 Hi. Good morning, everybody. And the public work. We're going to have an interesting morning and the entire morning is going to be spent on housing issues in Vermont. Today is introduction. Though this committee doesn't need much of an introduction. To the housing problem issue crisis, whatever you want to call it. In the state of Vermont. And we've assembled. Some of the leaders. In housing throughout the state. From developers to planners to nonprofits. And. We're going to sort of. As I've explained to the committee. Where we have a lot of housing bills that are either in our committee or coming to our committee. We have a lot of housing bills. We have a lot of housing bills. We have a lot of housing bills. And my intention and the committee. Like the idea of putting together an omnibus housing bill. We don't know exactly what the vehicle is. I hope it'll be a committee bill. But this is the first of many hearings. On housing. But we want to hear from these witnesses. And we want to hear from the committee members. And we want to hear from the committee members. And any solutions. That. That are in the works right now. Or new ideas or creative ideas from. And use planning. Two subsidy programs, but I don't want to go into. Subsidy programs that much that are. In play. Already. And this hearing is not. So much about money. As new policy ideas. Obviously money is always the. A big sweetener here and his key, but. I think there's a lot of things we might. Do and borrow from other states or jurisdictions. In terms of ideas. To make housing. Less expensive to build. In terms of. Build quicker and consistent with smart growth policies. So we have a lot of. Important folks here who have worked in Vermont for a long time. And know the lay of the land. So. Our first witness. Scott, did I miss an email where Josh can't be present till a minute? Okay. Well, we're going to. Probably not surprising start off with Chris Cochran. We like to start off with the administration. First in terms of getting. Some background in terms of. Getting what they see on the horizon. And then we'll move on to each other. And the format is that everybody will have about. And then we'll move on to the next slide. Feel free. If you have. A comment that you think is especially. Permanent to other people's testimony to raise your hand. And we may have a little dialogue before we leave that person. But other than that, I don't know whether we will have time at the end. To do more of a round table thing. But we will hopefully either have you back or. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I should add this. Potential bill for the rest of the month at least. So with that said, unless anybody, any committee members have any questions. I'm going to turn it over to Chris Cochran. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Chris Cochran. I'm the director of community planning and revitalization. And I work for the agency of commerce and community development. And I'm pleased to say I'm one of the best jobs in state development. And I'm pleased to be working with our partners to figure out ways we can align our policies, regulations and programs. To support compact development in our centers. As you know, kind of most recently we've been working with this committee. On S one on one, which was a bill that made several changes. To support smart growth. One of the things that. I think it's going to make a big, big difference in many of our communities. And I want to thank the community. The committee for their leadership on this. I do believe the press release has a sound bite. It helps municipalities. Create zoning. Create opportunities for new housing within their, you know, sewer and water areas, service areas and their smart growth locations. ACG is going to send out an announcement today. A press release announcing the 41 grant winners. It was a $500,000 investment. I think it's going to really make a big, big difference. I think it's going to make a big difference. I think it's going to make a big difference. I believe the press release has a sound bite from the chair. So thank you for that. I think continuing work like that is really important. Kind of getting communities engaged locally. And how they can become, you know, how they can find local housing solutions and make it easier to develop is key. I hope we can continue this. Into the next year. I guess we'll find out more about that when the governor gets in the city. I think we'll find out more. And the other thing. I think one of the things that we're going to do is that as an S 101, that I hope we can continue working on was a. Expansion of the downtown and village and our tax credits. Two neighborhood areas. Without getting into the weeds, the neighborhood designation essentially does a lot of the bylaw modernization grants through different, The last thing, one of the things that we do is try to figure out how we can identify areas where there's overlap between state and local regulation and try to minimize those overlaps. And one of the things in 101 that we'd like to see if we can get past this year is the elimination of the duplication of the state and local water and wastewater connection permits. The House pushed back on that and took it out, but I think, you know, I hope those conversations will continue. But it's, you know, it's one of many examples of overlap. Some may disagree with this, but I mean, I think Act 250 in our centers is a bit of a duplication of permitting. And we'd like to see opportunities to allow communities to permit larger scale housing developments within our centers need the housing it's the right location. And we've been working over the summer and fall with Representative Bongarts on the house on a bill called H511. It does several things, including Act 250 exemption for centers. It makes the neighborhood designation I think a little bit easier for our smaller communities to achieve. I think that in conjunction if we can continue the bylaw grants will ensure that we get more communities in the neighborhood designation program. That with tax credits I think will will really make a