Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: Okay,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: great. So welcome. This is Senate Institutions. Today is Friday, February 13, and we are here today. We have two items. We're gonna first hear from folks from Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition and then hear from Vermont Natural Resources Conservation District. So it's a good day to appreciate what is happening physically in Vermont. So, who is going first? Is it? Us and me? Okay.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: So, we can sit there and

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: then we'll we'll identify ourselves. Wendy Harrison, Windham District. So, hopefully, what some of the world will talk about is in my district.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: It should be.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Rob, I'll

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: get Bennington District. Joe Major, Windsor, Senator Russ Ingalls, Essex District, Northeast Kingdom, we like to call it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Is actually very similar in terms of housing and geography to the central part of Windham County. You find that in the school redistricting committee. Okay. And And

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: there's another fun fact.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: We're not cousins.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: We don't know that. Or you probably do.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. So, Mary, if you wanna just, introduce yourself for the record. Okay.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: My name is Mary Major. I'm with the Windham and Windsor Housing Trust based in Brattleboro, Vermont. Thank you so much for having us today. So, the Housing Trust is a member organization of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition. This group is comprised of long standing non profits of businesses of volunteer groups across the state that bring VHCV funds into our communities for long lasting impacts. You go to the next slide. Today's ask is to fully fund VHCPs statutory share. So on this slide you can see a lot of impacts and a lot of numbers and how these funds really get funneled into communities to make permanent differences. Throughout this presentation I'm going to kind of talk generally, but you can see more information on the slides. But I do want to share how deeply critical it is that we as implementers, and you all as policymakers, see the intertwining nature of both the housing and conservation missions. Put it simply, as human communities living in the landscape, one that is changing drastically, that's experienced flood, smoke, and last, some data's question, wildfire. Considering one within the other is absolutely crucial. I also wanna highlight the value of the perpetuity within these funds and these projects. In conservation, that's what a farm, a trail system, a stream that's protected forever in housing, that's a safeguard against gentrification, and it creates a resource that's available not only for a few years, but for our community members to access even decades after we've made that initial investment. Today I'm going to give a tour of our region and projects that we've recently completed and projects that are upcoming just to put a fine point on how these funds are used. So first up is Alice Coldway Drive in Putney. This is an extremely exciting project. It's 25 new permanently affordable homes, and I think that this project does a really good job of exemplifying a few things. It it shows the variety of projects that VHCb funds. It shows how VHCb has stayed power in partnership in projects. So first of all, in this picture, can see some green space there that are kind of chopped up into into squares. That's community gardens and farmer's market space. BHCb funded that. So the group now owns their land that they are on, and and so they are permanently protected on that space. BHCb also funded our Alice Highway Drive apartments, those two buildings, which are now under construction. The staying power was that we got the permits in 2022, and for the last three years have been stuck in appeals and finally have

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: are

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: are well underway in in construction and excited to open the applications on Tuesday. And we'll have a big party this summer. I just also added a few more details here about how some of these units are set aside for folks exiting homelessness, and then it also exemplifies how this is workforce housing. The income eligibility of these goes way higher than a lot of people really contemplate generally. Next page.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And I just yeah. The more It's been

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: We

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: got a committee. 2022,

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: what what was the holdup with planning and zoning?

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: Planning and zoning, it was beautifully aligned with the town plan and zoning. There was no variance. It was a neighbor who filed an appeal, two sets of appeals, and they both went to environmental court, Supreme Court. And then, again, with the jurisdictional jurisdictional opinion for us. Kathy Bayer

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: from Ever North and Co. Partners with Windham District. So unanimous decision of the DRV, very solid support, not only the DRV, but the entire town. One neighbor appealed the DRV permit. We went all the way to the supreme court of that. And then, unfortunately, we needed a jurisdictional opinion on that we were exempt from f 50 because we're we're your priority housing project, and you are able to appeal a j o. So right back, we went. It was kind of a double hitter.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: Is the neighbor still there?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. He lives in a senior substance.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: I just I just ran and took her on a hiking trail.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. And let me add to that. So I was on Senate Economic Development Housing when that was happening. We were going through the changes to Act two fifty and we, legislators on the, on the, committee tried and we asked, for a way for when a town is so obviously fine with, with the development that it not have, have to go through that the developer not be able or Yeah, not the that either it's good. New Hampshire has a system where they get penalized if they lose but their attorney said, no, we can do that. And then they said, we're on the constitution requires that you have an So appeal I still think we can move the appeal process down to the town level, but that's a future thing, but no, we were unhappy about that. And I'm glad that, so this is a poster child for that.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: Just out of curiosity, what was her issue?

