much money, there's a point below which won't that's can't go down because of fixed cost of Mhmm. Owning property. Mhmm. And I do think the other problem is, know, we're not seeing very much difference between if you're a private developer wanting to develop market rate housing, you want to return on your investment. So will people be more cautious if rents go down in terms of building market rate housing and then so we're just in an unusual place that we have not been in before in terms of the construction market.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Also just to tag on, I think that one of the challenges is we're building slowly enough so the impact in those specific area markets is slow. Mean, you had a slew of new housing units coming on board in Burlington tomorrow, it would be different than the trickle up number that we have coming online. So I would think the impact on that would be slower just given the slow absorption of them into the market.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: That could well be. Yeah. Anyway. But that's a limiting factor. Right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So probably the second chart on the right is Kesha, or

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: I touched on that, move ahead. I would think you're starting with that, I'm misconaised. I don't know.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Enjoy it. And because also we

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: want love to address what people are, because

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think we could actually do something about that, but I'm not sure if a political assignment at the moment would embrace.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And what that's really saying and what this

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: So this chart here, you've seen several times, and you'll see several more times this is data from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency breaking down the housing need by what level of affordability it needs to be. And you see really on the rental side and also on the owner side, that huge need in the affordable at 80% AMI and below, and then at that 80 to 120 as well. Those are the areas where we really see that for those units to be produced, we need public subsidy to create those units, and it's a little more than half of what we need to meet our housing goals. I think Vermont cannot meet this housing target without adding these affordable units, because our goal isn't to have a certain number of homes in the state. Our goal is to make sure the Vermont population is sustainably housed. And in order to do that, they need to afford the homes that they're living in. I know there's a lot of talk in here about area median income, and I just wanted to pause

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and take a moment

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: to talk about what does that mean in terms of household income? So what actually house general last year asked us to pull together this handout that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I provided to you that breaks down what is This one. Yeah. So

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: far, we have a three person household and later on we have a one person household as well. And it says at these different affordability levels, so starting at 60% AMI going up through 150% AMI, these are very typically used thresholds in housing policy. What does that mean in terms of a income for a household? And what does that mean for a rent or home that they can afford? And I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: just wanted to leave you

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: with that information so that you can see as we're talking through the types of housing that BHCB and our partners support, these are units that are really housing Vermont's workforce and the growing sectors of Vermont's workforce. So I know I listened in to when ACCD was in here talking about the intersection of housing and economic development and pointing to the huge growth that Beta anticipates seeing over the coming years, hiring a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: new technician every day with the next few years,

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: And that those new technicians at a rate of 50,000 to $60,000 per year, in Chittenden County, that 60% AMI does qualifying them to live in the affordable housing that CHT and other partners around the state are producing with BHCV support, and really at that income level are challenged in the market.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So for, to support these I mean, you know,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I feel really strongly about keeping our eye on affordability and AMI doesn't necessarily translate to affordability, right? So in Chittenden County now, a two adult, two child household needs $160,000 to pay all their bills on time. So what I don't want us to do is sort of undersell how bad this crisis is just because people don't have the level of income needed to actually afford all of the costs that they're burdened with. I feel like we'll take our eye off of that affordability metric getting further and further away from people if we just treat AMI like the affordability metric. It's simply it's a 130,000 in the other counties that are not Chittenden County to pay all your bills on time.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So would be interesting to see

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: what's included in both those figures.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well AMI is the average amount people make versus what you need to pay all of your bills on time and feel less stressed which is like our middle class goal.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right and not paying more than 30%

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: on housing. I think what this

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: is telling us what the research here is

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: telling us is that there is a con a concentration of the highest number of households are on the lower end of the AMI side. Our base has been hardest choices. They are also essential workers in our workforce. Mhmm. What have we been doing about it collectively?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: The legislature, the governor has really targeted a huge

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: number of resources towards the development of housing in the work that the HCB has been able to help fund. We've helped to serve over 5,600 households since 2020. And we're really proud of that number and know how much more there is to do. The legislature, you all have also asked us to really focus on a housing investment strategy that is diverse and meets the diverse needs of our housing market. And so where you ask us to invest in home ownership, in rental, in manufactured housing communities. And if you have interest there, I'm happy to come back and talk about our work there, but also in special populations like farm worker housing, recovery residences, accessibility. And by spreading these investments across the housing spectrum, we have an average per unit investment across this time period of eighty thousand dollars per unit. And that's that's representing a large range from what it takes to build an for a state the state portion of investment to build a new rental home all the way down to what does it take to make a home accessible.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Can I come back to

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: that unless you're gonna pull up manufactured homes somewhere else?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Not this

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: time. Okay. I mean I'm gonna

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: come back. It's interesting because it's like a low number of infill units, but the number of lots, that has got to be huge bang for your buck. That's like maybe the most affordable investment we're making in ownership because they own their are they owning their lots through this? No generally, in some

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: cases they're owned by co ops. Okay. And so they have ownership to the co op and in some cases it under the law when a park comes up, residents have a choice and some have chosen to ask a nonprofit to become the owner of their park. Okay.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's how long. But the chair say some of these are owned by whoever I mean People own their homes. Yeah, they own the home.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But if you're saying you've you've helped purchase a 77 lots that means those lots are cooperatively by a nonprofit.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: What we're doing here is making investments that are helping stabilize communities that might otherwise be lost. So we're often making infrastructure better parts where you might lose that but for the improvement of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: sewer systems or water system,

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: etcetera.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: When you make those improvements, are you seeing a majority of those communities become nonprofits or self governing?