difference over time and and you know these are not quick changes they're not going to happen overnight. But these are slow incremental changes that were really really make a difference. Have you gone over 511 at all in your committee. We have not. Would it be helpful if I just hit the highlights or or do you want to wait. The ones, yeah, the ones that deal with the goal here of making housing quicker to build and more less costly to build. Yeah. There's there's just a there's several it's like this is small incremental changes but meaningful changes it takes existing provisions are designation framework. It uses it expands an existing active 50 benefit for designated centers called priority housing projects. These are certain mixed use of affordable housing developments located within centers. And as the threshold and allows smaller communities to participate in a more equal way, it essentially, I know it's a kind of a loaded word but you know it changes the active 50 jurisdiction within these areas. So larger projects projects of you know 2030 40 units can be approved locally without an additional active 50 permit. And that will will be a big help, especially with the huge investment we're seeing, you know, from the federal level. That's not the case now. There's a limit on. So, there, there are tears. So right now, larger communities, like in your region, Senator Burlington has no cap on the exam on the number of units that they can build so city place for example, was a very large, you know, nearly nearly 500 units. Did not need to get an active 50 permit, because they had a certain amount of affordable housing and they qualified as a priority housing project in smaller communities the cap right now is that 25 units. And we've heard from our partners I think VHFA did a study, looking at kind of where the sweet spot is for development. You know, and I think it's around 30 to 40 units. And, you know, where you kind of get the right max, you know, the right benefit for like scale to make the housing more affordable. And with a 25 unit threshold it's harder for smaller communities to participate in that I think there was a recent example and South hero, you know, the community really wanted to get the neighborhood designation to support the affordable housing development. The unit cap was too low. It wasn't going to benefit them. I think it did ultimately get built, but it had to go, you know, through active 50. So, we'd like to raise those thresholds in that bill. So I have an analogous question. When you talk about increasing the credits. My understanding is there will be a proposal to increase the credits and I assume also expand the breadth of the credits. Is there any kind of requirement or a priority to the application for credits that have housing development within the application, or can you get downtown credits for projects that have no housing increase. Right now there's no priority or preference for housing. And we had that said we do a lot of we do support a lot of affordable housing development within centers. A little bit is, you know, it's it is a decent mix every year and I'd be happy to share the numbers. But I think, you know, it tends to go to more commercial development. And this is due largely to the designation and how they're constructed. The downtowns and village centers are really only looking at the commercial core of the community and not so much of the housing that surrounds the communities. So I think the proposal to expand and enlarge the area to the neighborhoods that surround the commercial cores will naturally increase the investment in housing because more housing units would be eligible for the tax credits. Do you want to mention a couple of more things and in represent a bongar spill and then we'll yeah, Christine. What we do is, you know, we spent a lot of time this summer, I'm a CCD on the Vermont Climate Council. And, you know, we're looking at ways to make our, our downtowns and village centers also more resilient, while also supporting kind of safe infill within these areas. Right now, there's an exclusion that says you can't infill any in any location located within a river corridor. It's not consistent with an ours policy that does allow infill within centers. So we want to make a change to allow appropriate safe infill within these centers. So that's one provision that we'd like to see and I think the natural resources committee is supportive of that related to that is a something that the Senate passed this committee passed before was a tax credit to provide an incentive for flood proofing buildings within our downtowns, you know, our downtowns and village centers historically were built on water because water was a source of power transportation. They're not going to be moving anytime soon. So we want to make sure that while when buildings are being improved that they take the steps to flood proof these buildings so when when when a flood does happen and it will happen again, these businesses can bounce back more quickly or people's lives are not as devastated as they could be. I just have one more question. Chris, is there anything out there from past few years that we try to aspire to in terms of legislation that fell by the wayside that you think that we might want to revisit. And specifically on bylaw modernization. Are you very happy with the way things are going I mean we wanted to do more of a mandate than a current approach or technical assistance approach, but we got what we could get. And it seems to be working but should we revisit that as well. Yeah, I, and I think you're making a reference to a bill from 2020 which was s 237, which I think got some good ideas out there. Ultimately, a lot of it didn't pass the house but I think taking another look at some of the exclusive single family zoning in our, in our communities may be worthy of a conversation. I think you want to make sure that it's targeted at areas with sewer and water because otherwise it has a potential to, you know, encourage sprawl. If you say single family, you know is banned everywhere. And I think you might get some pushback but I