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: Was a technicality. She was cited in some articles talking about her feelings on it, but it's a technicality. Right.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: She used a technicality, but what she said was she didn't like that as the entry into Putney because it is one of that was one of the things that she said in the papers. And then and she ran for office and didn't win. I mean, was so clear that community supported Windham District. Do

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: you know the actual cost per unit, not what you're going to write the unit out at, but what it actually cost you with all your appeals and so forth, per unit, this cost.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: I can't give you the per unit cost, Kathy might be able to get it off the top I of my know that throughout that, because of this delay and at this particular time in history, costs really escalated

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: during those It is just a piece of trying to create affordable housing is very difficult through the process, and so that's why I was curious to know what it actually cost you per unit to build the individual. The delay, the difference in the delay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, It's the delay increase in the cost. So that would be if if you do get those numbers.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: And appeals are expensive because we have to have legal representation in the appeal processes. It all adds to the cost.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: So, next slide. Next is Holton Home in Rattleboro. So this is a beautiful historic structure in Brattleboro in a wonderful neighborhood. We're really excited about redeveloping it. It's been used since the end of 1800s until a few years ago was a senior living home, and then that operation scaled back to to one of their other sites. And so we're really excited to turn it back into housing. And what makes this one really special besides the gorgeous nature of it and the neighborhood itself, up to five units will be set aside for folks who are individuals living with developmental delays and their in home shared living providers. We were kind of inspired by this very local group of aging parents of children with developmental disabilities and really wondering what the next step was for them because there's very few options. There's a named six hundred deficit homes across the state. This is, you know, five is not 600, but it's a it's a step, and so we're really excited to be moving forward with that. Hopefully breaking ground this fall. Just wondering.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: Do you know, are you gonna are your renovation costs gonna trigger you full compliance? So if you if you

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: It's not a change of use.

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: Right, it's not a change in use, but if your cost for renovations exceed a certain percentage of value, then you're required to bring the building into full compliance with current standards. So I don't know whether you put that back

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: in will

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: be a pretty thorough it will be a pretty yeah. Thorough

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: You will have to have an elevator. You will have to bring it into compliance with all the current energy standards.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: Yeah. We've done a lot of feasibility work. We've started

[Unidentified committee member (likely Joseph "Joe" Major or Sen. Russ Ingalls)]: I mean, I'm in favor of reuse. It's just sometimes our rules work against us to basically be able to reuse the existing facilities. Mhmm.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: And luckily, we've gone through

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: the feasibility. And that's what Windsor specializes in too, is rehab, I think. We've done a lot of older ability, which keeps the character of the community intact. So, that's a benefit to the community that we don't measure, but it's tangible.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: Next slide please. So the next one is going to be 316 South Street in Springfield. This is an exciting project that we just finished up. It's a brand new modular home, a single family shared equity home, which is just new and exciting and kind of playing to our strengths of both shared equity and housing development. And this family, you can see they wrote a nice note about what this means to them. But this family had been impacted by flooding a few years ago and then had to move to a third story walk in where they required visibility. And so now they're living in this highly energy efficient home, which they own, which is thoroughly accessible. So just really big impact makes a lot of difference. And it won't just be affordable for them since it's in the shared equity program. That initial investment rolls over in perpetuity without additional taxpayer funds. Next slide, please. So this is a really exciting and transformative redevelopment. So the Chalet, we purchased in 2020 on an emergency timeline in response to COVID and created permanent supportive housing there with the intention of redeveloping the site before creating more housing in the future. We're really excited finally to be at the phase where we're moving forward with that plan. The full vision is 70 homes on this site. We're gonna start with phase one, which there is a 31 unit multifamily housing building in the back of the lot. The current residents will be relocated there, so with housing retentions. And then we'll have eight single family homeownership opportunities, all shared equity, another multifamily housing building and some townhouse, like a row of townhouses. And then we'll also be able to preserve this really iconic structure of the chalet, which looks like eight chalets. It's named after the very just iconic architecture. So it's workforce, it's supportive housing, it's accessibility, it's traffic safety. In creating this design, we brought together residents on the site and residents in the neighborhood to name what their priorities were, and they called out that they would like increased accessibility, they would like pedestrian safety, and they'd also like access to green space. So that's all those we were able to incorporate into the design and create this really transformative new neighborhood vision, which includes new public transportation access. And we'll be breaking ground on it this summer. It was also named as a vital project in the Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategy and also just received a congressionally delegated spending, so just really exciting project. Next slide. Bricks and mortar are really important and last for generations. This is a historic princess. She is an openly trans woman of color. She grew up in an abusive environment. She came to Brattleboro for a new start to create a new community, and she moved into this home on Ellie Street, not first, or redevelopments. We did not just redevelop this home. This home was redeveloped many decades ago, way before way before I was on the scene here. But it exists still. It exists in that affordability, and so she can access that apartment and create this new safe community. As you can tell, it's really been life changing. And I as I drive by, which I do very often, I see her with her neighbors just, like, laughing and creating this new community space, and it warms my heart. I I really love it. Next page. So thank you for your strong support for VHCb and again, at the Statutory Share. This is a celebration this July of Central and Main in Windsor, and I think that it puts a fine point on you could see Gus there representing VHCP, but you can also see a ton of other people. None of these projects are funded by a single source. None of these projects just take one person. It takes so much partnership and the VHCb funds through their partnership and leveraging all these other fund sources make it all kind of come together and possible. So thank you very much, and I'll close it off there.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you for your work. It's wonderful. Anybody else have any questions?