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Yes. They are our statute. That's who we invest in.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. So those are all

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: owned by non top. All those assets are in non profit ownership or cooperative ownership.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That's pretty good for

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: stable affordability. Really good. Yeah, that's right. Just because you've entrusted us to steward a significant amount of investment, we're happy to report that there's only one project that fills ARPA dollars that's yet to be completed. It's getting completed in Downtown Burlington next month with the and we'll disperse the final 3,000,000 of that 119,000,000 appropriation. And what that also did was it brought another $260,000,000 into the state or of other sources to pay

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: for that housing construction and

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: created created and preserved a thousand units on the nose. I can remember. Yeah. And the benefit of those thousand units is gonna be felt for a long time in the state. We've been talking about how affordability is getting more and more out of reach for the hot households. And as we enter really difficult economic times, I think we're really fortunate that the state created so many units in the last several years that will help sustain people far into the future. Some housing strategies that we focus on, and I know Champlain Housing Trust is here talking about Bay Ridge, and I also want to make sure Gus has time to present, so I'm not going dwell on it. But creating new neighborhoods, really allowing us to leverage funds, housing for intellectual and developmental disabilities, These are all strategies that we've been able to explore. I'll go into a

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: little greater depth there. Since a lot of people are gonna use this picture, I just need people to know congresswoman Bellam and I were sharing the scissors and could not

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: cut the ribbon. Like, I've never been

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: it was, like, a nightmare ribbon cutting scenario. Like, everyone else could cut the ribbon, and we were looking,

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: our scissors don't work. They are often like that.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: There's metaphor in there that I'm going to.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: And we've also touched on the work in St. Albans and also in South Burlington. This is where Augustus talked about that initial investment in affordable housing is helping unlock additional private investment and really transforming communities. Investments of this scale will be harder to make, this sort

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of neighborhood transformation will be harder to

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: make without sustained revenue for housing. I wanna dwell a little bit on leverage on a topic we get to talk to you folks about a lot, and that's because I know the cost of creating rental housing is something that keeps us up at night. It is way too high. It is still growing, And yet we need to do it. We need to create homes for those households in Vermont that are struggling. And so it is fortunate that in that affordable housing finance system, the state dollars stewarded by BHCB do not need to pay for the whole $600,000 roughly per unit. What our investment is able to do is leverage other sources, be they the lower income housing tax credits, other federal sources, conventional debt, to help make up the balance of the cost.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So what you're looking at

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: here are the pie charts. The blue is the state dollars, and then the orange, that's the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You see the smaller source So I just really wanted to

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: emphasize how state investment through the BHCB is not paying for the full cost of that unit. What it is doing is unlocking other dollars that are coming into the state.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And there it also is an illustration of the difference between the 9% credits and the 4% credits which more I talked about often in this committee.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Right and you know the great value of the 4% credits is that they are virtually unlimited to Vermont and the downfall of them is that they raised half the equity that the 9% credit is raised, 9% is again allocation every year from the Feds and once it's gone, it's gone. So one of the things that we were asked to do through the pandemic was to leverage more 4% credits because the crunch was so deep. Right. And we put more dollars into those units to bring that that private capital to the market.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: This is showing the same thing, but on a project by project basis with a sample of projects, again, really small x. What you have here is the per unit cost, the blue is the VHDB state funds, the yellow other leverage dollars that are coming in. And so what you're seeing is you're

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: seeing the most expensive types of projects are those

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: rental housing development or often homeownership projects, but that the state investment is fairly equal, whether we're talking all the way over on the right in a shelter bed versus a rental unit versus home ownership. While it is more expensive to build a home than to create a shelter bed, the cost to the state is roughly the same. And so as we're looking at what is their strategy, permanent housing, transitional housing, shelter, well, look at that policy question thinking about what is the cost of the state, what does it take to move these strategies forward and it is pretty steady across the board. Interesting.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And actually kind of higher, that shelter on the left is higher than almost any other investment you're making.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: And it is because there aren't those major sources like the housing tax credits that can

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: come in and help support it. That's a good health conversion.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: Move past this, we've touched on the 4% tax credits, the investments the state put into housing unlocked the source that we were not able to use in the past and will not be able to use as much in the future without state investment continued state investment in housing.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And is that given the changes at the federal level, is that differentiated 9%, 4%, and what we get for it continuing or do you see a change in that coming down? That is

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: a great question for BHFA. I will say that reconciliation package that passed over the summer had some good news on the Low Income Housing Tax Credit front. It actually increased the number of most valuable 9% credits to housing development and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to Vermont. So we have

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: more resources there a little bit, and it has some policy changes around the 4% as well. So it's promising to see the federal government lead into this housing source.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So we're seeing more of a big difference. I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: was gonna say, like, you know, we did Bay Ridge, HUD came, you know, like we

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: got to celebrate that our federal partners were

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: still there and with us, and I see that continuing in certain housing markets and programs, know, that that is still important to this administration.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: One of the positive changes that the Fed's made in the 4% credits was to issue guidance around our campaign called income averaging. What what income averaging meant was that usually with the tax credit unit, you're capped at 60% of median eligibility. With income averaging, they let you go to 80% for some units as long as you had other units that were gonna be affordable at 50% median. So that has broadened the range of people who are eligible for tax credit units. I

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: know you've heard from the Disabilities Council on the road to housing report, and chair, you served on the committee that came up with that report. The HPD has been working with the parents group to help develop housing, develop housing out of the pilot that was initially stood up by the legislature and we're excited to continue to do this

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, we will hope to continue to invest

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: in that. Yeah. I will say we do have an application for the second building at the month of the site. Outbreak. Now, so they're continuing to be active and we've had partnerships between lots of our housing providers and the parent groups around the state or some of the designated agencies because they don't have the real estate experience. So, downstream has been involved in two projects, Wind and Windsor and one CHT and another.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: One small program that we had the pleasure of running with the Community Loan Fund is working with the CTE centers around the state to help provide them capital to get their students out on job sites building housing. And the thing that really helped this project take off was a partnership with the Habitat chapters around the state who have been This is $315,000,000

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: they invested in three years ago. Yeah. Yeah. How much is left of the 15?

