 We have with us today Commissioner Josh Hanford and Director Chris Cochran. Commissioner Hanford was appointed as Commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development by Governor Scott in 2019 and has worked in the department for many years prior to that. Director Cochran is Director of Community Planning at the Department of Housing and Community Development which focuses on developing housing policy and helping municipalities housing jobs and public services and facilities to residents. I hope I got those bios correct. Either you can jump in if I was off hearing nothing. I'll pass the Zoom mic to Commissioner Hanford and Director Cochran for opening remarks. Yeah thank you so much. Josh want me to start or do you want to? Either way Chris I don't know if your video is off right now. I don't know if that's by design or mistake. There how about that? That works. I'll kick it off. I can just talk high level here. I'm happy to talk with folks. Housing is obviously in everyone's mind as many of us have been home more than ever since this pandemic started and it's been the housing crisis we have has been exacerbated by the pandemic. We've seen over 2,000 Vermont families in motels right now that are homeless. We have record high home sale enterprises are going through the roof and hardly any inventory. I'm very concerned about middle income. Vermont families being completely priced out of home ownership in Vermont and that this may take decades to sort of overcome. I know that we have not built the housing needed for decades. Really the last time we had a housing boom or met the demand was in the 1980s and so we've got a big hole to dig out of and our situation has been made worse by the pandemic. With that all said all that negative I think there's a lot of opportunity before us. Talk a little bit more about that as we go on here but there are substantial federal resources like never before that we could put towards housing the housing we need now and housing we need in the future to really help Vermont grow and thrive and so I'll be happy to talk more about that later. Thank you. Director Cochran. All right. I'm shocked and stunned that everybody wants to spend this afternoon this lovely afternoon talking about Act 250 but you asked for it so you're going to get it. A little for about me you know I have a confession to make. I'm not an Act 250 expert. I kind of got pulled into the Act 250 arena kind of kicking and screaming but so I'm going to just make some high level comments about how I got involved and a little bit of context on Act 250 in the legislature and some things that we're working on to kind of make housing more affordable in the right locations. But you know the focus of my work is is kind of community revitalization downtowns and village centers of these different state designation programs. The goal of these programs are to align our investments and our policies to ensure we have these vibrant centers. These centers are you know underpin our quality of life our economy our brand even though we don't have a lot of tourists now I do hope they're coming back and I hope our downtowns are in places that they are going to want to visit and where they're going to want to shop and they're going to die. For so many years these were benefit districts you know they were started around 2000 early 2000s and they were basically business improvement districts you know a lot of the buildings were run down in these centers they really needed help and many of them the upper floors were vacant because they couldn't afford a sprinkler or an elevator system to install them. So we created these districts in many of our communities we first started designing downtowns and village centers and neighborhoods so we had all these designations in place. The major benefit for these programs were tax credits that that boosted the quality of these buildings. For various reasons we never really looked at them as a regulatory tool but that over time that did change. Everybody more or less agreed in Vermont that these are places we'd like to concentrate development. It made sense because these are good places we've been investing in for hundreds of years. This is where our schools are, this is where our public buildings are, this is where our sewer and water systems are. They could receive more development than other areas usually more cost effectively and by developing and concentrating in these areas we could do a lot to protect the forest land and farmland and natural areas that we all liked. So the other thing that we also need in Vermont is more housing and more affordable housing in particular and these two kind of you know creating these rings around these centers and the need for affordable housing and our regulatory framework that is often maligned for good or for bad kind of came together into a policy that the legislature enacted I want to say about 12 or 15 years ago called priority housing projects. Now what priority housing projects did is for certain affordable housing projects located within these centers if they met the criteria they were exempt from Act 250. This kind of created a regulatory framework in our benefit district but it's done a lot of good over time and it certainly supported a lot more affordable housing development within our state designated centers. I think we did a study I want to say about five years ago and we interviewed developers about what their savings were and developers and getting this dated but they said six they'd saved them about $60,000 in development fees and it shaved about six months off their development time. Well what they said the real benefit was was you know the risk of appeals was reduced if they knew they didn't have to go to Act 250 they could design their project in a different way and get their building in the ground much more quickly. In 2020 we just did a tally on the number of PHP projects this was just in