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: No.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Into thinking. So we have Stealing. Is it my teacher?

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: Chair Hannah. Reggier. Reggier.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Oh, and this is the Voltriq Common Lands.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Yeah. So, my name's Sandra McGeer. I'm the chair of the board of Bull Creek Common Lands. We're a nonprofit. We're an all volunteer organization, and Robert Plunkett, my colleague on the board, is there as well. So, we are here obviously in support of the HCV funding. We are grateful recipients. Our most recent project, which you see a beautiful image of here, is the conservation of some land in the headwaters of the Bull Creek, and that has been in process for about three years and finally came to completion in November 2025, so just a few months ago, really. Okay. Let's see. Next slide. Beautiful. I need to go there. It's in my vision. You should definitely come. Is a different view of the same pond, and this is this is this one six acre pond is part of a large 20 acre complex of wetlands in the in the headwaters area. There's also vernal pools, and there are diverse wetlands. There's forested wetlands, there's open wetlands, so they all hold different niches in our environment. So I just wanna I'll talk about our budget a tiny bit since we're talking about money. So again, we're an all volunteer board. Our total project cost was $950,000 VHCB granted about a third of that, dollars 315,000, which was split between the majority came to us for acquisition costs and some associated costs, and Vermont Land Trust also received some direct funding for the conservation easement that's on this three forty one acres. We all we had some land donated and some sold out of value, so that was another third or so of the budget, and the remaining third was made up of one, two, three, four, five, six, six different foundation grants and a bunch of individual donations from the community and from their field as well. So, the next slide shows the context, and this is a watershed map of the state. The Bull Creek flows north into the Saxons River, which flows into the Connecticut River, And this area is in the