think that's something worthy of additional conversation. And I think we would like to work with you on that. So, Senator Clarkson has a question but yes after each witnesses finished, or even in the middle of testimony if you want, raise your hand, and you can ask a question. Senator Clarkson. Thank you. Good morning. It's so good to see so many of you champions of housing. Chris, I would wonder if we might tie the expansion to the downtown tax credits to housing sort of building on Michael's question, but specifically the expansion because we've been looking for an expansion for as you know several years really since Paul's death as I think the first time we really wanted to establish a much more significant downtown tax credit opportunity. And maybe to build on Michael's question we could tie the expansion of it to housing, or at least have that as a as a priority within that expansion. Yeah, I'd be open to talking further about that. I think the challenge is we don't know what the applicant pool will be every year, and I'd hate to just kind of tie the board's hands, you know, but we could also, I mean you could do it any other ways I'd be open to like a directive to like, you know, from in in statute to give priority consideration to housing but just so long it wasn't like too explicit, because we want to be able to support lots of different good projects and the mix and the needs our community is going to vary. Thanks. Food for thought. Okay. Let's move on. Thank you, Chris. I hope you can stay with us. Christine. There you are. Good morning, Christine. Good morning. I'm not getting the best audio. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you, Beck. Good morning and thank you very much for having me and allowing me to participate in this very important roundtable. I know a little about my background. I came to Vermont 43 years ago to serve as Brattleboro's assistant town manager and planner. And I've worked in the housing field my whole career. I'm the executive director of the Brattleboro housing partnerships, which is also the housing authority for Brattleboro for 24 years. I stepped aside two years ago to focus on two development projects for BHP. I served for 10 years on the Vermont Housing Conservation Board and three years as its chair. I worked on many other local and statewide planning and housing groups. I currently am a member of the Tri Park Mobile Home Community Association on its board and on its master redevelopment committee. So with this background, I will address your request. And most important area to be addressed in Vermont is its public housing. Yes, we have it and we have a fair amount of it. Much of it was built in the 60s 70s and 80s. It can be very worn out. And despite the best efforts of the housing authorities. As BHCB developed the housing trust model for new lower income and subsidized housing development, public housing for many reasons was not included. At one point, there was a notion that the federal government should step up and take care of its public housing. I could not agree more with that. However, that is exactly what did not happen. The study of the backlog of needed capital improvements in public housing throughout the country. Six years ago, found a backlog of $36 billion. I did a study of the bread of our housing partnership and found that at one time, we had a capital and essential capital improvement need of over $9 million. We received $350,000 a year to address our essential capital needs. As a state, we are now the recipients of significant federal dollars for housing. And I strongly advocate that some of these funds be directed to public housing. I believe Vermont never intended to have two classes of housing for the very low and low income. One done by the nonprofits that gets a substantial upgrade every 15 years. And the other, the federal public housing, which is still dealing with original cabinets built in the 80s. There are incredibly inefficient heating systems, as well as others. In some cases, this housing really should be removed. And in its place, new housing that meets the standards of 2022. We can easily double or triple the density on these sites and have new neighborhoods in or near the downtowns where many of these are located with a mix of income and ages. Most public housing authorities are staffed for property management. So taking on this challenge is going to be very difficult. I would say that one of the things that I've done is the development of four different developments. We did them with Nancy Owens and Evernorth. And our residents see the difference. And our residents say to us, how come I live at Blank, that is so old and so worn out, and they get to live at Red Clover Commons, which is so nice and so new and has all the, all the basic amenities that people need. I don't know if they see whether they're low income or not, but these are, are low, very low income people. And they're sitting there going how come we have two different standards. We don't mean to in Vermont, I know we don't mean to have that, but that's what's happened. So most public housing authorities are really not staffed for development. There are some that have done development, and mine was one of them. And they've done good work, I would say, modestly. So here's my recommendation. I would like to see Gus VHC be tasked with development of a program that focused on working with housing authorities to redevelop Vermont's public housing. I would like to use this opportunity to have all of Vermont subsidized housing at the same standard, not some still using systems and furnishings from the 70s or 80s. Well, many others are at 2022. And so we can result in more housing and even the quality of our, and even the quality of the subsidized housing in our state. So that's my first idea. And I'd really like, I'd love to see it happen. And I think what the state gets out of it is better and more housing. I know we can put greater densities on many of these sites. And we can change the mix of people because when all this public housing was built. It was restricted families or seniors in the disabled. We