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Fair amount. I mean, there's only nine projects out there right now. So but more and more of this CTE centers are getting the idea that is a good source to use.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And this is employing CTE students during the summer mostly, right? No, it's their

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: year round project, but one of the things that the fund is eligible to use is to employ the CTE students in a summer shift.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: So

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: you all know we have a dual mission and recently the Stowe Land Trust brought us a project in Morristown to conserve 150 acres and convert eight vacation homes back to year round residences. And we said that's really exciting. They partnered with downstream on the single family end of it. Six of the homes will be made permanent affordable, which will just be market rate housing. But I think what I wanted to focus on in this part of the presentation is we see the value of shared equity as a great, physically conservative approach that does help build wealth, does get people into home ownership who would otherwise not become homeowners, but also has great potential for the state's investment to grow over time. I walked into the offices of the Champlain Housing Trust last spring and they were advertising at least three homes for sale that we had subsidized some time ago. And I'll just talk about the one in the middle because it's in Essex and I remember clearly what we bought from UVM, actually the HFA bought from UVM what was called Officers Road, the parade ground. Across from the parade grounds, the conservation easement on the parade grounds. It's a permanent open space for that neighborhood and then converted the houses along Officers were going to 60 condominiums, 30 permanently affordable. When we did that back in the early nineties, our investment was about $15,000 per unit. So what you see here is one of those units up to resale close thirty years after originally opened and original purchase somewhere around $90,000 and after details, we had an investment of 15,000 to bring that cost handle about 75 at that time. So today, it has a market value of almost $400,000 and the public subsidy, which represent their estate investment, grew from 15,000 to 170,000 and allowed them to sell it to a new homeowner at 222000 Dollars. And so without us having to put another nickel in, we have done about a little over 1,400 homes like this all over the state. They've been home now to more than 2,100 households because of the recycling of the public subsidy.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And there's also a great profit sharing for improvements, right? Like then you know you're not handing people like the project. People get some of

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: their share their equity with public but if they make improvements to their homes all of that improvements, they get better set of the value of those. We just looked at 55 resales, which happened over about the last year. Our average investment in those homes, which span a whole the time that we've been around was about $27,000 The average growth in the investment when the home was resold was 136,000 The average buyer was in the low 80s and about 83% of media. We think this is one of the things that we think really works well because you don't have to keep investing year after year and I think what this colleague presented at the beginning, we talked about the value of permanent affordability as a policy for the law and the goal is to not displace people. The goal is preserve community wealth here. Obviously, we're just underway with the last few condominiums across from the junior high school and high school in Woodstock. We did a few years ago, we're back again. And in a market like Woodstock without permanent affordability, you you'd invest once to get into somebody in homeownership and then you'd have to keep investing at a deeper level to keep up.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Where our average price now is about $7.50 to 800.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So as we think about what we need to focus on, what we need

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: because our gut these are on the market now for how much? I'm gonna have to

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: get back to you on the specific Yeah. I can't remember, but it's motivated to use. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The photo picture here is of another one of those catalytic projects. Yeah. So it dropped out. Was in Middlebury where the anchor funding for both six single family homes and a 30 some unit rental development is spurring a two fifty minute neighborhood. But as we get into the rest of the presentation, wanted to talk about areas of focus for DHCV and areas of focus for all of you. So we see the need cost containment wherever we can figure out how to do it. We just had a board retreat. We invited in both one of our most skilled and recently retired architects and two builders, along with some other folks just to talk to us about the market and the market forces that they're dealing with. The reality is that, you know, major costs are of new construction or being found in materials and labor. It is a very good thing that people who build housing for us are making more money than they ever have before. But it is a problem for us that it costs so much and that costs over the course of since we did the housing revenue bond have about doubled to build housing. Governor Scott proposed the housing revenue bond. He used to talk about it regularly. We talked about $37,000,000 generating a $200,000,000 investment in 800 homes. And we 37,000,000 today would probably generate an investment in about 300 homes because it's gotten so much more expensive. We are focused on cost containment. One of the things the panelists told us is that we have a severe labor shortage in Vermont and when we are competing for labor, we're competing for labor for people who are building luxury homes. And so until we challenge change that demographic, I think that's why you invest in the CTE program. We're gonna continue to face that as a problem. We have increased pressures on the cost of materials whether they are related to tariffs or the Build America Buy America provisions that come with a lot of federal funds. There's actually talking Washington now and we're part of ethics groups asking them to suspend MAHA for a variety of reasons including that HUD can't move quickly enough on waivers for things that are not made in The United States. It can't be found here, but also because it's just raising costs.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: You just used the term luxury homes. Curious, do you see the distinction between luxury homes and vacation homes or second homes so to speak?

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I'm not good at making that distinction. I know somebody in our office has a family member in the construction trades whose family was asked to get on a home and stove that was gonna cost worth of $30,000,000 Is that a luxury home, the second home or both? Can't tell you, I'm just saying, I was sitting in in the other body a couple years ago and representative Carson said, well, in my neck of the woods, you can't find anybody to build the homes because they're busy building a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: $4,000,000 home down the road from me.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So we we're it's a small labor pool. We have not had growth in it. It's aging. It's a good thing we have, you know, air guns today except everybody having to wear their their shoulders out with hammers, but it's an aging workforce. I don't have any of my friends who built houses in the eighties, nineties, and boss who are my age, and then they don't wanna they're happy to build a cabinet at a slow pace in their garage or their workshop. Right. They don't wanna be counting nails really anymore. Is there Kesha. Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: How closely are you watching with the Fed discussions and interest rates and, like, volatility and unpredictability over the next year?

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: You know, the biggest one of the the biggest policy related to cost of housing is interest rates. Mhmm. One of the things that, again, we get the issue of cost containment at the beginning of the pandemic, construction loans cost around 3%. They got as high as 9%. Mhmm. So if you were building a project and expecting in 2021 to borrow 10% and you got in the ground in '22 or '23 and all of sudden construction loan was 9%, that was a piece of the cost escalation. Mhmm. Obviously, for a first time home buyer, if we could go back to being able to borrow it under 4% instead of that near six, that would be a great thing in terms of people working on the housing. Mhmm.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So A time and and delays are a

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So have morning a number of things here that we'll talk about, appeals, corrective action plans, which I think we just got a report on, what may be possible in terms of regulatory reform. And then finally, rental assistance.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Maybe not today, but I'd love with any documentation you have on appeals recommendations changes that you all would definitely support and advocate for because that I'm trying to understand and get my hands around what just recently was presented to us and also what you'd like to see in that area, maybe not today. It's a public