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Southern

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Vermont Piedmont, and it's an area that has been identified as being critical for conservation by various organizations and entities. So, it's in one of the Nature Conservancy focal areas, and this specific forest block that we're working in, it checks all of the highest priority boxes of Vermont's conservation design. So, highest priority interior forest block, connectivity block, surface water, riparian areas, and riparian connectivity. And there's also a number of rare and endangered species, and probably more than we've discovered so far. So, next time we'll zoom into the watershed itself, then you'll see the area outlined in pink is this project. So, it was three separate parcels. It bridges the Townsend in Athens town line. And you the the pond is the pond that we were looking at in the in the photo. So that is really the head the body of water at the headwaters of the whole little creek, which flows to the East and then to the north. And you'll see there's also the forested wetland in the middle and the open wetland in the Southwest there. You'll see also a new section of trail that's connecting an old road that ran along the Bull Creek out to another old road in Townsend. So we're able to provide connectivity for hikers who had been using that already but couldn't make it around the Beaver Pond Complex on an actual road surface. The other thing I guess I'll point out is that what's outlined in green is also Bull Creek Common Lands Conserved land, the community forest that we conserved with the HCV support in 2022. That's great. It's a beautiful area. It is a beautiful area. Yeah. So the next few slides, I just wanna go through some elements of the community impact. There's really been a a ripple effect from our organization being able to purchase and conserve this land. It's land that people in the community have had access to for generations for hunting, for exploring, for nature observation, and what we've seen happening when so these three separate parcels went on the market separately, and what we tend to see is that when larger acreage goes on the market, it either gets bought by, like, a commercial logging venture or which is not necessarily bad for the community, but also private, out of state kind of trophy home builders, and so that was definitely what was happening with at least one of these lots, and it's just really gratifying to know that like, we will not post this land. People will continue to have access. We have a lot of support from the hunters who have hunting camps nearby, as well as the people who are, you know, ecologists and biologists to know the value of the wetlands and the landscape there. And the next slide just shows a quick image of the trail. It doesn't look, this is the old road actually. We'll finish completing the trail in this coming spring. We do have a lot of moose and other animals wandering around our trails as well. It could be any number of animal prints that I threw up there.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Well, it's just the next slide sort of addresses where we're working in the landscape and how we're aligning with the different planning objectives in the towns that we're working with. Both Townsend and Athens have a town plan, but no zoning, and we're working in the areas that are designated resource protection areas. This image shows that a house lot that had been cleared before we bought this parcel from a lumber company, and so this could have potentially been a house, but not one that anyone in the local community could have afforded, and it would have involved building a very long road to get to a site that had a view of the Headwaters Pond, and we could have imagined that posted signs could possibly have gone up afterwards. So it's lovely to know that this will remain unfragmented and open to the public. That's great,

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: and you were

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: able to address that pretty quickly, probably, because sometimes those purchases can happen pretty fast.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Yeah, we were lucky there was a neighbor of this parcel who let us know that you chatted with someone from the lumber company who said that they were, you know, they were in here to flip this parcel, they were gonna finish logging it, and they cleared a house site, and like, thinking about subdividing, weren't sure yet. And so, we were able to get in and chat with them before it went on the market. And, I mean, the details of the we're always doing these things where like, we had a purchase and sale contract that needed to be backed up by an appraisal because we have certain, like, obligations of the land trust to not pay more than appraised value for land. So we went through all of that, and, we didn't know it was gonna work out, but it was a good day. Thank you. Good for all of us. Thank you. Did you have a Nope. Field trip. So of slides are just sort of about this ripple impact and what it's allowed the community to do in reciprocity for the land. So this is people standing around looking at a ditch, which was created by That's what

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: we did when we went, right? Our ditches are gorgeous.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: But the soil that had been in that ditch ran off into the Bull Creek and out into the Saxons River, created some saltation somewhere because the loggers who had done work last on the property left without putting in water bars. And so we were able to go in, and this is showing the same view looking down with water bars in place to try to retain what was left of the topsoil. This is NRCS folks who helped us with this project, so even once we had a purchase and sale contract in place, the NRCS folks were able to come in and start helping us with the restoration work, and that was two and a half miles of horse roads that we've restored and going into our second spring, it's in good shape. And the next view is showing what the house plot looks like after it's grown in for a year, and we're doing some work protecting hardwood seedlings that are growing up naturally so that the deer don't browse them and they get a good start to regrow this area. So, we're keeping an eye, we're doing a lot of management work with invasives and tree protection and trying to get the buffers going again to protect these wetlands that really act as sponges in the headwaters of the Gold Creek, has flooded several times, that's made it up in the last several years. So this won't stop the flooding, but it will do a lot to hold water when we get those massive storms. And the beavers themselves, this is the beaver channel, but the beavers themselves do a lot of that work for us. The next slide shows some historic pictures of the property. So, this whole area is now available as the Turtle Lot Lot, which and the Turtle Lot or Turtle O family had multiple homesteads in this area from seventeen nineties to the eighteen eighties or nineties. And their name, like, remained the patch of land. We're gonna name the trail after their family. They were French Huguenot refugees and were teamsters and amazing stone builders. The stone wall is six feet tall, and this is one of their wells. So there's a state archaeological site designated now, and it's part of our conservation easement to protect the gerbilogic legacy as well. Then this last piece of impact is just it's like what lives there. This is this is the land. It's spectacular. It's remote. All of these more than human beings are thriving, and we hope that they can continue. And we also just hope that a lot of local people will find joy coming across this fan of rose begonias looming or the chestnut sided warbler nest and many, many more, the pair of gray foxes that we caught on the wildlife cameras. Those constituents are grateful as well with the HCP funding.

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: We'll give them a great number of facts. So

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: this is just where I will leave it. It's it's some of the other community voices. We've done some outreach and asking the local communities to let us know what they love about their neck of the woods and also if they have questions or concerns about conservation. And these are some folks that both indicated were okay to share anonymously. But a lot of alignment in wanting to preserve the beauty and the land for it on safe and providing a balance of recreation and, like, wilderness experience. I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: didn't know that bald eagles were not common because I see them a fair amount on the

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Canadian species list for a

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: long time. Well, mean, in the country, I I was aware of that, but I just I guess I didn't know in Vermont that they went away and then they came

[Mary Major (Windham & Windsor Housing Trust)]: back. Yeah.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: I think they've seen AT there was a there was a pepigrapha that pretty much, yeah, decimated them. Yeah. I remember growing up.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. I remember that too. Yeah.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So it works, actually. When

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: you try to help, like, life wants to live. Right? All these animals and plants are doing everything they can

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: too. Well, is wonderful. Thank you very much.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Thank you. Thank you for your time and thank you for considering funding the HCV in the full amount. Now did we fund it in the full

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: amount last year? I think we did, but I think we might have done it with ARPA money or Yeah, full funding last year. But that was the first year for a while, I think. No, I think that is correct. Okay, thank you. So hopefully we can make it a trend, but it's

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: not there yet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hello,

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: I am Kim Fitzgerald, the CEO of Crickett Eagle Square, and a little bit about Cathedral Square, we have 28 communities in Chipman, Franklin, and Grand Isle Counties, and those 28 communities, almost all of them, had funding from VHCV. We're a little bit older than VHCV, so not all of our projects, but since when things started from beyond, go beyond these, as everybody stated previously, we absolutely need those funds to be able to build our housing. And we also really liked and with the Housing and Conservation. We love being able to have walking paths and piping trails, and especially because we serve mostly those 55 in Boulder, and we have S. S. Which is a big component is that wellness. So again, we are very happy about the E. Again, we are happy that the Governor's Budget has statutory amount in it, but I would say we need more, as would happen last year, I understand the budget constraints. But Cathedral Square has 1,100 units of housing, which serves about 1,300 people, and we today have 1,300 people on our waiting list waiting to to get in. It's absolutely crisis. We will celebrate our fiftieth anniversary next year, each square room, and I say I could build tomorrow what it's taken us fifty years to build and not even meet the need I'm seeing today on our business. So that's a little bit on the housing side, but what I really wanted to talk with you all today about is on the programming side, and specifically as it relates to those exiting homelessness. So we have created a program called HIP, or Housing Incentive Program, and I want to give a little background. Cathedral Square has always been serviced and rich. We have always housed people exiting homelessness, but we didn't really track it much in our early days because it didn't really matter much to us. We've always served underserved, low income folks. We are a nonprofit, but in 2016, the governor put a mandate that anybody receiving public funding needed to house 15% of their portfolio needed to be coming from homelessness. And so at that point, we started tracking it and we started those coming from homelessness on our waiting list. And so today we have over 200 people in our housing that has come from homelessness. And I suspect it's even higher than that because of course people who, before we started tracking, also come in. And we do have people who live with us for forty years. So this is about permanently affordable housing for the long term. So what we started hearing on the ground is that our staff were saying, We need some more support here. What I didn't say is when that governor's mandate went into place, there was no funding that came along with it. So it meant no extra services, nothing for the housing to help support housing those funding from homelessness. And so even though we had always done it, this was, of course need subsidies, so it really does start to concentrate some because not all of our properties have project based subsidy. And the other thing we started to look at is our evictions. So in a year and a half period of time, we had 19 evictions started. I will tell you, not all of them ended in eviction, but for Cathedral Square to have 19 evictions started in a year and a half is huge for us. I've been with Cathedral Square twenty six years, and I can tell you, I don't think there was, like, ten years where we were having 19 evictions started in a period of time. Eviction is absolutely the last resort. We work very hard with our residents to ensure that they don't get evicted. And what we found, I looked at, you know, diving a little deeper into this, we realized that 12 of the 19 were formerly homeless people. And I said immediately to staff, we have to do better. Do not want to be a revolving door. And what you might not realize is if somebody moves, besides lots of other reasons too, right, but if somebody moves in for homelessness and then they are evicted, they lose their subsidy and it's near impossible to get that subsidy back. So that means they are worse off when they leave us than they were when they came to us. And so I said, we have to do better. We have to figure out. We have to figure this out. And I will tell you, I have had people say to me, Kim, you have over 200 people in your housing who come from homelessness having 12 evictions. Not that big a deal, but it's not a statistic we want and we wanted to be able to do better. We started looking and figuring out what can we do. So as I mentioned earlier, we created SASH, which stands for Support Services at Home. Since 2009, we've had this model. We have it at all of our housing communities. It includes care coordination and wellness nurse, all about prevention, healthcare services. In addition, we have partnered with our local designated agency, which is the Howard Center, and through the SASH model, we have embedded mental health clinicians in the housing. Really important model. We have federal funding for it right now. Unfortunately, that federal funding will end at the end of this federal fiscal year, so ninethirty. And this is so that clinicians are where people live. I'm sure you've all heard about people riding along with the police, and I say get them into housing where people live before behavior's escalated, before we have to have a fall to the police. So really great model, I could talk all day about just that, but I won't. So really great model, we would love to continue to have it beyond 09:30. But in addition, Cathedral Square does have one staff member who call her Shines, and it really is about success in housing. And so she is really targeted with helping anybody who's referred to her within our staff, and she can be dealing with somebody who, for example, let's say, is horny and is failing their property, the housing inspection, all the way to somebody who may have schizophrenia. She has the whole gamut she's working with. And then what we just said is, let's create a position who is specifically targeted to working with those coming from homelessness. And so we have a hip manager now. And I will say in this picture, you will see Chuck, who is one of our success stories. He moved into our Howard Square property in South Burlington from homelessness, and he's now our resident manager helping the entire community. Wow. He was a great Huge investor, yes. And so how does this model work? So first I want, especially this group, know that I did meet with quite a few folks to kind of get some ideas of what other people were doing. And so I met with the Vermont for Criminal Justice Reform about their contingency management program, And as you may be familiar with that, they actually give incentives for folks coming out of incarceration to check-in on a weekly basis and they pay cash. And then if they take a drug test, they give actually even more. So it's all cash incentive basis. Met with them, learned all about their program. I also met with Spectrum who works with youth who also was paying incentives, dollars 1,500 a month, that was really they because really wanted to pay for the rent in Burlington. They needed at least that much. And then I also used to serve on the New Place board, and the New Place has a model of serving those on their shelters, serving those from homelessness, and they graduate upstairs once they're in the program for a while, and they start paying a little bit towards rent, and they put all of that rent money aside to be used for security deposit for when they're ready to move on to something else. I will say Cathedral Square has housed quite a few people who've come from the

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: A New Model. So kind

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: of taking all these models in concert together, we came up with this. In order to be a HIP participant, you have to come from homelessness. That's the first thing. Then we have a menu of services. And I always say this is not a one size fits all. And so that menu of services is designed to be very open ended and what fits for one person, hopefully, will also have other options to fit for another somebody else. So somebody might, for example, decide that they're going to attend an AA meeting. That might be something they chose from the menu of services. Or somebody else might go to a training on budgeting or finances. Somebody else might say, I haven't spoken to my son in five years. I'm going call my son. So all over the gamut and if it's something on the menu of services that the participant doesn't see like, Nothing's fitting for me this month, they can come up with an idea. And all we say is it has to benefit they themselves or their community. And so how it works is that if they complete one of the items on the menu of services and they are in good tenancy, meaning they have paid their rent and they do not have any lease violations, they actually get a cash incentive. So we pay them $50 cash in hand. We don't care what they do with it. It's not ours to know. And we put the other $50 in a bank account for them. They can borrow, so this continues over time. It's a five year program, and they can borrow against the amount of money that's in the bank account, but the deal is if they borrow against it, they have to pay it back before they get the next incentive. They can also stay in the program even if they have a month where they don't, maybe they do have a lease violation, something happened or maybe they couldn't pay their rent. This doesn't have to be consecutive months. We all know, we're all human, things happen, somebody could have a health issue and have a health bill that they can't afford and so they can't afford their rent. So again, we're there for them, no judgment to support. And so this is a little bit about the incentives themselves. We highly incentivize the very first year because we know that when you first move into a community, it can make or break your tenancy. You're learning how to live in that community. You're learning the rules, the house rules, the unwritten rules. You're meeting your neighbors for the first time and we know that those first meetings, again, can go with her pad. Again, it's a five year model. We also did research to show that if somebody's behavior changes for five years, the likelihood that this will remain forever is very, very strong, or at least for a long time. Send advice highly, like I said, in the first year, and then kind of wean off as the years go through. So the participants have the option really of earning just under $2,000 that we'll be paying out as time goes on. And then from their escrow account after the five year is complete, and again it could be sixty five months or it could be six years, that doesn't matter, but then they can get what's in the escrow account for them. So in grand total, they have the opportunity to earn just under $4,000 being in program and are actively participating. As I'm sure you know, that cost is less than a month and a half of being remote debt, right? So small dollars in grand scheme of things, but really trying to change the system to be supportive and helpful. Our hope, we've been fundraising for this program. We have no other funding at this point. It's all been fundraising. Our hope is to serve 60 people, so