can now get away from that and put up really nice mixed age mixed income housing. And that would be near our village and downtown centers. Coming on, I was a founding member of sash, and the Barbara housing partnerships serves as the designated regional housing organization for Windham and Windsor counties and it is now one of the pilot sites for family sash. While at BHP, we created a resident wellness and services team Burlington Housing Authority is the only other example I am aware of in the state among its subsidized housing agencies that has a comprehensive team of people to deliver wellness and services coordination to residents, and I could be wrong. I'm just not up to date. The team includes our three sash coordinators, a resident services coordinator, which we fund an education and employment coordinator, and the property management team. They meet weekly and it become an integral and essential part of how BHP carries out its housing mission. Let me give you one example. We started this group. The first task that I gave them was to address our chronic rent payment problem in family housing it hovered at 55 to 65% per month. So this was their first task and they were quite skeptical. They did it. And when their program was in place. We now saw rent collection in these same places at 85 to 95% per month. I am not making that up. The reason was that among the interventions that they put in place was that when there was a non payment of rent. The service hold was called by a service team member, not the property manager. The service team member could problem solve with the resident and often direct them to outside resources that would be of assistance to them. I believe this and the sash model demonstrate that housing entities can have supportive service coordinators, and that it brings the service connection as close as possible to those who need it. We do we have always struggled with the gap between the wonderful services that we have and the people that need them. This and sash just make that gap smaller. We need to let go of the concept that houses cannot or should not be involved in services. We have demonstrated that this is not true, and that it can work and that it actually is really beneficial to the resident. Another area along this line is the mandate the tax credit recipients commit to a certain number of units for the homeless, or almost homeless, or at risk. So, the housing authorities have always housed the hardest to house and often the homeless. So, we, we sort of understand that population it's what we do. The policy has called on the nonprofit housing agencies to take this population. And I know that it has not been a smooth transition. This is pre coven, but the nonprofit agencies were reporting higher numbers and eviction and issues of lease enforcement. It doesn't mean we should do away with that policy. And I think that what we need to do is to recognize that the entities that the agencies at the local level that bring the homeless and the hard to house to the houses and advocate for them and get them into housing. Do not have the resources to come back when that person has an issue, and they will, most of the time, and the housing entity if it doesn't have a service system like ours calls on that local resource and often has been told. In summary, we don't have the funding. We don't have the human or financial resources to cycle back to that person and help them help with you stay in their housing. So, there is a substantial need for these agencies to be able to assist clients after they obtain housing. We see that VHCB funds are housing funds and should not be allocated to this, they should be allocated to housing. But I would strongly recommend that local agencies working on housing the homeless and the hard to house have funding to ensure that they can respond when they are needed to keep someone in housing. Housing the homeless and hard to house is what we should be doing. However, if this results in more homelessness, then it is not a successful policy. Keeping people in housing must be as important as getting people housed to begin with. Almost done. The last area I'd like to mention is that of our mobile home parks. We support them in every way we can. They are often, they often are community associations subject to turnover on the board and staff and the desire to never have lot rent increases, yet they provide very essential housing. For many years, the Tri Park Community Association and Brattleboro is now addressing its prolonged need for new sewer lines bridges and removal of homes that are right next to the brook, and they flood at the smallest increase in water. It's not been easy to get to this point, but it has been very worthwhile and worth the effort and worth the effort to fund and continue. And I applaud the state agencies. I know of our VHCB and community development that have continuously figured out how to finance and refinance loans and programs to keep the master plan project for Tri Park going and to ensure that Tri Park stays a community association. The only alternative Tri Park has is to be bought out by some private or nonprofit, probably a private company. So it's very important it's housing that we need to keep it's worth the effort, and we should support and continue it. So those are my great ideas for today. Thank you Christina. One question. I'm happy to answer any questions. Can you hear me Christine. Can anybody hear me. Okay, chair I can hear you. Yes, we can hear you. Christine, I'm not sure Christine is hearing you. Yeah, I'm not. I didn't hear it. You don't hear me. I hear you now. Okay, great. My question is, again, by way of reiterating where we're going, hopefully is to produce more cost effective, less expensive, more housing and I was interested in your concept of maybe renovating or replacing existing public housing with more, more units on the same location, let's say, obviously if you're just renovating, it's going to be on the same location is, is it does that save money in producing more units as far as you're concerned. The fact that you're dealing with an existing structure, maybe that's already permitted or do you have to repermanent it for additional units. I'm intrigued with the idea whether we can use our existing public housing stock, and maybe turn it into denser housing or more modern housing and you said, even mixed income housing. So it could be a win win win but I don't know if that's realistic or not. I think one of the places that you would find the savings is that the public housing authority owns the land, and it's can be very expensive land because of its proximity to the downtown. It could help for some of the cases that I'm thinking of, you would want to tear down the building, it's, it's just too old. I mean it's really too old, and it has not had the kinds of essential capital improvements that it's needed. But then to put up a new building could be not inexpensive but given how much development we've done in Vermont and, frankly, how good we are at it, I think that we could put it up on the public housing site. And it because we don't buy the land, it would help. And we could increase the density which would also help a lot. Okay. Okay, so I did the math and it's about 12 minutes per witness. Probably not even that much when we talk about questions but so to the extent folks can keep their testimony to that we have lots of opportunity to have you back to drill down deeper but we want an overview of today of some creative ideas. I see the commissioner has joined us. I don't know if you have an idea of the flow of what we're after, but you're usually pretty good at that. We're looking at trying to hear new ideas, not necessarily monetary more money for existing programs but other ideas. The administration may be thinking of or have looked at that can produce housing in a more dependable environment, a less expensive permitting process, quicker. And just to get at the problem of our shortage of housing in the state of Vermont and this is going to be, we're looking at an omnibus bill down the road so you'll be in this committee probably on a weekly basis talking about housing so don't feel the need to go deep. But if you can give us an overview that would be great. Sure. Thank you. Good morning. Josh Hanford commissioner housing community development. Sorry I missed the beginning of this. What I want to say is, you know, this committee, you know, has been very supportive of the sort of zoning land use changes that need to be made to make our housing development more responsive, you know, quicker, more affordable. And we need to do a lot more there but I want to thank you Senator Schrockton. I think you'll see a press release this morning getting at that very thing about helping towns modernize their, their bylaws. And to be more pro housing growth. I think that is the number one thing that Vermont needs to wrestle with and be comfortable with is we need to be pro housing growth, and we haven't been for decades. There are smart ways to do that and we're getting at those by, you know, exempting areas from you know whether it's Act 250 encouraging towns to have, you know, allow more density and more creative housing solutions in fill multi unit on what would have been restricted to single family home, you know zoning. All of those aspects are foundational to what we need to do and shift towards to modernize and keep up with our housing demand. I think we're moving down that road that's great we need to move faster. I think the other piece is the market itself just isn't able to respond to the modest home construction that we need, and we need to double down on. And it's time for government to incentivize that it's been a sort of hands off approach at this middle income housing level, you know, left up to the market. The fact is we hear from developers for profit nonprofit of every stripe that they are having a hard time building homes at a rate that many working Vermont families can afford, and you know the price points are just increasing. If we want more of those sort of entry level modest homes built, we're going to need to do something to incentivize it because left to the market they won't be produced. We'll see more homes above $550,000 produced when we need homes at $350,000 produced new homes. You know that's for the new development. We also have areas of the state that have sort of existing housing stock that needs incentives to rehab and put those back out. Those are expensive as well. There's a value gap there when you look at the effort to buy even a foreclosed home, you know, great you can get a great deal on a home for $140,000, but they need another $140,000 of investment to bring them up to current energy standards as required to, you know, replace heating systems windows roof. It is very expensive. The challenges when you're done with that investment. It's not going to praise for what you put into it and folks like Nancy with ever north and others have experimented with this and they can tell you that it just costs more to put into these redevelopment projects existing stock then they will praise at the end. So there is another place where government needs to intervene and incentivize. I don't want to take too much time because I don't have as much of a prepared testimony as others but one area that governors laser focused on is this missile in missing middle income home ownership development. The BAA has a pilot program in the BAA. And, you know, without getting ahead of myself, I think you'll see more efforts in the budget for next year to focus on missing middle income home ownership supply side incentives. It's not enough to increase home ownership down payment assistance in those efforts that are based on the buyer. The buyers are out competing each other those efforts left by themselves are just becoming less and less efficient, and they're competing against them when the supply doesn't exist. We have a scarcity problem. It's increasing cost, unaffordability across the rental and a home ownership market that is a disaster. You know it's a recipe for more homelessness when people are paying more than 50% of their household income on on housing. We have high slide solutions, all strikes small home builders, large developers for profit nonprofit all across the state, and we need a variety of of sort of, I would say paths to get this done. We have some traditional things in place, you know, like the shared equity program folks are familiar with, but we need new tools. We need to pilot things and see if they work. We need to not be scared to try some new approaches here because what we've been doing the last 30 years clearly isn't keeping up with the need and the demands and so we have to be a little entrepreneur spirit here and try some things and be okay with learning as we go we've got these federal resources that are short time Congress appropriated them to respond to the crisis in the recovery, and we can't sort of sit and wait to have every detail understood before we launch anything, because our, our housing crisis is growing by the day and so I would just implore you to be also be willing to take some risk and address this need head on with lots of different solutions. And so all sort of stop there if you have specific questions for me I'm happy to try to jump in. Well that's music to my ears I would love to hear maybe you can send us a memo in like the next week or so nothing elaborate like a page and a half with bullet points of some of those ideas that you don't have to say whether they're being proposed by the administration or not, but just a list of potential ideas where some incentives can be put on the supply side, and we'll dig deeper into those. My intent is to take all ideas, put them in bill form and then have the committee over several week period go through that bill and make decisions as to whether they want it in or out. Whether they want it in basis or not amended or not to work towards a committee bill which its focus is pretty much precisely. Well, in large part what you, what you're talking about. I want to, we want some new creative ideas of how to do it I'm glad you mentioned shared equity because my, my thoughts went there, originally whether we can do more with that on the homeowners side where they get incentives to get into housing on the end product they, they give back some of that money in terms of shared equity and keep the house affordable at the same time. So we have some programs like that already but maybe it can be tweaked. I could give you one specific example of something that's under construct consideration, both with VHCB and with VHFA and with lots of banks credit unions and builders that is an example of one of the ideas we need to move forward on is, you know, it's risky to build construction loans to build homes speculative that we haven't pre sold yet. It's the interest rates are going up, and banks are afraid to take risk, especially after the 2008 you know crisis, you know pre funding. You know, condos and townhouses, you have to have those pre sold so we're talking about a construction risk pool that allows us to, you know, mitigate that risk so construction loans to build more housing can have a lower interest rate and those financial institutions can take more risk to do more construction lending, which will help the entire industry, all types of building. And, you know, we don't have to, it's a small sort of match into a pool that can allow the market to work better to take on more construction lending for home building and you know we can put requirements around that that this needs to be primary residences and so forth but that's one example of what a lot of people are talking about that could benefit a broad spectrum spectrum of more home building in the state so right Senator. Thank you, Senator Ron Kinsel. Thanks Mr Chair, Senator Clarkson and I have a bill that's going to come out this week or next I don't know how about her works right now with a bill backup but you know I hear you talking about middle middle income home ownership totally get it and agree I think I'm talking about a lot of working families who want to be oriented toward downtown and transit as well and as I've traveled, you know, to some of our, our smaller village centers and downtown. And they, they really want to see incentives to help commercial buildings transition to residential building the amenities and the safety safety amenities that are needed to make that residential housing I think that could happen. I'm not a developer myself but you know that is existing envelopes that you know could be rehab potentially quickly I know we're talking about doing this quickly. The other thing that we're proposing is trying to figure out if there's a way for the state to help get a match from some of our larger institutions are hospitals, the folks that are have a large contingent of working folks who literally can't take jobs in these areas because they cannot find housing. And so I just wonder if you think those are creative ideas where we could set aside some money for really specific ideas that might leverage other dollars as we think about ideas. Yes, and yes, and one more. You know we've heard from a lot of businesses about the same issue they can't house their own employees so they were talking about can we build our own housing and you know there's challenges with having employer owned housing because you're not only do their landlord and their employer, that's not really the best model but what I'm hearing more from the business community is that they would convert some of these properties to housing. It's not as easy as you think but the buildings are there, the infrastructure is there the water electricity the broadband. The challenge is to quickly do that we need an exemption for act 250 because if you eight or more units in any of those office buildings trigger act 250 for reuse, even though the resources have already been put into that property. It's in the perfect location. It could get stalled by a budding neighbors it could get tied up and so that is really I think where we need to come together as Vermonters and decide are our homes for people that are, you know, the need just as important as our sort of long standing environmental, you know, procedures, I just put it that simple that really for that money, and that to be a quick solution, we need a fix for what gets in the way to convert perfectly good buildings in the right location to serve the needs of our future and not continue to be stuck in the past. Okay. Thank you very much, Josh will be in touch and certainly have you back. Next week I look forward to getting a short memo, like a couple of sentences on each ideas, you know that you've seen, and you think we should explore whether the is putting money in or trying to establish as a pilot. Just, this is a brainstorming session to come up with ideas and you're in the middle of all this. Thank you. Okay, Senator Clarkson. Yes, I look forward to next week maybe we'll hear something more about the construction risk pool and they proposal for construction risk pool. Okay. I mean, in the budget address would be great. It sounds like it may be in the Budget Adjustment Act which we probably or in the but yeah either way, got to look at already. So, next we have Eric Farrell becomes from the same neck of the woods as I do he's, he's appeared before the development review board in South Burlington in which I serve. In the first hand, some of his frustrations in terms of development and what the regulations and laws put developers through but I've also seen his end product of some really great projects so I'm happy to have you here Eric and talk to us. Yes, I have to unmute to talk to you right. And is this your first time testifying with this committee because I don't think we've met. He testified on our road tour I remember. Right, right. I don't actually remember what I did yesterday. So I'm not sure. So I did want to tell Christine though that I moved to Vermont 74 years ago, not voluntarily. But I, but I've been here all my life. So, I agree. I don't have anything really profound to say and I probably won't say anything you already know, but I agree with Josh that it's all about pro housing growth, and it's, and it's all about supply supply supply. And I don't, you know, I've chosen a different path for dealing with affordable housing because I've been partnering with template house and trust and Cathedral Square and housing Vermont for about 20 years, because I, I, what I do best is take risks and what they do best is deliver affordable and so I think anytime any, any, in any shape or form that you can deliver or support nonprofit housing efforts and have them and allow them to partner with for profit developers I think that's a great model. And these in my experience. So, I don't think there's, there's very little you can do to impact construction costs I think construction costs are running right now I built mostly multifamily housing construction costs are running around 15 or 18% higher than they were 18 months ago. It doesn't add a penny of value to the units that we deliver. I don't want to build them in, and in rental housing, you know, rents are are stronger than they were but they don't come close to overcoming the increase, you know, in cost. I think anything that you can do like in Burlington, I do think the process is duplicative. I don't think that anything in the city of Burlington should be subject to activity, probably the same for South Burlington and maybe other communities that I'm not familiar with that anybody that has a sophisticated zoning and planning should not be subject to 50 in my opinion, because the biggest obstacle or impediment to people doing the work that I do is the risks that we take. A lot of people don't are not willing or able to take risks. And I think that that is an impediment that you know, you know to housing growth. And an interesting thing about people sometimes will complain to me that the housing we build is new, and it's expensive. And yes, it's more expensive than existing stock but every time. If we, if we build housing, the, our residents are not coming. They're not new residents to the community, they're just transitioning out of older stock. So if we if we build a lot of new stock, it makes older stock available. The older stock is more affordable. So in a lot of ways we're, we're helping to create or distribute more affordable housing by building new stock even though I can't afford to build new affordable housing not at today's construction costs. So the only way that I can help the affordability is to, is to partner with the nonprofits and to build more supply. And I, and I think we could, if we doubled the amount of supply, we wouldn't catch up to the demand in 10 years. But I think it's impossible. It's almost impossible to catch up with the man. So, an interesting thing that frustrates me is that is that people who are that show up at zoning hearings or planning hearings or active 50 hearings, and who are opposed to housing. You'll notice that they have one common characteristic. They don't have housing. You don't see people showing up at these meetings who don't have housing renters don't show up complaining about me building out of the mountain. It's people who have housing in it, and it really, it's, it's, it's, it's very frustrating to hear that to see that happen. So, sorry, I just need to interject. People need to mute if they aren't speaking we're getting some weird background noise. You're getting background noise from me because we're doing construction downstairs. And so I'm going to keep it briefing get off and I apologize for that but they're jack hammering the concrete floor to convert 7,000 feet of commercial space to more housing. I'm sorry about that. Let's see what else can I say. I, you know, I don't have anything more profound to say that other than, then it's all about all about supply and supply in the, you know, interestingly enough, some people complain about the permitting costs, the cost themselves the fees have very little. So my, my developer friends will kill me for saying this, but they don't really impact the cost of housing all that much. You know, yes, we pay high fees, but they, they don't have a whole lot of impact on the, on the end result. It's the time delays and the risks that are that are really the factor. So, so, and, and the last thing I will say