 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Powered Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM, and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity, and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Roosevelt Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx.com, New York Powered Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW.H.com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Hello and welcome to the edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the different people. I've worked with you for a long time, so I mean it's not here today. Before we get to our guests of housing and Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity, let's thank our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and many others, including the partnership for Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity. Let's welcome Zachary Watson, Zachary Ralph Watson of Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity. Welcome to Ableton on Air. For those of you who don't know, what are the missions and goals of Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity? Thanks, Larry. Yeah, so Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity is a 501c3, it's a Christian ecumenical nonprofit, and we build affordable housing for home ownership. So we have a couple programs. We do home repairs. We help with home access to help people stay in their home as they age, and we also build homes and rehabilitate homes and work with income-sensitive Vermonters in Center Vermont to provide them with a home that is theirs with an affordable mortgage. As a Christian organization, our mission is spreading the love of God and by providing shelter for those who need it, and our vision is creating a world where everyone has a place to live. Now, in terms of affordability, obviously, affording a home isn't an easy thing. There are rentals. Is it 30% of when somebody wants a home through Habitat? Is it usually 30% of the person's income? How does that work? That's correct, yeah. So in order, the definition of affordable means that you are paying less than or equal to 30% of your income on your mortgage payment. So that includes your principal payment, which is the amount that you pay towards the actual home itself, and then your escrow, which includes your homeowner's insurance as well as your property taxes. And we make the home affordable by giving a mortgage that fits the budget of our partner homeowners. Now, I understand that... Can you explain what sweat equity is? Because if somebody can't really afford payments... I mean, yeah, they have to make payments, but what is sweat equity? Habitat for Humanity is not a giveaway program. It's a true partnership. And it's a partnership in that basically in exchange for the sweat equity, we provide this subsidized mortgage. So what sweat equity is, is that the partner homeowner agrees to work up to 250 hours on their home, and those 250 hours can be split up between friends and family. It can be being on the work site, hammering nails and hanging doors, things like that, unskilled labor. It can also be office work. We work to fit the needs of our applicants and our partner homeowners. We also require that our partner homeowners complete an eight-hour financial wellness course through Down Street Housing and Community Development, and that's all designed... the financial wellness course as well as the sweat equity on the home is designed to help the homeowner be successful. So they understand their home that they're actually building, and they also understand the tools and resources to help them be financially successful. How long has Habitat for Humanity been around? And since Vermont, Habitat for Humanity, how long have you guys been around? Habitat for Humanity was started in 1979 by Millard and Linda Fuller, who are our founders, and Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity started 10 years later in 1989. Okay, so let's get to new projects. We've been on before, but what are some of the new projects that Habitat for Humanity Central Vermont is working on? There's a lot of exciting stuff going on right now, and we just finished a rehabilitation of a 100-year-old house in Barrie to meet high-performance energy standards, which means it's going to be really cheap to operate that house because it's energy-efficient. So we just finished that in March, and we just closed our application period for... I know you had one in Randolph. Yep, so we have a property in Randolph. It's on Central Street in Randolph. It's between 39 and 43 Central Street. So we just closed the application period to find our partner homeowners for that. We will select our partner homeowners sometime in October. That property we can build a single house on or we can build a duplex on. If we built a duplex, it would be our first duplex, which is very exciting. What's a duplex? Duplex is...it means two. So it's a two-unit household, and there are different ways that you can kind of arrange a duplex. For us, we focus on privacy and separation. So we basically... The cars are side-by-side townhouse where there's just a shared wall. You have separate entrances, separate driveways, separate yards. Everything is separate except for the shared wall. So that's the type of duplex we have. A shared wall, what would that mean in terms of... It's just the wall that's between... So you've got one unit on the right and one unit on the left, and there's just a wall down the middle that's their shared wall. Now, what are some of the myths around owning a home that people shouldn't be scared of? Is there anything that you want to add to that? Because I know it is scary to own a home. You have a lot to do within that. Yeah. You know, that's a good question. I haven't really thought about that too much, I think for some folks, the fear might be that when you own a home, you're kind of stuck somewhere. And especially, you know, if there's subsidized housing where we subsidize a mortgage and we create some restrictions so that our houses remain forever affordable, some folks are afraid that if they take this house, they might be stuck there. And that's, you know, it's like anything else. You know, you're not forced to do anything. But people can always leave and sell their house and that's the nice thing and that's the difference between a rental and owning a home is that you can be someplace for five years and where if you're paying rent, that rent is going to your landlord and you don't ever see that money again, where if you own your home and you're paying a mortgage, that mortgage payment is going to you. That when you resell the house, you get all that money back plus the appreciated value of the home, which is how much the home has increased in value since you bought it. Those that don't know, what does it appreciate? Because, you know, appreciate and de-appreciate because, for example, if