this past year there were over 800 units that received this priority housing project exemption so that's a little bit how you know how the state designation programs got connected to Act 250. Act 250 also considers the designation programs as one of their subcriteria called 9L but that's a conversation for another day. Another part of my job you know is working at the state house and just to get everybody kind of level set you know the legislature has been working on Act 250 report for several years now I think it started in 2017 kind of they appointed a blue ribbon commission appointed several legislators to go out and study there were all these stakeholder groups and conversations about how do we modernize Act 250. It had been on the books for 50 years many credited for kind of saving southern Vermont in particular from kind of rampant development that was brought to us by the United States but Act 250 had a lot of critics as well and even the environmental community recognized it was time to kind of review the program and make some updates to it. Given the priority housing project framework was working we said you know hey there's general agreement that these are areas that we'd like to invest in these are good locations for housing these are good locations to concentrate development. We floated this idea that we should say well let's exempt all commercial and housing development not just affordable housing development within these centers. The environmental community generally thought that was a good idea so long as it came with protections for the outlying areas so you know the farms and forests and natural areas that surrounded them and more or less we kind of came to terms on this basic framework. The House Natural Resources Committee took up the bill while they spent a lot of time on it. They basically agreed to that whole framework passed the House and they added actually exempting village centers from Act 250 as well and then COVID hit and then everything kind of went sideways. The bill somewhat stalled there were efforts to kind of pick up the conversation again but we all learned that the Zoom context was really really hard to explain complicated bills and essentially it just ran out of momentum and stalled. We were working hard to re-center the conversation and refocus it. Everybody knows I meant not everybody but you know the governor had an executive order to reorder and rearrange Act 250 and more modernize it. That was rejected by the legislature. There was a recent effort to bring the Act 250 discussion back on the table with an amended bill. I'm hopeful you know Senator Bray who is the Senate the head of the Natural Resources Committee is committed to picking up Act 250 and I do hope you know once he's gotten through some of his work and passed crossover he will pick it up again. The other thing I want to mention and this is sorry I'm droning on too much is you know Act 250 gets knocked all the time it's an easy target but there's some also some important changes we need to make at the local level. Local zoning is not perfect either and since we weren't making a lot of progress in the Act 250 arena we did spend some time on tools to modernize local zoning and I can talk more about the details of those later but a bill was passed last year that supported smart growth housing development within centers and right now there is a bill in the Senate that will do even more to create more housing opportunities within and around our downtown centers and my hope is and you know Josh can tell you more you know by aligning our state level policy Act 250 with our local zoning to support housing in the right locations with what we presume to be a sizable chunk of of our ARPA money coming to support housing we can really take this once in a lifetime opportunity to create affordable housing in the right locations and just you know I think it'd be a game changer for Vermont and for our economy and for our businesses and I'll leave it there for now thanks. Yeah thank you so much so I'm going to move into the Q&A kind of before we go into the more general housing conversation and its relationship with Act 250 you've mentioned ARPA a few times and I know that there's kind of a windfall of funds and resources available that the state can expect in the coming weeks and months well would you mind kind of going into detail on that to the extent that you're able to share sort of the plan right now with those funds? Sure and I'm just going to speak to housing and I'm maybe going to go back before ARPA the CRF funding the Corona Relief Fund that we used all last year started started the process there was over 85 million dollars put towards housing from the CRF funding about 25 million for rental assistance and more 5 million for mortgage assistance and the balance was really put into housing development both rehabbing apartments that were in need of repair that were offline as well as building some emergency sort of rapid housing to address the homeless situation around Vermont and since then ARPA 1 and ARPA 2 I guess they're being called has over 350 million in rental assistance and mortgage assistance and services and supports what we've all been waiting for is where is the capital dollars to build more housing because part of our problem is you know it's great to have all this rental assistance and support but we don't have the housing units to house people that's why there's 200 families in emergency motels right now well there's a flexible part of the ARPA money and the governor is working on a proposal right now talking with leadership in the legislature about how to spend this pot of money close to a billion dollars and the governor has already come out saying that using this money on big legacy challenges that we've had in Vermont seems like the best plan like this is a once in a generation opportunity to address things that have plagued us for a long time you know you've