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And and so on appeals, we are taking it up first in the senate. It's gonna begin in that resources and come to us. We'll have you full time with it. There we heard the words presentation of their recommendations, and then we will also be hearing another lot of people been working and have additional recommendations. So that's your timeouts.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Thanks. Just add to that. Randy. One of the major problems in building housing is the process for approval of permitting. And so any thoughts that you might have to share with us on how can the permitting process be speeded up? What what's happening right now? What are the roadblocks that are in fact tackled towards, and what recommendations would you have on that area? So I'll be talking about the funding project in a minute, and I'll try to address all those issues today offline with you And continue. Or when whenever you have us back in. Right. To speak to first, as we look at costs, whether you're a nonprofit developer or a for profit developer, costs are aligning in the market from what we've seen, from what we're hearing. We do require competitive bidding. We are gonna focus more and more on how do we simplify design, how do we repeat design. A lot of communities want buildings to look like what you see Putney Landing here, which I believe are duplexes. Really nice design. The building below is across from Walmart here in Berlin. It's what's called the double loaded shorter building. It is a simpler design, it is a little less expensive, but a lot less attractive. But less attractive. So one of the dilemmas we have as funders that our partners have as developers and that you have because you have constituents as your constituent constituents usually want the nicer looking product.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But to integrate into the communities they're coming into.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Yeah. Yeah. And if you if you look at the other side of the building, it actually the entryway looks is not quite so plain Jane. But there are other issues around design that are problematic. We have found that housing people who have lots of challenges that the more people share things like hallways and common entrances as opposed to having their own entrances, the more there's opportunity for comfort. So for distressed populations, more expensive design sometimes is called, but we will encourage simple design wherever we can, we're trying to there are ways to break up and make it's like the one on the bottom more attractive, but it does save money.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: You know that I love listening to the architect out of New York City, I think his name is Krishna Chakrabarty who did the spread on how much more New York could build if they let go of you know, some of their regulations, about 500,000 units. One of the cases he makes as an architect is that shared stairwells and hallways actually limit loneliness and isolation, and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: one of

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: the biggest problems we have in the state is that people can die without anybody knowing that they're gone for days.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I mean I think you have to balance that though with the other challenges.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, just wanna say, like, I I don't wanna completely disregard that. I mean, as I to CHT, my husband is the reason we know someone was picked up by ICE, who doesn't have any family. So, you know, I don't want to discount that maybe shared entryways create conflict, but they're also the only way we build community in this day and age.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Essentially community spaces by those entrants.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Completely agree with you. All I was saying is, as we try to house people when you've asked us to in a statute, who have a variety of issues, some of them interacting with their neighbors is more problematic and while you can't create common courtyards and other ways that people either sometimes individual entry way reduces conflict in some circumstances. I know.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think you've seen We need to we yeah. About six minutes. Minutes. Because you're gonna come back. So you have

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: report that you asked DC, I believe, or AR to give you on corrective action plans. What I can tell you that I hear regularly from developers is that it takes twelve to eighteen months to get through getting the approved correction corrective action plan, and that's just too long. This is a site we're now working on in Newport. And so anything we can do that asks that helps AMR speed that process up, I would say six months ought to be long enough, we should be doing it.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Will you be presenting that today to Senate National Resources? Well, I want that committee to hear what you just said.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I mean, I Okay. And yeah. I I would also say to you that the home act had positive impact on increased height and density. This is a building under construction in Waterbury right now. For those of us old enough to remember Rusty Parker was the site of his home. Yeah. Is that W D E V? And the town water initially turned it down and because we passed the homes act on that thing and they looked at the requirements in it. They said, oh, we do have to pull out a building of this gassing and this height. So I'm big on growing vertically wherever we can and doing as much infill development as we can. Yeah. But we

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: won't find out that that's not that high. Is

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: there a capital vertical?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Because I heard South Burlington talking about possibly 14 storey buildings in the U Mall parking lot. I'm not against it, but I'm just curious. Are you as high as

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: we can go? I think I I I do think that there's some room for communities to have debates about how tall, but I have a good friend who's been opposed to tall buildings in Burlington, and I think he's all wet.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: No. This is an issue with the.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Issues. The

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: the tallest building in the state

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: is Rutland at 14 stories or 13 stories? Pretty much. Oh, this isn't like a famous statistic. This is

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I always pass that building and I'm like, there is. We're probably at it.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Yeah. What did that

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean Burlington has 12 story buildings, they're just in valleys more than on hills, so it really depends how you, what height metric you're using.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So regulatory reform, you passed Act 181. I hope that the that's gonna make it easier. I think when we get to the question of appeals, there's lots to be said about that more than I can say in the five minutes remaining. But I think the more we have fights in the permitting process and then restrict the right to appeal Mhmm. With that. What happened in Putney was that the community decided to seek a village designation because they wanted more designated to have more housing in the village. That had to be approved by the regional planning commission who then sent the recommendation to a state body that also approved it. It then spent two and a half years and three years making future to the Supreme Court because a single person has the right to say, I don't think we should have 25 units at that site that the whole community had agreed. The regional planning commission agreed and the state agreed was a great place for Vermont to grow. So I think to get to your question, we need in those kinds of instances where we said this is where we wanna grow to make it harder for individuals.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So we've asked for that now in several spots to green light things once certain permits have been approved on certain funding processes.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: But we

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: have some cleanup to do.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. We we have more

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: to do. We still have to do the hard work of changing hearts and minds. So the building in Greensboro was offered to our partners at Rural Edge. They went through a long period. They got a lot of community opposition. And ultimately, the select board was asked to put it to a town vote, they lost 60 to 40. So the opportunity is gone. Yes. That's what's included.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I guess

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I'm just not sure why something like that goes to a vote. That was

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: a select board's decision. You know, if you But

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: what is the trigger decision there?

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: It was a town building, and the voters said to them,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: don't give don't Don't fill in this town building. Don't fill in town. Leave it out. It's empty still though, right?

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I don't know quite what they're doing with it. Just know the building has lots of issues in it that have been neglected for many years. Yeah. That's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the target.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I want I do wanna talk about the value of rental assistance. I'm sure at some point, you'll hear from Kathleen Burke. Yeah. I heard a member of the other chair and the other body speaking about the need. We are losing ground on the availability of rental assistance in the state. We had three projects that lost 22 project based vouchers and that meant that they could borrow less and right then in order to get those 92 homes built added $1,300,000 into into those three developments because those vouchers were lost. So anything you can do that would stem the loss of vouchers. Well, we're working

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: on the VA as well. Would be deeply appreciated.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I know what I want to the point I'm trying to make here is that it's not just important for people like the woman who is pictured here and testified last year who had had a traumatic had an auto accident that led to a traumatic brain injury that led to becoming homeless and we get a hotels to housing along with the voucher she is we house. That's really important. I'm also saying it has an impact on housing development because when there's rental assistance, a developer can borrow from her and need less of ours.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think we need landlord risk mitigation too.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: There's just

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: only so much control we have over whether or not people will rent and we need to look at that problem. Even if I mean it's easy to take our section eight vouchers away, it's just so underutilized because people are afraid of how entangled they can get in a difficult situation that affects their other tenants.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We agree. Yeah. I'll give

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: you three slides that go to your economic development mission very quickly. We have a program called the rural economic development initiative with grant writing support to small towns and to businesses in small towns, sometimes doing infrastructure, sometimes preparing a building that this one in Bridgewater is having a day care, out of their facility, sometimes helping a business like Maplebrook mozzarella to an expansion through a value added producer grant. We've invested a million dollars. The next time you've seen numbers here of what we've leveraged, it's gonna be pushing the gas of $28,000,000 because we helped a lot of communities apply for disaster recovery permit. So great technical assistance program. We have a small business program for farmers that we work with and you can see the numbers here. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it, but on your way north, those of you go north, can opt. This is at in yeah. Big intersection of Route 2 and Under B. These are folks who would well, for development rights to help them get on their farm, expand their farm, and then did business planning and help them open this wonderful market there. Good return on investment for rural communities and for rural businesses. I will not dwell because of the sun. And then finally, when we do conservation work, we are thinking about the rural economy a lot. Now the Skutney, Kingdom Trails, both were interested in, you know, our support for mountain biking. We helped revitalize with the help of a new nonprofit, Prospect Mountain, which is the second highest cross country skiing facility in the state. It's a ten minute ride from Downtown Bennington. And some of you may have heard the news of our work with your mom adapted last week, but they will now have a permanent home helping veterans and others who are disabled enjoying outdoor sports in their first permanent home. They have adaptive programs both at Sugarbush and at Killington. He based in Yeah. Permanently in Rochester. It's a great for Vermont for veterans as well.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'm in this country.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So just to get back to our pipeline, this is the proposed pool building that CHG talked to you about last week, again, a sort of catalytic investment where we would be involved in some units and market units would also get built.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So few stories now. It's about like seven,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: six, I mean, plus the ground floor. Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, don't get me wrong, huge fan of this project, huge priority, but I have been trying to work out a session on ways we can say when we invest, you cannot keep reducing the number of stories, thereby increasing the cost

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: per unit.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Exactly. Especially they're going above and beyond with additional affordable percentage above and beyond what

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Burlington requires. What I do want to say that you should be aware of is that we are we have, as we as Polly said a few minutes ago, we have the very last ARPA project that will be completed in another sixty days and occupied in Burlington. We have other projects that will continue to get built out through '27, but you're gonna begin to see a big drop off in affordable housing development beyond that. And what I would say to you is that last year, the legislation was able to give us a little over $8,000,000 in one time funding. We had about $12,000,000 through earmarks from our congressional delegation. So our capacity without increased revenue will get decreased and our production will go down and the catalytic impact that we can have in projects like the Hula project, which we have not yet considered but it's coming to us will be diminished. So anything you can do, I understand second half of my innings are never great times to ask for more funding or more revenue, but anything you can do that keeps the momentum forward will will from our perspective be a very positive thing. Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Much much appreciated. We have that bell on our wall. So we will certainly be taking it up soon. Thank you. We'll have you back more to follow. Thank you for that, and thank you for your the the the priorities for this year. We appreciate, and you'll get a line up with many of ours as you already know. So this is really helpful, and we will have you back in a more targeted fashion as a thank you for your feedback.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And I just want to echo how you get into natural resources soon and we talk about density algorithms and bonuses when you're doing affordable housing and environmental development to go upward. There's nothing more environmental and climate forward than building up in places that transportation and infrastructure,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: which the Gullah project does. The

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: last thing, just senator Brock's question about the process. Everything I know about going to court is that it's it's extensive. It takes a long time. So I personally have talked in the past about creating something that New Hampshire has, which is a Housing Board of Appeals, where at six months, the Housing Board has to make decisions. I don't think there's a way for you to mandate how quickly the judiciary moves. So I think you need to look at that. I know that will be highly controversial. But I think we need to say once you go to court, you're in a small

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: court court court.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: An expensive court.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But the LERB didn't say we would keep it to three months or six months. If we're not dictating to them though I don't think we're

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: adding any value. We're beginning that work this week or early

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I would go beyond that and I would look at the part of the process that involves the inspection and approval where I see so often it seems to be sequential rather than simultaneous. I agree with you. Again, as I said earlier, I think how we figure out how to limit when a project can be appealed when it's when we've all agreed. Yeah. This is a place we want to grow would also be very beneficial. But we probably can't get rid of all appeal rights. We can certainly We

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: can certainly have some effect on. Thank you very much. We're gonna we'll switch to Megan, and we'll have welcome back the chamber now. Godfather and Polly thank you so much. Your partnership is just one more pillar that we lean on and go for housing work on so thank you so much.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: To the tallest building in Vermont is It's

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: the greatest congregational church, not the residential. The tallest residential building is in Burlington.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thought you had that white building.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But the tallest by actual height is the one in Rutland.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Oh that's fine. But

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: not the building base to the building top. The amount it is up in the air.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I see it better up in the air.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I know, I'm like yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I like the fact that it's Grace because Grace is in problem isn't it? Yeah great concert there this weekend for those of you who are listening Friday night of all these four seasons.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Good morning. Good morning, Megan. Welcome back. Thank you. Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. Thank you all for having us back. You know, this is not my first time being in this beginning, sorry, I'm adjusting to my new last system, to talk about housing. But I just wanted to say that we really appreciate being able to participate in this conversation. We are not a housing organization. We know there are a lot of housing organizations in the state that you can hear from, but we do represent employers and folks from across the state in lots of different industries and all of them point to housing as a major impediment to their ability to grow in Vermont, to attract the workforce, to retain the workforce. So we have joined this conversation over the last four to five years and hope that I'm able to share a few things today. And I can rely on our great housing organizations in the state to sort of give you data, give me the pictures, what's going on. What I would like to do is just point to some really specific programs that we think are working well, some challenges that we still see, and see if there's progress that can be made this year. If we don't talk about certain things, it doesn't mean we don't support them. You know, I