a person buys a car, the minute you take it out of the dealership, it loses depreciation. So what does that, those words mean? Yeah, you're right, so a car loses value as soon as you drive it off the lot. A house almost always will appreciate in value and that means that it gains value over time and it's typically connected to the market, to the economy and our economy is almost always growing but it's very rarely that house values lose value. They typically either gain value very quickly or sort of stagnate, but yeah, so a house is a great investment because you typically will see almost a guaranteed return on your investment plus what you've invested in it. So that's why homeownership is a good way of helping bring low income people out of poverty and to create middle class families. Right now, I'm going to mention this only a small smidgen but years ago back in the 60s and 70s there was something called NIMBY which means not my backyard. You know, with people, with special needs or people of color weren't allowed really to rent, you know, people were afraid or something like that. What are some of the misconceptions around people with special needs in housing if you want to bring that into the question? Well, I do want to preface too that I think... You want to educate people here? Yeah, I think there's been... I think NIMBY, the term NIMBY, not in my backyard, it's used pretty broadly on a number of issues. For me when I talk about NIMBYism this usually means that somebody knows that housing or energy or a park, something like that needs to happen. There's a documented need for that project to happen and that person knows that but they say, yeah, I get it but I just don't want it in my backyard. Put it in somebody else's backyard. And that's why it's not in my backyard because when you say not in my backyard it means I want it in somebody else's backyard but not mine. So in terms of... I can talk about NIMBYism around Habitat for Humanity. We work with low-income people and there are concerns sometimes by neighbors that they understand that we need to create housing for low-income people and that they need to be able to afford to live in a house but they don't want it in their neighborhood because they're afraid that this low-income household might bring down their property value or they're afraid that low-income people will bring unwanted things to their neighborhood. And this generally doesn't happen. And I assume basically these are misconceptions that people have that lead them to this fear and it's mostly fear. So that's what we run into but in our experience our Habitat for Humanity homeowners, they own their home which means they're invested in that neighborhood. Oftentimes the neighbors are involved building the house or actually come to the house blessing ceremony so we get to build that network of support with that homeowner and that helps them be successful as well but their kids go to our school, they pay their taxes, they're invested in that specific street and the city's infrastructure, the municipal infrastructure. These are true community members and so I think for the most part people are excited and have appreciated the relationships that they build with the partners. What are some of the... I mean, you have construction people or construction companies. What are some of the sponsors or how does Habitat for Humanity get the money for these houses? Is it basically donations only or how's that work? Well, so when we are a non-traditional mortgage lender which means that we originate and service our mortgages so we put forward the capital, the money to build the house and then we create the mortgage for that homeowner. So you put the money up front and then you sweat equity people up. And so when our homeowners pay back their mortgage and through our mortgage program we have a 0% interest mortgage all the money that they pay is going directly towards their house. That money that's paid towards their house is put into a revolving fund and those funds are used to help build our next house. Typically that is not enough money to build an entire house so we get subsidies through the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board a mortgage subsidy Vermont Housing and Conservation Board VHCB are fantastic partners. What about Housing Urban Development HUD? HUD so there are some HUD programs like HOME and the Housing Preservation Fund and Trust Fund and the Housing Trust Fund there are some sources of federal funding that are available and homeowners can actually access a mortgage through the USDA 504 grant or loan program. And they get accessible because 504 makes things accessible. It can be, yep. So there are some. We have not used HUD funds in the past and but yeah we mostly work with VHCB we get support from National Life from the Vermont Mutual Insurance Company Vermont TransCo we get a lot of community support from our businesses and then a lot of individual donors we have over 100 individual donors that help us every year and then we get grants and sponsorships from local businesses. So in terms of the meetings that have been happening recently and you have other stakeholder meetings explain a little bit about that and how people can get involved. Yeah so you asked me earlier what other projects we had and I mentioned Randolph so that's what we're working on now but we've been working on the Vermont Housing Development Project here in Montpelier on Northfield Street and it's about 50 acres and we are... Right across from the Econom Lodge. Right across from the Econom Lodge and it's a rural bacon parcel right now and we received a community development block grant from the Vermont Community Development Program of $50,000 as well as $10,000 from the Vermont Housing Conservation Board that talked a architectural and engineering development feasibility study. Explain what feasibility study... Yeah so basically we're looking at what are the geographic and cultural constraints and opportunities on the property so where might there be wetlands where might there be steep slopes what is the soil condition like all those things that help us determine where and how many houses we can build and then a big part of this is also we have to build a street up to it so we have to figure out the street access and then any time you're building houses or streets, you know cement is an impermeable surface which means water doesn't penetrate doesn't get into it so it stays on the surface and runs off and so any time you do that you have to do storm water mitigation plans how do you capture all that additional runoff so that's the feasibility study and ultimately it's going to help us determine how much... how many units we can build and how much it's going to cost to put in all the infrastructure that will help us determine essentially what is the pre-development costs for each one of our housing units and if it goes above