got broadband in there you've got sewer and water infrastructure you've got lots of things but one of them is housing and so you know I expect that the governor will be you know proposing shortly a massive investment in a housing development you know on the magnitude that we've really never seen before and with the goal of trying to bring on 5,000 units of housing here in the next few years you know that 5,000 figure has been thrown around for a long time I know you know the Vermont Futures Project talked about the need the building uh how homes together campaign talked about that number the most recent Vermont housing needs assessment said we need about 5,000 new units and so that's our goal and it's both to address the really affordable housing needs and also middle missing middle housing what we don't see happening you know in Vermont um is that missing that middle income housing being built both on the rental but more so on the home ownership side you know if you can afford a really nice home in Vermont whether it's a vacation home or you know you can just afford to purchase a new home being built these days they're out there you can find them they're very expensive and we have a great system for building affordable housing we pump on about 80 million dollars a year in housing capital on an average year into building affordable housing but that has income limits that really people that can move into those and leaves this missing middle that developers home builders can't really bring those units online at that price point um there isn't government subsidies to do it and they can't um you know make any margins on bringing that housing online and that's really what we're suffering from so we see this new ARPA funder funding as a game changer in this area to try to incentivize this type of housing um you know the the real challenge is do we have enough contractors late you know do we have enough tradesmen trades people to do this work and here we go our is our land use and regulatory scheme going to allow this to be built to meet the needs of Vermont now and you know frankly I'm worried about that I'm glad you're having this conversation um and it's time that we we sort of set issues aside and collaborate on building the housing we need and and sort of um addressing some of these environmental concerns about building housing that um I think in many cases are unfounded so I'll stop there yeah so I think you kind of touched on a lot there I know director Cochran you mentioned I think the bill was s 237 last year the housing bill that had some active 50 language attached to it if I recall there were some concerns by environmental advocates about sewer and water and the impact on those village centers for development in downtown's do you see the ARPA funds that commissioner Hanford just mentioned that could go toward sewer and water infrastructure as potentially a component that could kind of massage the downtown exemption provisions as they're considered in the state house this year they're kind of unlinked I think some of the conversation that linked kind of smart growth development opportunities to was a provision that changed how connection permits happened and then it got kind of conflated with combined sewer overflows and I don't think they're necessarily linked you know we want to create more housing opportunities in these centers because they do have the infrastructure and capacity but certainly to your point about you know do we need to make investments and upgrade these treatment plans absolutely and you know this is exactly what ARPA is tagged to do to make these significant increases but yeah to the two pieces coming together I mean housing is a type of infrastructure just like sewer and water pipes are I think the two need to go hand in hand do you foresee any I mean you kind of mentioned you there might be a reemergence of kind of a similar provision though this year for a kind of isolated downtown exemptions rather than an active ability for any major potential hurdles to that if it if it is realistically considered I I think if it were to be considered it would have to be considered in that larger framework of of some exemptions for certain centers along with increased protections for areas that surround them I don't see one moving without the other I think it would I think there's some people who believe it's impossible to get perfect agreement so why don't we move one piece and then pick up the other pieces later but just given this the membership of the committees I don't see how they could be parted out and move separately I'd like to be wrong but I just don't see it happening yeah well no we appreciate the realistic take on that switching gears a little bit you know generally speaking and Mr. Hanford you touched on this and your opening remarks major challenges that the pandemic has caused I know obviously we have the situation with a lot of families that are currently living in motels but what about migration to the state I know that we've had a lot of like anecdotal data on the amount of the populations that have kind of decided to move some people are calling it another back to the land movement but has that really been as big of a migration as folks are making it up to be and is that impacting housing pretty significantly right now I know you kind of touched on it yeah I think it's real you know I think that this pandemic has you know proven a lot of people can work remotely do their job just fine and we're seeing people attracted to Vermont knowing that they can do their job here enjoy the great you know opportunities we have in Vermont live an outdoor lifestyle and if you talk to a lot of realtors they're selling homes to folks from out of state what's interesting is what I'm hearing is many of those are permanent residents these are vacation homes they're moving here that's exactly what we need we have this demographic challenge we need folks to move here and be part of our workforce and be part of our you know taxpayers and that's a great opportunity but that comes with the price you know many folks have the cash or they have you know higher paying jobs that really are scooping up those affordable homes that work in classroom monitors you know are saving up for trying to buy and entering you know the homeowner market for the first time and it's driven up the cost of you know new home purchase in Vermont to I think it's somewhere around $479,000 and you know by national you know organizations have rated you know us now the most unaffordable new home purchase median median price not because we're more expensive than other states as far as home price but because the wages when you add the wages and that and that purchase price it really puts us as at a disadvantage so we need to build more homes and we need to help cover those added costs that often aren't thought about when we have very well-intentioned you know rules regulations and priorities we place on some of our land uses and you know our landscape that we like to look at and enjoy but they have costs in development and if we're not mitigating those we're only squeezing our middle class and making it harder for them to you know live here work here and you know last thing we want to do is have them seek opportunities out of the state because we've become a more desirable state and people are moving in we need to do both and what's what's frustrating a little bit about this Act 250 conversation you know Chris was very kind there but we've been talking about this exemption in downtowns and in our built environments that have robust planning and infrastructure in place already for years and the discussion in my view hasn't gone far enough and has been sidelined by issues that aren't really related to a common goal that many of our partners say they have that's where we want the housing to be built that's where we have the infrastructure it's smart growth requires less driving it keeps new developments from them that forest in the hills and prevents ag land from being developed so why not support Act 250 exemption or downtown I've seen many projects die as a result of appeals of Act 250 that is exactly the housing that we want to see built and you know it's just a death by a thousand cuts when you have these barriers to get through and very slim margins for developers building housing especially if they're trying to make it affordable you know for for folks so I really think we're at a point in Vermont here where we have to say you know what do we want what are our values you know is it acceptable to have 2000 Vermonters homeless in motels when we could build housing you know on an empty lot but for the challenges of some of our regulatory you know issues and you know I love the landscape I came from working in the natural resource world before housing but you know not every parcel is the same when you have a lot that could be developed with infrastructure in between two other developed lots and you know it maybe has a prime ag soil designation on it I don't know if that one acre lot is really serving its purpose as prime ag so let's build the housing we need and help Vermonters not be homeless is the really the future that we need to start talking about so sorry you kind of brought up a really good point and I'm hearing it more and more and it's sort of this intersection between sort of the environmental goals of Vermont we all want Vermont to you know remain as beautiful as it is and also sort of the economic opportunity and economic justice goals that those environmental goals can sometimes conflict with I mean to put it kind of bluntly staying on topic and kind of the middle middle income housing availability I've heard quite a lot about commercial spaces they're they're sitting vacant in a lot of instances you see those as a viable potential area for housing I guess of all types and if so are there regulatory barriers either through act 250 or at the local level that we need to consider before we think of them as something we can actually develop I'll start a big picture then Chris can correct me where I mess up but um yes office buildings that you know may not have as much you know purpose as we come out of this pandemic schools been in multiple conversations over the last few weeks with communities that have downsized um you know their schools aren't utilized anymore could that be housing um you know so it's not the traditional let's you know just build a you know five lots of big single family homes on two acres we need sort of the modern housing that hasn't been built here that other states have enjoyed I think more building in this area and we can use these existing properties and convert them to housing and really meet multiple goals here now what I'm not certain on is but I think that in many cases that conversion of use may trigger act 250 or other regulatory issues that are going to present problems and that's the sort of reform that's just smart and makes sense that we need to all get on the same page and push our legislators to understand that we're talking about you know Vermont's future here and that it shouldn't be this hard to convert um you know empty office buildings in a downtown that has services and we're talking smart growth into the housing that we need and we need like yesterday just to follow up you know many of these larger commercial developments you know in our centers you know if they were of a certain size they're going to trigger act 250 jurisdiction once they've triggered a permit you know you are once you're in active 50 you're forever in active 50 so if you wanted to convert one of these commercial buildings into housing you would have to get a permit amendment third sometimes they can be quick and efficient sometimes they can be very very time-consuming but I think we're already seeing this you know you know one of our revitalization incentives for our downtown is tax credits and I think it's the old Chittenden bank building in Burlington you know half the building was divided up into housing and used the tax credits to create you know housing out of a commercial office space you know how flexible the space is and conducive it is to convert to use for housing is going to vary significantly on the building plan you know just and you know there's a lot of different life and safety codes that come into play but I do think it is cheaper and easier to convert one of these existing buildings than it is to permit and build something new so I do think it will be on the rise and many of the commercial projects that we typically see I think most of the commercial developers are now doing housing because that's really where the market is and that's really where the need is. Meg McGovern commented in the chat two new appeals process or two new appeals the city place project going on six years of delays same issues over and over I guess you're preaching to the choir to use her words I mean these are serious costs for developers is there any is there any kind of ballpark estimate on what you would need to kind of traditionally factor into costs to navigate the Act 250 process in terms of added project costs generally? The only data that I have was what I shared with you you know as far as you know the basic you can figure out what the basic fee you know it's a basis it's a number of calculated and what your total development costs are and time is a factor too those are known the cost of a permit appeal is an unknown and that's when things get really expensive especially when you're carrying the cost of a property that you're owning or a parcel that you're owning you can't develop that may get tied into litigation that will take six months years two years to solve that that's when things get really expensive you know I'll comment on one one example that we look to to point out how challenge this is is in Woodstock you know fortunately it was a non-profit housing developer that received lots of public subsidies to carry the project and stick with it but it was affordable rental and home ownership right across from the high school perfect location and it was delayed by appeals of an eight you know neighbor Act 250 and it dragged on for I think six years and cost the project an additional million dollars on an eight million dollar housing project that you know everyone in town wanted everyone in town needed and you know all of us funders stuck with it because to give up would have would have you know prove the point that this is how you beat you know this is how you use environmental concerns to you know keep people out that maybe don't have a house like yours or you don't think you know kind of shouldn't be able to afford to live in your community and I think that you know we have to wrestle with that in Vermont and look at you know some communities don't have um you know welcoming zoning for um folks that maybe can't afford that the predominant you know size of home and lots and Chris and his team have been working on that for years and we've made progress but there's more to go the more that needs to be done yeah um Abbott Stark uh writes in the chat what are your thoughts on single family housing in our densest cities such as Burlington is the accessory dwelling unit law enough to meaningfully grow the city center and surrounding surrounding high medium low density neighborhoods or is more uh expansing of zoning needed kind of an information but yeah it's a great question I think it's a good start um accessory dwelling units are often seen as kind of a you know low hanging fruit an easy thing that you can change um and it will help some families I think um um help you know add create more housing whether or otherwise wouldn't um but if you look at the economies of scale you know to just to to make the development costs of producing one unit you know if you could do a duplex or a triplex you know in that same building um the numbers just look a lot better I think we can do more and I think you know there's nothing holding communities back from doing more you don't need state intervention um yeah without getting into too much weeds you know the state is a dillens rule state so if the legislature enacts a change that changes the edgy laws it is effective in all the communities um in the state of Vermont and that's what happened last year it increased this the square footage of these units um so but communities can do more by themselves you know this is just creates a floor um and we would encourage and we've got lots of guidance and training that aims to help communities to do all they can um to create more housing opportunities within these centers many of the community is kind of touching on your initial you know comment about water and wastewater systems you know they need more hookups to make these systems viable um and the way to do that is to you know increase the density um so I hope you know these are local decisions um but we hope more communities will look to that and obviously you know getting more people and more housing in your centers makes them more vital active and attractive places to live and visit and work yeah and along that same vein and going to kind of some of our smaller towns uh katie raycroft meyer uh wrote in uh the attendee questions how can the state support small villages uh small Vermont villages to develop small-scale global housing using it for seniors to age in place and as well as uh young families um it's it go ahead I can take that one josh if you then um so in in um s-101 which is a bill you know it's poised it's in third reading right now in the senate um there's several provisions that would help our smaller communities you know chidney county is blessed with a large development community that can do a lot of these projects take on these housing projects small rule