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: know let's build homes will

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: be adhered, and there are a lot of things that they're working on that we're also supportive of, But just wanted to highlight some things that we've seen recently and feedback that we've gotten from our members. You know, I think first off is that over the last five years with the federal funding that the state has received, there have been some pretty innovative programs that have come through this committee that have come through the state as ways to create housing. I'm not sure that the state would have created these programs without the availability of those federal funds, right? It can take some of that risk away. And I think that that paid off. So first off, I would just say, let's keep that spirit of innovation going. The federal funding is no more. State funding is a challenge, but I think that innovation has showed that the spirit of Vermonters can really create some phenomenal opportunities to create housing. And one that I really want to highlight is VHIP. And I know the department will talk about all of the different metrics of how many units, where, and all of that that Bhip has created. To me, one of the most phenomenal successes of Bhip is bringing new builders into the market. One thing that Vermont has really struggled with is we've seen the number of people involved in home development and home building diminish. We have sort of a strong affordable housing community and a strong luxury housing community, but those folks who can develop sort of the everyday house for our smaller communities, the triplexes, the quad quadplexes, was missing. BHIP has invested in over 500 or 600 different builders to that program and It's a whole range. It's a whole range of people who have gotten into home development through using BHIP as sort of a launching point to take some of that risk away of saying okay what would it what if I turn this one unit? What would I need to know to be able to turn this one piece, one apartment into something that's viable for someone to live in? Know, Jonah Richards, who we all sort of highlight as a great rural housing developer, his first unit was through the BHIP program. So it's pretty exciting to see what is happening through that program, and these small scale developers are coming through BHIP from Bennington County to Franklin County. It's really getting across the state. So that's one piece of the program that I think I really like to highlight because it's hitting such an important piece of our workforce in housing development. And the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: unit price is of course so attractive.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: The unit price is attractive. The base of the buck that the state gets for the investment there is significant. On average 39,000 a unit. Yeah. Yeah. It is going to struggle to keep that program going without it moving into PACE funding. Right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: One type of funds. Again, hopefully something we can deal

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: with the revenue. So we would support AHIP becoming a permanent base funded program so that we can make sure the people are in place to move that forward. In order to make sure that those state dollars who are invested are growing far enough, we still need to look at what's happening, where are the challenges in the regulatory environment, and where are things that I think you all have done well, maybe not being implemented as well as intended, where there may need to be some technical changes. I'm to start with Act 181. We were part of the coalition that supported the passage of Act 181. We were on board from the first group working on the updates to Act two fifty modernization right through the passage in every committee hearing. I can't even imagine how many hours sitting there and believe in the opportunities to move Act two fifty from purely a size based jurisdiction to something that takes into account size and location in order to see more housing get built in smart growth areas and make sure critical natural resources of statewide importance are getting the review that they need. I am worried with some of, as we're seeing how things are playing out, that maybe those legislative intents that I at least saw and I think others, as part of that group saw, going through the process are not playing out as we expected and think there should be some technical corrections made to ensure that this bill does, this act does meet its full potential. Tier one, we're hearing the adoption is lower than expected. At the same time, I know I believe you already heard from the RPCs about some of the challenges they see as they're mapping areas that maybe those growth areas that are being looked at to be smaller than what they saw. I think the intent of the mapping of tier one is that every community has access to these

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: examples. That was written into the law.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: And when we're saying how do we ensure that every community is treated equitably, it doesn't mean we add regulation to communities so that those other communities are equally as regulated. It's giving all of those communities opportunity. So if folks aren't looking at tier one a as an opportunity, understanding why, what are the holdups, what we're hearing is a lot of hesitation around inheriting existing act two fifty permit conditions.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: The municipality.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That each community would have to take on monitoring and overseeing those and I've heard that the reason they aren't is because they don't want to do that and so how can we help?

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: Right

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: and South Burlington would like to come in and

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: talk about that but also

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't want it to be that we're back to the developer litigating Act two fifty with the LERB and managing their own municipal process also. Tier 1A was supposed to end conversations about the land use in those areas, but that land use is housing, commercial, economic. And that is

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: a key point too. I feel like that house, the commercial industrial piece is not getting enough attention. And the whole point of those 1A areas is that it should be places where people can live and work and regional hubs. And if we're only thinking about 1A in terms of housing and not thinking about, okay, where is that part of the town that may be next to where the housing is, that may be next to the commercial center where there may be industrial growth? I think we need to do more to be looking at not just where we've historically grown, but where do we need to grow over the next twenty years and be open to letting towns be more part of that conversation. At the same time, you know, hearing that one fee may not be taken up. I think understanding again where is the concern for the communities, just that, you know, a project that size, they would prefer to have the statement put on. As long as it's not, we don't want that housing in our community, so we're gonna say no to 1B. We would support, which we did two years ago, this 1B moving from an opt in to an opt out, and that if communities do not have take the 1B, their priority housing projects are still allowed in those areas. I think we should recognize that

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: 1A is going to be your commercial and economic corridors and 1B was supposed to be where we get a lot of housing and if that doesn't happen our bills

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: were not affected. And this was a huge bill that went through a lot of change in the last two weeks. It should be expected that we are going to need technical correction to say how do we make sure

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: technical correction. This is a big technical. Opt in out popped out as a big technical correction.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Tier three, we also need to ensure we're really talking about natural resources of statewide significance. We know we've just seen one draft, we're expecting another draft, but I think that first draft had a lot of people rightfully really concerned, especially in our rural areas, where you've created a road rule that's supposed to incentivize building close to the road, And then you put tier three close to the road, you've basically told that area you're in if you're next to the road, you're in if you're away from the road, you're in regardless. We have lost the incentive. In tier three,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: in a no go zone, not in Right.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Well, tier three, not in no go, but it is automatic. Well, it's not even supposed to be automatic. The other piece is, you know, I heard plenty of times during conversation, tier three is not we are not looking for hunting camps here. That's not the target. Mhmm. 200 square feet is the the trigger. I don't know a hunting camp that is smaller than 200 square feet. So I would say that is a direct move away from the legislative intent there.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Karen Warren said a really compelling job. It