a certain number then we will say well it's not really feasible to do this, we can't do it and so we won't but our goal is to make it feasible by working with the community so we held our first stakeholder meeting last night Thursday the second and a stakeholder for this project is community members, it's our neighbors it's individuals in our community that have special interests accessibility for people with special needs and but also the homeless and modern income, higher income, private developers so it's a sort of energy efficiency, passive house institute it's everybody that might have a stake and interest or in this development we invited them to this stakeholder meeting to share their thoughts about it and what they would like to see we had about 25 people there last night and we had a really strong discussion and we learned a lot from our community a lot that we didn't think about before and we went in with a blank slate so we yeah one of the things that was raised and I know this is going to air soon one of the things that was raised at that meeting for example since you're not too far from the Econolodge there's forest there and one of the things of building this the new development that people raised was sometimes people walk to people's back yard how's the security going to change is it going to be gated or are you going to have like a I wouldn't say a gated rounded but like a perimeter where people can't you know the security thing between the how would this it's 50 acres so how would this really work in terms of the wildlife and all of that am I phrasing it right? no no that's a so there will be so it's the responsibility of a private landowner to post their property if they don't want people walking on it and that's one of the beautiful parts about Vermont is that we have a beautiful forested landscape and a lot of Vermonters traditionally have not posted their land and that is allowed for the proliferation of hunting and outdoor recreation so that's a really positive part of Vermont currently the property is private but the landowner has not posted it and as a result a lot of the neighbors use it for their own personal recreation so ultimately if somebody in a butter doesn't want I mean it's not likely that somebody would walk through somebody's backyard anyways no I mean I'm just saying that's yeah I'm saying it was raised yeah I mean that seems if somebody has a maintained lawn that there's it seems very unlikely that somebody would go through that but if somebody is really concerned about not wanting people in their backyard then they would it would be their responsibility to post it but the park that will be designing as part of this housing development will have designated parking areas and it's not going to be a free for all and I think all you have to think about is other parks how does another park work and it's pretty clear that so what is the misconceptions now people with special needs having their own housing what are the misconceptions around people with special needs when it comes to renting I mean in your own opinion when it comes to renting or having a house yeah I really can't talk to that Larry I'm not sure I can tell you that we build we design our houses to meet the needs of our partner homeowner and so if we select somebody that has mobility issues we partner with somebody that has mobility issues we will design the house to meet their needs and usually that means houses that are universally accessible means having doorways that are wide enough to get a wheelchair through it means having hallways that are wide enough to have a wheelchair through it means having ramp access up to the house and it means having pull bars and things like that in the bathroom so we design our houses to meet the needs of of our partner homeowner and that would include people that have mobility issues what was one of the main reasons why now I know Central Vermont what was the main reasons why Habitat for Humanity formed years ago so when Linda and Millard Fullard started the organization like I said were a Christian organization and it was their Christian ministry to build housing so they were pastors they weren't, I don't believe they were pastors I believe they were a couple of individuals that realized there was a need for providing shelter for low income families and they came up with this they felt a calling to do this and what they designed was the current program and it's pretty simple you partner with somebody that's low income for us that's 30% to 80% of area median income based on your household size and then you work with sweat equity and volunteers to keep the cost of construction low and as a non-profit we can also receive donated materials and then we offer a low interest or 0% interest mortgage to that homeowner that's affordable, it means less than 30% of their income and then those mortgage payments are recycled into so we mentioned recycled goods and services so wood nails all of that would be donated by whom? they're not always donated, we purchase a lot we're invested in our community typically we spend anywhere between $150,000 and $200,000 out of pocket for our houses and then we might receive somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000 and donated materials so talk a little bit about I know you can't speak a lot about it but Jimmy Carter's former president Jimmy Carter's invested time in Habitat talk a little bit about that yeah, I can't talk too much about it so Habitat for Humanity is an international organization we are probably the most well known international housing organization in the world we're in 70 countries, all 50 states and I would say the reason we are very well known is because of the work of the Carter's because they have been invested and basically come even at his age he is coming and working on Habitat houses every year and he brings money and he brings promotion of our work and he's just been a fantastic ally in our work okay, what are some of the future goals I mean we have some time what are some of the future goals of Central Vermont Habitat yeah, our goals are to make this housing development work we we would hope to build maybe 100 plus units up there this will give us at the new site in Montpelier this will give us maybe up to 10, 15 years of work for us to do and that's a lot and so part of that effort is we're going to need to build a lot of infrastructure that will cost millions of dollars and so we will be doing some we'll be needing a lot of support from our local businesses and individuals to help us raise those funds so we can build streets and water infrastructure and storm water infrastructure and sidewalks, parks and all of that so we'll be requesting lots of support from our communities and businesses so that's the big thing on the horizon right now we have been expanding our home repair program or home preservation program and we're doing six