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: we would have about $180,000

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: more to raise for the five year model. And currently we are serving 25 active participants in this model these particular properties of Cathedral Square, and we have paid out 145 incentives so far, just totaling over $7,000 We have worked with 18 participants who were struggling to pay their rent, five of which had a notice to quit, meaning that their housing was in jeopardy. 13 of these have been completely resolved, including those five notice to quit. So nobody has a notice to quit right now of the participants, but we are still working with five people who are still struggling financially. We're trying to support them. 22 of the 25 participants have signed up for Sash, which we are extremely excited about because this is a voluntary, obviously, sign up and it is about wellness and support and training and education and programming, all those things. Then 15 participants have met with a mental health clinician at least once. And of course, some have met with them many more times than

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: that. Good.

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: And so a little bit of success, and then I will be wrapping up. So here are two brothers who actually live in Burlington and come from a rather large family in Burlington, John and James, and John said he had been living at a shelter while working six days a week. He said it was a very humbling experience and that he kept just pushing forward. So when he got the call from us that he was going get into a Cathedral Square apartment, he said he felt like it was a new chapter in his life. And then his brother James said this program, meaning the hip program, has been life changing. It's not just about having a roof over our heads, it's about feeling secure and supportive. We also do have a hip video, which I will send

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: you probably on Monday at this point, Friday afternoon,

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: that's But it has another participant and the hip manager talking and this participant on the video does talk about how it holds him accountable. He feels like he's being heard and seen for the first time and that he really has a trusted friend in the hip manager. So we're very excited about the results we've had so far and of course, as Cathedral Square typically does, we try to try these things out, we pilot them and if they work, we try to then expand them.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That is wonderful. Terrific, thank you so much. Mean, I probably would have questions. I don't want to take your time either, but it's a wonderful program.

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Thank you. Yeah, and I had not heard

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: of this one, so it's really good to know. Do you have housing in all of those counties?

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: It's many We have 28 properties in Chittenden, Franklin and Grand Owl.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay.

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: And then we are the creators and overseers of Sash, so we are statewide with the Sash model.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. And I'm I am familiar with Sash, and Sash is wonderful. I'm talking about savings money. Right? I mean, Sash is just so efficient. Yes. Exactly. That's terrific. I just wanted to say, and I probably said this last year too, but just the VHCb having the conservation people and the housing people together, that was so smart of Vermont to do years ago. And I think sometime, it was about when they started Acting 50, but it really helped reduce the conflict between developers and conservation folks. Just understanding that both things are important is just critical. Really now we need, it's good that we're here and we're structured that way because we're having those same conversations again.

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: Yeah. We had speakers this morning time down in California, they're totally separate and really hard to get kind of anything done, right? Because they're kind of

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: at odds with each other. Right, right, and they don't talk to each other, I was in Florida, and it was not quite the same as California, the development process was better, but this is even better. Thank you all for your work.

[Kim Fitzgerald (CEO, Cathedral Square)]: Thank you very much. Thanks

[Sandra McGeer (Chair, Bull Creek Common Lands)]: Thanks for being here. Okay, so the next steps are 215. It's what I have on my number. Thank you. Alright. So we

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: can take a break and you guys can go talk outside if you want. Let's we're we're adjourned.