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: feels like he has some good maps that they can show up where that concern is. We are expecting a new draft. I hope the new draft addresses those challenges.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: They have had public comment.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: They have one round on the first draft. No, I another But round this I think there were a lot of pretty big questions between the first draft and the second draft. I think stakeholder input is going be really important to make sure this gets right and I hope that that timeframe that they're under is enough to get that input and to make sure that this is rolling out well. The other, the other thing I want to highlight is we are hearing concerns, from people who are involved in development, in the state about how the district coordinators, how it is to work with them. Certainly when we say that part of Act two fifty's problem is reputational, it's because there can be some adversarial relationships. We supported a five person professional board specifically because I was under the impression that there needed to be more support to do this sort of deferred maintenance on the training to ensure that this program was being administered fairly and predictably across the state. I'm hearing it's getting worse, not better. That's fairly conservative. Right. That isn't necessarily within the legislative purview to deal with. Mean, that's a

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: cultural issue, but I

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: think it's something that needs to be raised and it's something that we are raising as well. Right. Every time

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I hear about something, it should mean that we're spending time clarifying in favor of our original intent. So we've heard that with subdivisions and all kinds of things that really just create more work for us or delay and deny the intent of what we'd already passed and that's very frustrating.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: And I think you know some of what we see is around redevelopment projects too that can be especially frustrating if someone is doing a redevelopment project rather than building in a greenfield. The state should be saying, how can we

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: help you? How do we

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: get this done? And roadblock after roadblock, cost after cost are being incurred that have folks saying to me, why why am I doing this? This is such a huge amount of money for a redevelopment project. I could go to New Hampshire, do this project in a greenfield, no problem. And it's challenging for me to keep trying to say no, no, no, stay in Vermont, commit to Vermont, we want you here, we want that redevelopment project here. I think cultural shift, especially around redevelopment projects, is going to be important. You know, when we

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: talked about the cleanup plan that Gus brought up, it's based on the name, we've got

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: to be encouraging that work to happen. Absolutely, but

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I just want to say in terms of your concerns how is the chamber registering these concerns with the

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: I have registered these concerns with the LERP so we're working on setting up a meeting with some folks in the administration and some of the developers that we've heard from and inviting them to participate in that on the the cultural piece especially and how things are going.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Can you give just a couple of more specific examples of what you're referring to? Because in in terms of the nature of the problem, like a specific kind of problem, maybe you're Right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Where where the redevelopment might be, and then Kesha has

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: a question.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Yeah. So the do you mean, like, with the relationship challenges, right? Well, of the this and maybe the a re development.

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Okay, exactly. I just wanted to have do a feel for what exactly that means? It means,

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: you know, getting sort of pretty terse responses, getting incomplete letters when you've put in a lot of work after incomplete letter, after incomplete letter. You know, when we're looking at some of the documents that people have showed to us, getting into minutiae that seems like outside of the scope of what we're supposed to be looking at before things even get to the commission, right, where the commission's supposed to be able to make some of these determinations it's trying to get through to the staff and we know there are there's been work to address this by bringing in roving coordinators to help with the backlog and we're just not hearing that that is helping. And I'm not sure folks would want me to get into really specifics, but on tape here, happy to send you some of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the specifics that we've heard from you. So it meant the

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: district coordinators were

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: hopefully helping things be easier and better coordinated and more consistent around the state preparing to go to the district commission, is that right? Yeah, So that would be an easier process and more consistent process with commissions. You're excited about and then if you just give Randy a a redevelopment example and then we'll

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: go to Kesha's question. Project, and this is a Subaru dealership in Rutland who is redeveloping a contaminated site

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: for a

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: lock to have a larger dealership. They will say car dealerships provide a lot of revenue to the state, and so taking a redevelopment project and slowing it down by two years is a lot of lost revenue, as well as leaving a bladed property undeveloped and getting folks who are pretty large supporters of their community frustrated about why are we here?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, I mean, I just have

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: to touch that two years. I mean, has only been

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: in action for six years. No.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Is the learning. Right. So here's the not What I'm hoping is that that relationships change, right? As we have five professionals here, that some of this work, and I know how much work they have on their plates, but then some of this work is getting down to, okay, let's make sure we all have the same understanding of how this criteria should be interpreted.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Applied into good level. Let's go to the Okay, because you've got I know,

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: and I got a few, I got big things to get through. Yeah, I just want to say,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I will, but I don't like having to speak to our intent, but I have written letters district coordinators when they are clearly not following a bill we had just passed, a law we had just changed, and the spirit of what we've tried to accomplish. I think we all need to be talking to our districts and I think we should have some of our district coordinators and district commissioners in because there is certainly a minority report as well from a lot of district commissioners who feel like they want things to move faster and I can bring some of those. Kristen

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Sultan who's now on clerk was always like the standout district coordinator. I mean anytime I would hear So, you know, I can see it. She will be, you know, when that time is allotted, she will be a great person to be doing this training. Okay. Okay. The home act, there's a couple of things that have been raised. The definition of served by water and sewer not being applied consistently. So a town where water is on one side of the street, sewer is on the other side of the street, saying you're not served by water and sewer because it's on the other side of the right of way. So maybe some clarification there that served by water and sewer does not mean it has to be on the same side of the street of Newark development.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Oh, no. That's a new bill.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Misalignment between municipal plans and zoning districts. So the zoning districts that have come online, municipal plans can take a long time to get through the process, so there's some worry about appeals to a project that meets the zoning district, but doesn't meet the municipal plan yet because the municipal plan hasn't been brought up. So maybe a correction there. I have

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: some things in wet molded here. I'm gonna honestly municipal plans are revisited all the time on a very regular basis so it

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: could be one year it could

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: be absolutely.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We have seen in municipal plans where they've gotten extremely stuck around what does the legislature mean, what's in our plan, do we need it, like it's just not that simple. That's another area where

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: people And are we have developers that we can have come in to sort of

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: talk more

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: about that. Impact fees? Yes. When you all are investing a lot of money into allowing housing to be built and then a community adds an impact fee to that unit of housing. It's sort of un it does. It does.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Know an unregulated area. I can't at the moment with me. Yeah.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: And I know towns are under extreme pressure. Right? It's very hard to get the the development the infrastructure, the development they need, and that's why I think passing things like Chittenden was incredibly important to give new tools to communities. But we have to align house housing policy that helps especially when it's a per bedroom Yeah. Fee. You're really hitting that work with family.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I'd like to look at a square footage fee over a per bedroom fee that if they're going to have a pet fee that not be

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: per bedroom. Also, I mean, question as we begin to look at this, what have you done with VLCT to raise this and have this conversation? Guys know much. Not okay. This is a live situation. I appreciate it. I'm just curious.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Yeah and this was a newer one that came to my attention as you know we're prepping for the session so.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I'm very concerned with the lurb and the direction it's going. We need some guardrails or to extend the rule making time and extend the extensions because I just the trajectory from the messages I'm getting to

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: people I respect is alarming.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: And I, again, I don't want to undermine the work that they're doing. I know they have a ton on their plate and it is a huge bill. They have a ton of direction they've been giving and I think two years in, a technical correction to say, okay, we want to make sure tier one works. We need to do these things because if our pieces don't work, whole thing falls apart.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The exemptions were meant to be easy on roads to the tiers. That was the intent when we passed them. And there's, we think you would have to see a very good reason to depart downward from the exemptions that we created. And I hope they realize that. That was absolutely the intent.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: And we'll have to figure out how to support communities who are saying like, oh, I don't

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: know about this. Right. And support communities that are saying we're all in and we're still struggling with this, right? Like that's how Burlington. Well and we still have

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: these concerns too I mean in terms of what we can take on board.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Professional services availability cost for our small developers like those ones who are coming out through VHIP it can be really hard to get a wetlands professional, engineer professional, to put you on their docket, right? Like everything else, these are limited professions in Vermont, and when you have a project of 150 units that you're going to review or a project of four units that you're going to review, that four unit project can get down on the list. And so our small developers can be waiting a really long time and putting out money to get a professional opinion so they can submit that opinion to DEC to be told, you don't need, you know, you're not in London or you don't need to go

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to country's letter. But aren't our Rutland now pretty clear? They're not as bad as

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: our Rutland. No. No. That's current to be right now. Yeah. Absolutely not.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It's not just small developers. It's small farms. It's a lot of people were told, by the way, get another wetland delineation because yours is five years out of date. That's tens of thousands of dollars just casually even just being requested without

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: to be told like you're all set you've had to put out the money that is so if it's an opportunity especially for our small

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: guys so even that we don't have jurisdiction over the wetlands, I would encourage you to add your concerns to SMRE's scope.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We I would love for us to get ANR in here to talk about concurrent and streamlined and shorter permit timeline. And

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: I met the new commissioner of DEC and I think she's very open to these new provisions. Okay, last one, big one. So the HOME Act put in some pieces there about, you know, in terms of deed covenants, HOA bylaws, moving forward, you can't restrict these things. But everything that's still in place is still in place. And there's a lot of these restrictions in place across Vermont of saying this HOA will not allow any ADUs, any small, you know, small development units to be added or, you know, this neighborhood, all 70 homes have heat restrictions that say no AUs, nothing like that can be added. And towns that still find ways to put in exclusionary zoning. We have a proposal that doesn't interfere with the rights of those HOAs, but says, or towns or neighborhoods, if you are applying for state funds, whether it's, you know, to upgrade your wastewater system or to get more infrastructure dollars, that there is, especially when these are competitive in their score, that you lose points on your score if you have restrictions that don't allow new housing, that don't meet the state's clear goals of housing. To go back to our intent. Right. So it's probably not as simple as I'm saying it, but that's that's the goal. I live in Jericho. I live in a neighborhood that has an HOA that says you can't build anything else here, and there is ample space if somebody wanted to put ADUs in, if somebody wanted to say, I could put three units here or I could put four units here, or as a community we said, instead of a rec field here, this would be a great place for 12 condos. We can't do that under our HOA and I think it would take us having to say you know what, when we need to get our wastewater system fixed, those state dollars that can help are not available to us to get some of the folks to I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: think this is actually terrific. I think it's a great proposal and I would I think as we prep for that kind of testimony obviously we want know how many HOAs there are in the state and how many Yeah,

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: think those have to register with the Secretary of State so I'm thinking we can find that. I know from my I'll say my Jericho Sherpa who has taken me around the town. Such a great term. There are about 2,000 households in Jericho and 500 have restricted deeds or each other under strict legislation. And they're in places where we're saying, this is where we can grow. Like, well, no, legally, we can't. So if this is, you know, and this is indicative of what's happening around the state, though Jericho has a particular reputation for same note housing over the years that we're trying to change, we're trying to move past that but I think something like this Nicer than me. In my opinion,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: it says you cannot restrict ADUs. You cannot prohibit in home childcare centers. There are other bills out there. You cannot restrict gardens. You cannot Right. You cannot.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We remember this one was

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: just clotheslines. Right, yeah. The

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: line to dry clothes which was restricted in many of these housing associations. Yeah. I think this is terrific and I think we would definitely

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: We be taking do care about appeals. We can come back and track that. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And we will be. It's that I think, I don't know if you were in here, but we're gonna we are gonna take it up first, then it's gonna go first, and SNRE is gonna start, and that comes to us.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Excellent. Thank you very much.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well and thank you for your work on this continued work. I mean, as I don't know if Randy and Tom know that you've been working on these Act two fifty eight pieces right from the beginning. Since previous

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: jobs. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Which is great. No. No. It's terrific. So thank you for

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: your continued support and your support.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Thank you for having me. You know, happy to stay engaged throughout the session.

[Pollaidh “Polly” Major (Director of Policy & Special Projects, VHCB)]: Great. And we really appreciate that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and language on this you've given me, I think.

[Megan Sullivan (VP, Government Affairs, Vermont Chamber of Commerce)]: Yes. The on the camera.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Did weigh in on Peter's request to support Mueller to extend their authority, but that's gonna

[Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: be another discussion. Okay. Yep.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It's another discussion. Think that more loans better, but I'm not cute. Thank you. I think until Let's Grow Homes shows up, let's take a two minute break. Let's Grow Homes is supposed to start at 11:25

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: if they're not here. So we'll start as soon as

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: they show up. So don't go too far, David.