is that density is the most archaic measure of development that ever existed. A lot of communities are moving to floor area ratios, or form based code. And so I think that, you know, if every town got rid of density is a measure that would be a plus. So, I don't have anything more to say than that I told Scott that I could be on from nine to 10, then I got another commitment I can come back on 11 which I will do. I probably haven't told you anything you haven't heard. So, I just have one question before you go and then we're going to take a 10 minute break. You say delay. I've also heard like uncertainty in the process is really a risk factor for developers. I think that's why Burlington and South Burlington has fairly sophisticated planning offices that may be duplicative and not a need for active 50 other. Do you have any handle on the rest of the state and smaller communities what we can do to help them get through the process quicker. I really don't because I don't work in any I mean I 99% of my work is in Burlington South Burlington a little bit in Colchester. So I don't really have any experience with it with smaller, you know, communities but I will tell you a lot of people don't do the work that I do because of the upfront costs, the uncertainty and the risks and the potential for delay you can shell out an enormous amount of money and be nowhere in two years and that just stops people from even starting. Do you have knowledge or experience as how Vermont compares to other state do you have developer friends and other states that say, I can't believe you have to go through all this and Vermont. Oh yeah, I know everybody that I, I don't know a lot of people from out of state but but people who yeah people tell me that I'm nuts to be doing business in Vermont. You know, but I, you know, and I don't agree with them. I think I think Vermont is is the is the, you know, I'm never going to live anywhere but Vermont I love I love working in this community, but it's difficult it's it's it's not very developer, you know, friendly only because of the only because of the risk but I, you know, the course the other side of that is that if if you took off all the constraints then Vermont might someday look like some other states that we don't want to have happen either. So it's it's hard to find that balance between maintaining the quality of life that we have here but also allow people, but also create more housing opportunities for people who want to come here. So that's kind of a collection. Thank you, Eric. I'm just curious. If risk is one of the greatest factors, and yet we have such huge housing need how is. Why is it so risky. I mean, I, I get the finances, and I get delays, but risk when we have such huge housing need. I don't get that I think that is like, you know, we're, we're we're building for a very real need and there's no question I mean if I build, there's a lot of demand, but you can't you can't finance the upfront costs, all the upfront costs are out of pocket, you can't borrow that you can't, you know, when you auction land and spend money on architects and engineers and everything else, all of that is out of pocket. And, and so you know some people don't want to take those risks for 123 years down the road or, or five years in the worst case. Look at Macaulay Square took them five years in the Supreme Court to get a building permit. And I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they had out of pocket before they got there. Right. But I, we also heard previously that there's a lot of pre purchase with with with things is that a way to mitigate some of that risk for middle income and higher income housing. You mean pre purchase mean people buy something in advance. Yeah, or buy an option to buy in advance. But nobody's, nobody's going to put up at risk money to do that. They may put money in escrow but I can't spend that money. Yeah. You know, so it's all, it's all out of pocket. And it's, I mean I love the work that I do and I think it's worth it but it's, but it's a heavy lift to get there. And so there's a lot fewer people doing what I do now than there were, you know, 20 years ago. Senator Clarkson, one of the answers to your question I think, simplistically put, some of these projects may not get permitted, and you don't know that till so that's a risk to even though the demands there you may not get the permit. You may not have the housing and you may have put up all this front. Right, I get that I just, our demand is so high that it's, it's anyway. There's anything you can do to make it make it assured. I mean you can't guarantee you know you can't guarantee you can't, you can't just all you know you. We don't want it to be like Houston where you can walk in to the office and walk out 90 minutes later with a permit for a 50 unit apartment building we don't want that either. So, I'm not sure what I'm not sure what the real answer is, but but the permit process itself, not the fees is is is an issue for sure. Josh you have a quick question we're going to take a 10 minute break after this question. I'm sure Clarkson, you know in her own backyard she knows you know Stratford Commons, you know that was delayed for years and years and that delay costs and extra $2 million of public funds, but we were willing to take that risk. We were willing to hold on. If that was someone without those resources. That project wouldn't have happened. Right. I mean, if that risk for public and supported housing, I just think that, and absolutely I get, I get the risk I just am was thinking on on the more, you know, less supported housing, I mean you know the less publicly financed housing that yeah I can cite developers and developers all over the state that have said hey I started down this path of 10 units in Addison and here in this town and I got an appeal. I stopped the project because I don't have $100,000 in a year to wait and it just doesn't happen. And so the uncertainty is the risk and it kills the project. Right, so the risk is everything. It's time, it's money, it's permit, it's process. Okay. Thank you, everybody will come back at 1015.