vermont you know waiting for somebody to save them they're going to be waiting an awful long time so what s-101 does is create new tax credits to improve housing and that could support for instance what I call over housed you know people living in a large house one or two people living in a large house could they make multiple units within that house could they use a tax credit and it also provides training to help people learn how to use these tools and take on a small development projects because nobody's going to save them you know it's going to be the people who live in those communities who wants to fix up that building down the street that's run down or creating unit within their house that's how we are going to solve this problem we can't wait for somebody else to come and do it and so I do believe s-101 as proposed has a lot of potential to help the rule parts of the state um do something to improve the quality of housing stock and create more housing opportunities it still has to pass the house but we're so far so good on its journey um so I skipped over a question and I apologize to Janet Hurley who asked what do you think the likelihood that redevelopment of downtown flood plain areas would be included in the downtown program designations? Unlikely um we all learned from Tropical Storm Irene that it's really not a great place to to live um but there were some provisions in this was the the um house's version of act 250 reform um that talked about aligning our our our policies so A&R policies and state policies from from for downtown development within centers um you know when I for an example like Montpelier Montpelier is a community that does flood frequently in large storm events um but adding a house where there is a parking lot um so long as it doesn't encroach any closer to the river may be a good idea um and there was language in that bill that talked about aligning these policies you can build safely and develop within these centers and increase housing opportunities but you just have to do it in a smart way um so it really depends on how it's crafted but I think generally you know learning from these storms um you don't want to build new housing um that puts people at risk um but it can be done carefully and thoughtfully so it's one off site by site analysis of where these opportunities will be. Switching gears a bit and it was a question that kind of came up in some of our attendee registration comments and it's also been a topic that's been brought up a new number of times in the legislature um I know that there are kind of wide discrepancies in terms of BIPOC housing um ownership and land ownership in state and I'm curious as to what the department is doing in turn to try to kind of address those discrepancies in a direct way. Yeah that's a great question um in the governor's proposal that I worked on and it's making its way through the legislature both the house and senate side to do more investment in housing uh the both rental but on the home ownership side um there's a set aside for for the BIPOC community uh to help folks move into home ownership um you know Vermont is a very high home ownership state it thinks about 72 but that's for white Vermonters um that the BIPOC community has a much lower home ownership rate and recognizing that this is is a real issue we need to tackle it head on make those opportunities available um you know provide extra incentives you know extra outreach to to make folks aware of the the funding that exists and target um that community for access to home ownership and you know the governor is going to keep working on this we work closely with Susanna Davis and the Racial Equity Task Force on developing some of these policies um and I think when the governor announces even more ARPA money related to housing development this will be another focus as well as even in business incentives and and support for um you know job training and other economic development proposals it it's upon us to like be proactive about this and make sure it's in every one of our proposals and and that's what we're we're we're trying to do um there's going to be more work to be done on this in the future and it's going to take some time one we don't have much affordable housing stock and we need to build it and we need to target some of these programs to those groups so they have access um along that same thread we had a question and I apologize I can't see the name of a person asked that um should we have more regional regional affordable housing groups that work with employers to solve housing issues do we need more inclusionary zoning um I guess that's kind of a broad question but you know to what extent are you all partnered with kind of local housing groups um is there is there a need for these sort of groups to to grow um or to kind of increase in and their abundance in the state or what's that kind of nonprofit landscape look like I'd say we have a very strong active and efficient nonprofit affordable housing network we have regional groups community land trusts home ownership centers that cover the entire state um and they you know a partner on these housing developments they offer training and technical assistance and you know counseling access to first-time home ownership um you know subsidized loans they offer a home repair program for lower income homeowners um that might have trouble accessing uh you know capital don't have any equity in the home so I think we have a robust network of those organizations that we work with and they work quite well um I think that the key point of the question there though was how can we work better to collaborate with area employers that have jobs that are going unfilled and where those might align with housing opportunities I think there is a lot of work there that could be done folks often um you know don't that those economic development committees and housing committees often aren't aligned and communicating as much as they should be and I know in our housing strategies especially as you roll out new development we need to build the units of housing where there's jobs where there's a need for net new units and then also focus on um reinvestment in some of the underutilized housing opportunities in other parts of the state that have housing stock I mean that's what's a challenge about our housing crisis and situation in Vermont it's not uniform we have some regions of the state that have adequate housing stock but it's in very poor quality it's very old and it needs reinvestment um it's being unused and then we have other parts of the state where there is no underutilized housing stock we need net new units and we need to coordinate on that and we need to coordinate with area employers to make sure it's we're building where they need where they need workers to live those areas with excess housing stock and this has just made you know hypothesizing I would assume that those are largely areas where you're not within a reasonable commuter distance to probably job centers maybe um in some instances I know I grew up in Corinth Vermont and there's a little bit more housing you know in that kind of part of the state than outside of Burlington have you seen kind of an impact as far as broadband on kind of enabling those communities because of the prevalence of remote work to be more viable places for young professionals to move to or professionals of any age to kind of move to and make a life in a little out of my wheelhouse but maybe Josh you want to answer I mean yeah to my own experience in I live in North Calis which is north of Montpelier 20 25 minutes out of town and we did not have high speed and you know the realtors were asking questions you know like do you want to do you want to sell your house because the market was hot and they said how fast is your broadband um and you know it's something that these two pieces have to happen but I think it will take time for the broadband um and the housing improvement to occur yeah I think that's it's definitely part of the puzzle but it's not an entire piece I mean we have you know communities like Springfield which have fastest broadband in the state and they have um you know someone argue more adequate housing stock than other parts of the state um and Rutland has more housing stock and it's not like there's there isn't jobs there there's unfilled jobs that there are major employers as well um you know I think that there's this definitely this pull towards Chittenden County um and then you know parts of Franklin and parts of Washington County parts of Addison County and then again over in the upper valley the parts of Windsor County that sort of across from you know Hanover Lebanon that have these extreme tight housing markets and they're they they need net new units and then we have these other parts of the state that have some of this older housing stock that's sort of surrounding our traditional you know downtown and centers that you know were once very you know prominent neighborhoods and very large historic homes that have many cases been divided up into apartments and they haven't seen as much of that reinvestment and one of my hopes as a silver lining out of this pandemic and the desire for Vermont as a place to people to move to and feel safe you know is that maybe some of these folks moving to Vermont because there's a shortage of supply will move to those areas and really become part of those communities making them better that's where the housing deals are you know I've heard the governor say it you know many times there are some housing deals out there but they're in those communities and you know folks that see feel that they're priced out of you know some of the other more expensive markets if you can work remotely you know give those communities a shot and invest yourself in them and improve them and I you know that that's one way to more affordable housing for for folks looking is to to think about some of these other opportunities in different parts of the state and many of those have high-speed broadband so that's not going to be the issue for remote work I can't help Chris out in East Calis or you know I used to live in Rochester up on the hill but um um so I apologize I'm jumping around a bit but I want to get to people's questions in the chat and I'm kind of reading them as they come in uh Julie Marks writes are there incentives for hotel owners to convert their existing underutilized hotels and motels into long-term apartments I believe there was a developer in South Burlington that was attempting to convert a hotel to an apartment building there are I mean that that certainly has happened one you know sometimes just market driven um you know because we also have you know new new ways people are traveling and staying you know air bnb's and short-term rentals um some of these hotels and motels and lodges you know don't have the same um value in the marketplace um and so that that's happening naturally as well as affordable housing we see a lot of conversions happening right now um I know of at least a dozen that were turned into you know um efficiency apartments one bedroom apartments over the last eight months um due to COVID trying to move people out of emergency housing and shelters um and moving those into long-term home ownership not home ownership long-term rental properties and then we have a lot of folks that are in these motels that are being rented by the state on a nightly basis long term for homeless individuals and you know the um as we reopen to travel again some of those contracts are going to be ended and they're going to be you know moved into um serving visitors but some of those properties you know may not ever really go back to that model and that there are also opportunities to convert to uh multifamily rental um you know but sometimes you need to look at the location is it a healthy place to have long-term housing is it really you know is it walkable or their jobs close by you know what are the the surroundings and is that a good investment for the state to put some of this money into those locations needs to needs to be considered as well um you know on the topic of uh kind of incentives and funding we have all these new CRF and ARPA dollars but do you want to touch on any of your existing kind of programs um you know I'm looking at the your website right now and your funding and incentives page and you have Vermont community development program charitable housing tax credits downtown and village tax credits sales tax the allocation neighborhood development area designations are there any of those programs that you'd like to highlight um that might be kind of relevant to what we've discussed today yeah I'll touch on a few um you know in s101 the bill I mentioned earlier that's on third reading right now is a significant boost to the downtown and village center tax credits right now it's capped at three million dollars a year and demand for that program is at five million so we're not meeting the current demand for that program um so what the bill proposes is to increase the cap to four point seven five million and to touch on some of the housing needs that we see you know our communities that have the housing stock but need the investment it proposes to create a tax credit to improve rental housing stock in within these neighborhood development areas again I think these will be you know huge tools needed to you know I think Josh says this you know these are the communities that built Vermont these are important parts of our history and heritage and they're great buildings they just need an investment and the economics for them just don't make a whole lot of sense without some kind of subsidy so I do hope um you know if those provisions can pass out of the senate and be well received in the house I think we can start moving the needle um that kind of pales in comparison to some of the the ARPA funding that josh was talking about yeah I think you know we've had long-standing programs to help build housing um through our department and other partners such as Vermont Housing Conservation Board and Vermont Housing Finance Agencies with the very valuable uh low-income housing tax credit that's actually the biggest um that's responsible for housing development in Vermont and across the country it's the largest single source of affordable housing development it is an IRS tax program but in the community development program it's federal funding from Department of Housing and Urban Development it goes to communities so communities apply and they choose how to address their community development needs much of which is housing development we probably spend 60 to 70 percent in any given year of that pot of funding which is about eight million dollars a year on housing development um but it's you know it is a complicated process you know you community many partners um lots of conditions um and accountability but it works it works well um and as Chris said we're we've got these other lower entry you know tax credit programs um as far as you know small apartments above general stores and so forth that really are much easier to access if we have enough money where they do the work and they get reimbursed after it's done if they've qualified um but we we have more tools coming I think um you know and the challenges can we step up and coordinate all the permits needed I saw comments about you know A&R water hook up and sewer that's part of the mix can we um satisfy this demand in this construction boom in a way that we haven't been for for many decades um but it's you know we're we're still in this crisis and it's the housing situation has become worse and so we're going to need to collaborate and and change some models here one idea I heard um that they just implemented in California um because they have a housing crisis as well all the ARPA money for housing construction in California all the um typical environmental and permitting um conditions have all been waived for this money they've at grant the legislature has granted a blanket waiver for housing development with these ARPA funds and we need to employ tactics like that to move money and meet the needs um that we have in the short term um because these are you know these are important important things we need to address and some of our um solutions long-term solutions that well thought out and plan may take longer than the next year to sort out but yet we can't let this money sit on the sidelines and not be used and take advantage of this once in a generation opportunity um so we definitely appreciate all the work you two have done um you know to improve the housing quality and stock in our state um I think that kind of wraps up the event do you too have uh any kind of closing remarks you'd like to share just to pick up on something that Josh was talking about you know since we we have money for housing you know it'd be great to invest it in the housing most permits do get approved in the end but it does add a lot of time and cost a lot of soft cost to development and it would be much better to put as much of this this opportunity new opportunity money in the buildings those are lasting improvements that will really make a difference in people's lives yeah absolutely we definitely appreciate that here at the chamber um so that wraps up the event for today another big thanks to both of you for participating um we hope that you can join us in the future uh today marked the final event of the virtual policy series um every Friday afternoon starting in January we sent out we send out a legislative update called state domain if you aren't receiving one of those drop your email in the chat or send us a note and we'll make sure you do receive it in the future thank you all and have a great afternoon thank you