projects right now in Central Vermont building ramps primarily ramps for disabled people mostly it's for elderly individuals who would like to stay in their home they want to age in place so we're expanding that and we also have been developing a neighborhood revitalization program for Barrie in Barrie City on Blackwell Street it's neighborhood revitalization it uses an asset based community development model quality of life quality of life foundations as the habitat model and what it does is it basically works within the community it empowers them to think about their assets and their needs and then we work with them we help facilitate the process for using their assets to fill the needs so you have this like an example would be you've got a blighted blighted house or a place vacant lot but you also need a park so you go and you clean up that vacant lot and you create a park or put some community gardens in there so that's a big goal we're looking towards and that's again it's about empowering our community to create what they envision they need for themselves ok so the house that was completed in Barrie was a 100 year old house has there ever been a project where you couldn't do or you had problems doing because you know because of how old the property was or a problem it's hard if it's a historical landmark for example go ahead yeah that's how does that really work we do a cost analysis before we take on a project to determine how much it will take to acquire the property permit it and then how much it will cost and cost to build the house and all of that needs to fit within our current financial model we do subsidize all of our houses for homeowners but if we we try to stick as close to to what it would what the actual mortgage will be in terms of how much we spend on it so we looked at the pink lady in Williams not pink lady the rosewood inn in Williamstown and that's I believe that was early 1900s it was built by the guy that owned rock of ages and it was designed to look like a Mississippi river steamer and it had been basically abandoned for the last couple years or I would say 20 years and as a result it was really run down but it was beautiful it was a beautiful house so we went to it we checked it out we figured it would cost about a million dollars to preserve the building and then we thought okay that's a lot but how many units do we need to make it so we could spend that amount of money on preserving it and we figured we could put about four units in there and make it pencil out we would have converted it into a small condo association if you will have you guys ever built condo? never built anything like that but the problem was that it's not only cost so we could make the pencil out cost wise we are also looking at what are the services that are available locally and what will the impact of this be on this community so Williamstown is pretty small it's pretty rural and there aren't a lot of services there that a lot of low income people need like public transportation and medical exactly so in the end we decided not to move forward to the Rosewood Inn property because of the costs so it was a hotel? previously it was an inn and restaurant before that it was somebody's mansion house so we decided that it didn't make sense for the community and ultimately that was driven by the cost and so we decided that we couldn't move forward with that project now utilities heat, hot water okay when people rent this example in Montpelier utilities are usually included in the rent but in terms of how they talk for humanity how does that work do you help does your organization help people okay you give them a mortgage but does your organization help people get their utilities heat and hot water because it's expensive in the winter with heat do you help them keep utilities low as well we don't so as a homeowner that's the homeowner's responsibility to pay for their own utilities but what we do help with is that we build energy efficient homes so it's less expensive to heat and cool the home and then we so we make them very airtight and well insulated and for actual heating and cooling we use heat pumps which are very efficient and so that means that you're basically you're not needing to buy heating oil you're using your electricity for heating but they're also very efficient so you end up saving a lot of money on your heating and electricity and we actually built a passive house with solar in east Montpelier passive what is that passive is an energy efficiency standard it's more energy efficient than high performance and so passive because it was passive and it had solar basically the cost of heating and electrifying this home was zero dollars per month the only cost is maybe the solar panels which I can't remember if the homeowner bought those or if we provided those but otherwise you know the same resources exist for a homeowner for a renter so you can still get fuel assistance from the state and right now I believe there's economic services and right now there's a Vermont Homeowner Assistance Program which helps people who are behind on their utility bills and things like that so all those services still exist we don't duplicate those services what do you mean by not duplicating we don't provide additional assistance for utilities okay well we would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Ableton On Air for more information on Habitat for Humanity Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity's work you can go to www.CentralVermontHabitat.org www.CentralVermontHabitat.org and if you want to find out more information on Ableton On Air go to www.OrcaMedia.net that's O-R-C-A-M-E-D-I-A.net I'm Lauren Seiler on Leeds Not Here Today see you next time on the next edition of Ableton On Air see you next time major sponsors for Ableton On Air include Green Mountain Support Services empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community Washington County where hope and support come together media sponsors for Ableton On Air include Parkchester Times Muslim Community Report www this is the Bronx.info Associated Press Media Editors New York Parrot Online Newspaper U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International Anchor FM and Spotify Partners for Ableton On Air include Yachad of New York and New England where everyone belongs the Orthodox Union the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition Montpelier Medical Center of the Bronx Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx Ableton On Air has been seen in the following publications Parkchester Times www this is the Bronx.com New York Parrot Online Newspaper Muslim Community Report www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge Ableton On Air is part of the following organizations the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston, New England Chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists