 Good morning. This is Friday, January 8th, and this is the general housing military affairs committee. We have two witnesses this morning, Sarah Phillips and Jeffrey Pippinger from the administration. They will they will introduce themselves we are we asked them to come in this morning to begin not only begin our work for the year but to begin a recap of what happened in 2020 with respect to homelessness. To review quite quickly. When we went into lockdown and left the building in the middle of March and then we had a full state lockdown soon thereafter. One of the first things that happened was that we got homeless families and individuals or households as we call them now off the streets and we depopulated the shelters that we had going it was still during the cold weather exception. We found places for them to stay through the hotel system that we have, and then we use the CRF money to try to create safe spaces for the homeless will hear more about that this afternoon from the HPB and others. But I wanted to get us up to date, as best we can, on what the situation is we're in the middle of the cold weather exemption time. And we have done what we all considered last year the right thing to do was to keep people who we expected to be high. I forgot what the word was and we can Sarah or Jeffrey can get it but basically hyper vulnerable individuals that may have been vectors that we were concerned about their health and the, and the fact that they were vectors and couldn't spread it elsewhere. If they really if they received it. So, I think that's as basic as I'm going to get Sarah has been working probably 160 hours a week on this and deserves all of our respect for the amount of work that she and the division has done over this on this issue it's been truly remarkable. The response to the state and the service providers that we have that have been doing this for years and years and years with Sarah. I'm just from the beginning. Thank you for your work and please I'm just going to pass the microphone to you. As you know, this year, we are limited on time in our committees, I know you're limited for the day. So, if we can just, and I think you're here to 11 or up to 11 o'clock you have to leave by then is what I've heard. But just welcome and please kind of take us through what we did and, and, you know, kind of appreciate what we did as a success and the many miles to go that we still have to go in order to make sure that Verma just stay safe. Thank you, Representative Stevens. For the record, I'm Sarah Phillips. I'm the director at the Office of Economic Opportunity, which is a part of the Department for Children and Families and the Agency of Human Services. And I'll let my colleague introduce themselves before we get started. Good morning. Thanks for having us here. Thanks for having us here. For the record, my name is Jeffrey. I'm a senior advisor to Commissioner for the Department for Children and Families. It's probably worth it in this context, or let folks know, for those of you who do not know me, that prior to my current role, I was the general and emergency assistance program director for the Economic Services division of the department, meaning that among other things I oversaw the Motel Voucher program. It's a pleasure to be here at this point. Thanks for having us. Great. Thank you. Sarah, do you need to share the screen? Oh, yes, I can share the screen. I apologize. I thought Ron would share the screen. He has the, we did create some slides to show you because we wanted to include some data. If that's me, you'll just have to give me one. No, I can share it. No, actually I can't. I'll make you co-host. Are you hearing a background sound? That's off of Sarah. Here we go. I apologize. I have had to call in. It's supposed to be linked, but I, if you hear it when I speak or only others. Only others. Only others. Okay, I'll be sure to. I hear you. And then I hear me speak. And then I hear me speak. I will be sure to mute myself when I'm not speaking. And that should help with that. I apologize. As many Vermonters experience, including probably some of yourselves, I have bandwidth issues and so calling in, make sure that I can participate fully in the meeting. So. It makes co-host. Okay, you're making me co-host. Okay, so one moment and I. Let me know representative Stevens, if you prefer for me to do it. Sarah, are you okay to share? Do you want Ron to do it? Unmute. Thank you. Thank you for those kind words and thank you for the partnership and the work with this committee during the past year. It has been a lot of work on behalf of many Vermonters to address this issue in particular. And our community partners have really been amazing agencies to work with during this time. So this morning, we're going to walk you through some information about where we're at right now, how that maybe compares to past years. We know there's some new members on the committee and we want to make sure you have that comparison. And talk a little bit about the efforts, not just to keep people safely housed, but then to rehouse folks experiencing homelessness, where we're at right now with that and what we see moving forward. So I actually can be here this morning until 1130 has needed. I don't know that we'll need that much time. I just wanted to make you aware that I was able to do that. So, okay, let's see if I can. To begin, we just want to make sure that when we say we're talking about who's homeless in Vermont. We all have an understanding of what we mean. So we use the definition of homelessness in Vermont that is used by the US Department of Housing or Urban Development and it's the definition adopted by HHS and used across many programs. And generally, when we're referring to who is homeless in Vermont, we're talking about folks that we might say are literally homeless, which is folks who are unsheltered, folks who are staying in emergency shelter or in emergency housing are considered homeless. Folks staying in a motel room paid for by a community partner or paid for by a charitable organization or paid for by the state. All of that is considered who we're talking about when we're talking about who's homeless now. Obviously, there are an awful lot of Vermonters who are also on the edge and experiencing housing instability and precariously housed. And we see the impact of that when you look at the numbers later today. But this is who we're talking about when we usually mean who's homeless in Vermont and this is who the point in time count focuses on. So, maybe you've heard me explain this before, but in Vermont, we essentially have a system of care that meets our emergency housing and our emergency shelter needs in two ways, right? We have our General Assistance Emergency Housing Program. That's the Motel Voucher Program or TEMP Housing. And then we have the other half of the system of care, which is really our emergency shelter network. And that's made up of projects that are operated by a number of community partners around the state. And we meet those needs in a variety of different projects. So, some of that is through congregate emergency shelters, some of it's domestic violence shelters, some of it's seasonal shelters, some of it's emergency apartments for families. So, there's a range of ways that, and some of it's motel rooms paid for, again, by our community partner. So, there's a range of ways that our community partners meet emergency housing needs. In a typical year, our General Assistance Motel Voucher Program might serve about 2,500 households. And our emergency shelter, community-based emergency shelter network, serves about 2,700 households. So, in a typical year, that's what we might see. But as Representative Stevens started to outline, we very quickly realized that we were going to need to use this tool that we have, the Motel Voucher Program, and expand its use to meet a broader need, and what FEMA calls non-congregate shelter. So, you'll hear me use that term. But we have expanded the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program to meet a non-congregate shelter need during COVID. Right? During the pandemic. And we did that by using, by waving and variants of rules. And so, I provided you that link if folks wanted to see sort of what the eligibility is, wanted to dig a little deeper there. So, that's one thing we did. The other piece that folks should understand is that right now, our emergency shelter network looks like 30 different emergency shelters, and 24 emergency apartments, and then Motel Overflow, that some of our domestic violence shelters actually, if their shelter is full, rather than refer someone to the General Assistance Program, they just provide that motel room directly. That's what I mean when I say they have a Motel Overflow Pool. And our capacity in that emergency shelter network right now is about 350 households. So, that's how many folks we can serve in that community-based network. And it typically operates at its maximum capacity. And that's because these two systems of pair work together, right? So, if there's a shelter bed that's available and appropriate and safe for you, then that's where you refer to first before you receive a Motel voucher. And then, just to say last year at the same time, just to put it in comparison, we had capacity for about 560 households. So, our capacity in our shelter network has gone down significantly, and I'll talk a little bit about that. But also, it's gone up from where it was. So, I also provided you the number that last summer we saw our capacity at about 160 households, right? So, when the pandemic began, a lot of our season was the end of the cold weather season. We saw some of our seasonal shelters close early. We saw some of them close because they rely on volunteers, sometimes older volunteers. Or they just weren't able to meet the public health guidelines around social distancing effectively. Or because they weren't able to provide 24-7 shelter, right? A lot of shelters don't operate 24-7. It became really important that we'd be able to provide people safe places to be 24-7. So, some of them closed and we lost capacity that way. Other shelters stopped accepting new guests. And then, as Representative Stevens explained, some shelters decreased their capacity, and we placed those individuals in motels instead. So, we saw our diminished capacity in the emergency shelter network. And then, we've been slowly sort of reinforcing that network and we've seen our capacity increase, but we're not back up to where we would usually be this time of year. I'll pause because I see questions. Representative Tram. Thank you. Welcome, Sarah. It's good to see you again. My memory serves me correctly. We had appropriated certain funds to renovate congregate shelters in order to comply with CDC. I'm not sure that I'm seeing or hearing that or unless it's coming later in your presentation. Yeah, I will talk. Yes, that's right. So, through the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, some of their funds were specifically to help shelters renovate so they could better meet the public health guidelines. And that is why you see some of the capacity coming back online for sure. So, that work did happen. I know they'll talk more in detail about it with you, but yes, that's been an important part of how we've reinforced that shelter network. Great. Thank you. Representative Walls. Thank you, Sarah. And maybe you've got this coming in on another slide. I'm wondering how many individuals those households represent. We've got more data to share with you. So, I'll keep going and hopefully answer a lot of those. Thank you. I'll hold off on that then. And Representative Clankey. Thank you. And Sarah, thank you and your team for everything you've done over the past nine months. It's really been profound to see how you stepped up. So, appreciate it. One thing I've been working with recovery homes and it's been really helpful that you've been able to waive for the motel voucher program some of the variances of rules because the dilemma for people in recovery homes is recurrence happens, of course, in recovery. And then you have to be taken out of the recovery home. If you're using again. And right now they're able to use motel vouchers. But is it my understanding correct that if you cause your own homelessness, you do not qualify for motel voucher. And so if someone is kicked out of a recovery home, they can't go into a motel. Did I get that correctly? Let me back up and say just a couple of things. One is that the Office of Economic Opportunity administers the side of the system that is the community-based system of care, right? The emergency shelves network is my colleagues at the economic services division that are really the subject matter experts in the eligibility around the general assistance program. So I want to be cautious in answering your question. I might defer to Jeffrey Pivoter who used to be that program director who can speak more specifically. But I think generally, yes, you're correct that the program rules have varied. And typically if you are responsible for causing your own homelessness that you would not be eligible under normal rules, not under the rules that we are operating with now. Right. Jeffrey, did you want to add anything? Thank you. Thank you. Great. And so I do think, you know, certainly Deputy Commissioner Trish Tile from the Department for Children and Families, she oversees the Economic Services Division. It's really their team that does the benefits, the general assistance eligibility and they can speak more specifically to some of those questions. So I'll keep going here. So how many people are experiencing homelessness in Vermont right now? So anecdotally, at least we know that the number of Vermonters that are unsheltered or living in what you sometimes hear referred to as a place not meant for human habitation, right? The number of Vermonters that are unsheltered is way down right now because we have opened the door wide, open in the emergency housing program. And so that's been good news. We know that there's a lot, there are sometimes individuals that don't want to receive a motel voucher from the Department for Children and Families and there is some good outreach that our community partners do to sort of facilitate and encourage people to have a warm place to stay, which is important. So you might have heard about in Montpelier, an overflow shelter at Christchurch in Montpelier that Good Samaritan Haven operated during the month of December. They did that because they knew there were some folks who were unsheltered and they opened those doors up and they were able to serve a few folks. But their emphasis then was not on maintaining that church basement shelter, essentially. It's not in a basement, but in a church, like a big open fellowship room overflow shelter instead of maintaining that for the season, right, where they weren't able to offer 24-7 shelter. They used that as an opportunity for engagement and outreach to help get folks connected and into a motel room where they can be safe and warm 24 hours a day. So a lot of effort has gone into decreasing the unsheltered count. You know, I did sort of a little snapshot and climb here for you. So I reached out to our domestic violence agencies that have their own motel pool and they had, as of a couple nights ago, had 12 households and motels. Obviously, the largest number of folks who are homeless in the state of Vermont right now are in the Motel Voucher Program. As of January 6th, it looks like 1,800 rooms, about 1,827 rooms. You can roughly estimate that rooms as households is not exact, but of those 1,800 or so households, about 2,100 were adults and the remainder were children. And we're currently using 78 different lodging establishments in the state of Vermont. So this is really an enormous number of folks that are in motel. And then again, if you think about our emergency shelter network serving about 350 households in the state of Vermont, though, so this is really what homelessness looks like in the state of Vermont right now. And Sarah, very, very quickly, I suppose, on these rooms. What is the average cost of these rooms or are these being negotiated separately between each establishment? I mean, because this will go into the discussion that we're going to have ongoing, which is, boy, when we create these things on our own or we work with the agencies like the Shemplin Housing Trust, we're providing services along with this. These are just mostly the hotel rooms for what costs on average. Yeah, so I can follow up with more detail, but generally it's just a lodging establishment that agrees to accept payment through the program, right, a motel voucher. So there's no contract in place. And the average cost per night, I think across the whole program is about $88 per night per room. There are a couple instances. For instance, as you mentioned with the Shemplin Housing Trust where the department has a contract with Shemplin Housing Trust at Harbor Place in Shelburne. And so that's essentially a nonprofit motel and there's some on-site services there. And that's obviously a much reduced cost. And then I would say we're also at this time we are leasing space. I think it's folks that are familiar at the Holiday Inn in South Burlington. And so that's at a reduced cost as well and we have some staffing on-site there. So generally I think the average is $88 per night, but I can follow up and get back to you to confirm that that's still a case. Which is pretty much what the program has been. What the program has been. It's about the price that the program has been over the years. So I don't know if we need a specific price so I suppose that would help. But we are also FEMA is picking up much of this cost if I'm not mistaken. And we're paying a percentage. Is that still accurate? Yes. So we FEMA is a reimbursement program. I think as folks are familiar. And we have expanded the program as I've said to meet the non-congregate shelter needs due to the pandemic. And so it's really an emergency response effort due to meet a public health need. And so we continue to pursue the avenue of FEMA funding. FEMA covers 75% of the cost. Which is significant. And then the remainder has been CRF funds, the coronavirus relief funds. And I think that is absolutely why we are able to do this. But it's also, again, I just want to drive and say the reason we're doing it is to meet a non-congregate shelter need due to the public health crisis. And that's the report from FEMA. Representative Hango. Do you have time for a question? Representative Hango. Thank you. It may be addressed later on in your slides. I see a little bit about it. But in terms of services at all of these locations, can you safely say that there are services for people who have been rehoused at all of these locations? And if so, are those costs not being picked up by FEMA or the CRF money? Yeah, that's a great question. So we did, and we did early on, expand services also to meet that surge need. Sometimes that has been some housing, additional housing case management to help people identify housing and exit. Sometimes that's been just on-site services or outreach to motels to try and help people meet basic needs. Or really to help meet the safety and security needs at some of those sites as well. We certainly don't have on-site services at 78 different lodging establishments in the state of Vermont. And in many cases, I should be clear, these lodging establishments are housing folks that aren't in the general systems emergency housing program. Most of them are just operating as they would. So it's not as if general systems clients are the only folks in these hotels. In some cases we do have on-site services like I said at the holiday inn where the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity is providing 24-7 staffing at that site. In part because it's a very large site and we have an arrangement for 100 plus rooms at that site. So we have used some of the appropriation from the legislature at DCF for homeless assistance to fund some of that increased housing case management and motel-based services through December as of when those grants ended at the end of December we have pivoted a little bit to doing now what we're called non-congregate shelter services which we've structured to be FEMA-eligible as well. And so we do have entered into contracts with I think about 13 different providers around the state who responded to an RFP to provide on-site and motel outreach and on-site services. Again we're not reaching every lodging establishment and we're not reaching every household and the level of services really varies from a site where you may have 24-7 staffing and support to a site where you have a team that's coming to do outreach once or twice a week. So there's a lot of variability there but certainly everyone who is participating in the program has the opportunity to connect to a service provider through what we call coordinated entry which is how you get connected to housing help and to get access to housing resources to exit the program. So that work is ongoing and our community partners have really picked up the effort in that. I have a question about that and I'm sorry to keep asking questions but how is that funded? Obviously it's going to be ongoing throughout this year was it part of your budget ask or where's that money coming from? Yes it's in DCF's budget. You're talking about the non-congregate wraparound services Yes. Thank you. This slide is just again, OEO administers what's called the Housing Opportunity Grant Program which is really the grant program that is the core funding for our housing crisis response system. Our emergency shelters, homeless prevention and rehousing efforts. And so this graph every year we do sort of an end of year report. You can find that on our website. I'm happy to share the link with Ron. But this graph is pulled from and it really shows in 2020 how that end of year shift in capacity really impacted how many households we served in our community-based system of care. And then I think what's interesting is when you place that side by side with this chart which is really looking at the motel utilization through the general assistance program. So you can see sort of the direct correlation in March and April and May and June where the emergency shelter network went down and we saw a huge increase in GA. I think this chart goes beyond that though in illustrating that we've continued to see an increased need. We did see a dip in the summer months but we've seen it climb back up and we see now the highest number of households and motels that we've had over the course of the pandemic. What's lost in this chart is that we've actually had a lot of households also exit motels. Which you wouldn't catch in this right? It's not the same household. So we've had households exit. We've had new households coming in which are more overwhelming the system in some sense. But again really proud and glad that we're able to do this as a state and ensure that every Vermonter has a safe place to stay right now. Representative, can you jump in right here and talk a little bit more. Oh, there was a question, sorry. No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. So slide gets us back into the motel voucher setting of the non-congregate shelter. Before getting into it, I just wanted to say in response to Rappulaki's question about the recovery settings, in a situation like that a client would generally be seen not to have left that housing on their own accord. So that wouldn't be causing your own loss of housing. Really what it comes down to at this point is the situations are reviewed. There's often a gray area or a case-by-case basis to determine that. Which actually becomes really important in just a second. But this is the snapshot of how many rooms or households, sometimes a household may take up more than one room, but that's infrequent. We're seeing currently households with children as well as households without children. Sarah, can you go to the next slide please? So usually the way that we measure then count folks who experience homelessness from year to year to year to year is the point-time count. Which is a one-night census of folks experiencing homelessness. What I want to highlight in this particular moment, I won't read everything that's on there for you. You can see that. But what I want to highlight is that in 2020, so a year ago, this is always January, 746 households, 1,110 people were counted as experiencing homelessness. If you kind of think back to a few slides ago, what we're looking at now is 1,827 households and 2,512 people. In some regard, I think what's important to remember, and we have talked about this during the summer, during our testimony, is that oftentimes one of the critiques of the point-in-time count is that it's dependent upon the motel voucher system. The historical GA eligibility for the motel voucher system is based on categorical eligibility. Do you fit into the certain categories that determine whether or not you would be eligible for a motel voucher through the state? On top of that, whether or not it was an adverse weather night, a cold weather exception before that night, which is based on temperature metrics. Below 20 degrees, historically, ambient or wind chill, or lower than 32 degrees for the greater than 50% chance of precipitation. Those things matter, because if there was an adverse weather night, you'd see more folks in motels. So the data did kind of vary from year to year. I think what we have seen over the course of the pandemic is that with those categories being stripped away due to our efforts to help during the public health emergency, you're really getting a, in some ways, we're getting a better sense of whose experience you're most has and who's precariously housed relative to the historic data. Sarah, go ahead. So back to you. Sorry. I'm muted. We just wanted to also obviously expanding the general systems program is the only thing that we've been doing. I talked a little bit about the expansion of services as well to meet that need. But we also have done a lot of work to reinforce our shelter network. A lot of guidance, opportunity for one-on-one technical assistance with the Department of Health. It's facility-specific training for staff. We've provided various supplies to our shelter network and also additional funding to just help fill the gap. So it's a stressful time for our shelter network. So when we say that they're operating at diminished capacity in no way should folks think that that means that they're doing less. They're doing much more at this point in time. And then the other really important part of our response has been the establishment of isolation quarantine or recovery sites. And this is really for Vermonters who need to isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19. But they don't have a suitable home environment to do this. So sometimes that's because they're homeless or they're staying in a shelter or some other congregate setting. Sometimes it's a variety of factors that can mean somebody can't stay where they are to isolate or quarantine. And so this has actually been a critical resource for us. And currently the Champlain Housing Trust our isolation quarantine site is operated by them at the HOHOM in South Burlington. The HOHOM was actually purchased with CRF dollars that BHCB was using, so was administering. And so that'll be available to be an ongoing resource even once the pandemic is done. And we do also have the ability to mobilize an additional 30 rooms if we need it. So that's great news and that's an important resource in this work as well. And then importantly we've really worked on creating some resources to help folks exit motels as quickly as possible into other safe housing options. So one of those initiatives that was part of DCF work has been the what we call Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative. So this is really looking more broadly than just even just permanent housing like just exiting right into an apartment. But are there other safe housing options for you that would be better than staying in the motel even if it's not permanent housing? And also to provide some flexible funding. So really having some client centered problem solving, create a problem solving conversation. And then having some resources available to make it happen. That's work that we're not always able to do in our system of care honestly because it requires some flexible funding. And so this has been really a critical opportunity to build up our practice in this area as a field. So that funding ended on at the end of December with the end of the sort of CRF one so to speak. More than 200 households were assisted with that and we'll have sort of as we're moving out that those grant programs will have better data at the end of the month. But some examples of what folks were able to do. It's really the funds were able to be used to support any number of areas where a household was experiencing barriers to housing. And so whether that be transportation costs or debt relief in some cases because the debt was preventing them from being able to afford housing in an ongoing way to pay rent and they had an apartment available but didn't have the income because of that debt. You know, move in costs is think about what a cost to move into new housing. In some cases it was help with security deposits. In some cases it was help with being able to stay with family or friends by covering some of those costs that might be associated with that. So this has been a really great opportunity for us to broaden our just increase our toolbox in other words. And so I think it's been an important tool. The other major initiative at DCS has been to focus on rental assistance to re-house households experiencing homelessness. And so rapid re-housing is really the name of that kind of strategy when we talk about temporary rental assistance and housing retention services that go with that. And in this case that temporary rental assistance has been really 12 to 18 months of rental assistance. Folks exit a rapid housing initiative successfully because they're able to increase their income in that time to afford their rent in an ongoing way or because they're able to bridge to like a permanent housing voucher. And so we focused that effort and prioritized in partnership with the Vermont Continuums of Care, Homeless Continuums of Care, our partners networks. We focused that effort really on families and prioritized it for families such that most of those families in motels right now have a housing voucher and they're actively looking for housing. And so you can see some preliminary numbers right here. There's kind of two projects that we did this with. One is Vermont Rental Subsidy. We focused, that's a project or program that the department already administers that provides 12 months of rental assistance. And we focused an expansion on that program really to serve Vermont families that are in ReachUp, our TANF program. And so the Vermont Rental Subsidies went to ReachUp families who were experiencing homelessness. And so we have 40 families that have already leased up with that and 52 families with vouchers that are looking for housing. And then the other larger project was the CARES Housing Project. So this is funds that we used, both CRF funds to, on the front end of this project and then we're using our emergency, our HUD Emergency Solutions Grant CARES Award. So that's the HUD funds that DCF received annually, the Emergency Solutions Grant to support the federal funds that are part of the Housing Opportunity Grant program. We received a large CARES allocation, special CARES allocation to that program at $6.7 million. And so that's what we've looked to create the CARES Housing Project. So that's a statewide project, CBOEO, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunities, our partner administering the rental systems. And then we have a number of agencies around the state providing the housing retention services. So in that project right now we have 275 households who have already been determined eligible and have housing vouchers and are searching for housing. Some of them will be housed or have been housed in the new units coming online through the work that the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board has done. And then 91 households have already been leased up. So that's great news, it's very exciting and part of the challenge obviously with doing rental systems has been that the CRF funds were intended to, you know, we were planning on those ending at the end of December. So the way, so the use of the ESG CARES money allowed us to support this initiative, right? Those funds had a longer spending period. And then with Vermont Rental Subsidy what we had originally planned to do was use our CRF funds to supplement the general fund appropriation. So obviously now we'll be looking to see if some of the new rental systems money coming from Treasury as part of the second relief bill will be one of the ways that we can support some of these initiatives moving forward. Great. Representative Kalaki. Thank you, Sarah, for these numbers in the rental subsidy on this slide. Are there 52 families with vouchers and the 275 households with vouchers? Are they waiting because there's not enough housing to move these families into? Or are you hopeful that it's just a short-term issue? What's the holdup there? No, that's a great question. So it took us a little bit just to be fair, it took us a little time to be able to launch these programs. So the CARES Housing Project and the VRS really launched. CARES Housing Project launched September 1st and the VRS expansion really launched I think in August. And the CARES Housing Project being totally new so we had to sort of write it from scratch, right? So that's part of it. And then from there folks had to apply, be found eligible. All of those households had gone through the eligibility process and received their voucher by December at the latest. Most of them in October, November, it just took some time September, October, November. And then they have a certain number of days to find housing. Now in a typical year on average, and there's even been a report to the legislature on specialized housing vouchers in the past and some of the delays and utilizing those vouchers and so out of that we know that it can go from other programs that on average it can take 60 to 90 days to find housing. It just does. Our rental housing market is just that tight. I think so some of the delay is just due to that normal time period of searching and finding housing. And then some of it honestly is that households with barriers to housing find it even harder to get into housing. We also know that housing is not turning over like it might normally, which is a good thing, right? We don't want folks being evicted, but we're seeing sort of that housing turn over be even less than it might normally be. And frankly this is a lot of households looking for housing all at once. This is not, this is a very large number compared to what we might normally see. In an average year Vermont rental subsidy is maybe 100 households. So you know in a short time period of just three to four months we've essentially added 475 households. It's almost five times what we might do in a normal year. So I think we're seeing the impact of that as well. There's just going to be delays in leasing up. And by far one of the greatest challenges we have is just people finding a unit. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Representative Blomley and then Byron. Hi, Sarah. Good to see you. I am curious about I've gotten a couple of emails from folks living in my district who have said, you know, asked me the question, will the rental subsidies continue? And I'm just wondering how I respond to them. There are kinds of rental subsidies, right? There's kinds that are designed to be temporary to only go on for 12 to 18 months, right? Like this initiative, it's a rental assistance subsidy or rental voucher, but it's not a permanent voucher. And by design, those programs, what we would call the rapid rehousing strategy is folks exit from that program successfully because they're able to increase their income and afford their rent in an ongoing way or because they bridge onto a permanent housing voucher. So by design this resource is not necessarily intended to be ongoing. I think there's also the rental relief program or the rental housing stabilization program that the State Housing Authority administered, right? That was largely providing rental relief for people in current housing. And we can talk a little bit more about that later on because that is the new money that Treasury is the $200 million state minimum that we're getting in Vermont that is intended to really meet that need and some work is happening on how to quickly mobilize that. And then that program though in the first version of it. And I think you have Richard Williams from the State Housing Authority here today so I'm not going to go too into depth because I think he'll be the best one to talk about his program. But they did also have some funds available for people to move. They called it money to move. We worked really closely to carve out what we were doing at DCF to be different than what the State Housing Authority was doing. And largely our population was people experiencing homelessness helping them get rehoused whereas the population of the State Housing Authority was serving with people already in housing right? So it was a little bit different in that sense. And so I think one of the things that we haven't seen from the federal government is new permanent housing choice vouchers, right? We haven't seen the Section 8 vouchers as they're commonly called. And those are really important resource for us. A particular when we think on the other end of the rapid rehousing initiatives, right, is that we want people to be able to bridge to a permanent housing voucher if it's available. And we just know that our current number of housing choice vouchers in the state and just the regular attrition in that program isn't going to be able to absorb 375 households a year from now. And so a lot of effort will happen in the next year to work on employment and income with the households in the program. And a lot of effort will be done to work with our local public housing authorities as well to see if they can also partner with us to create what's called the move on preference. In other words, moving on from this program to that program, right? And then I think some advocacy at the federal level around housing choice vouchers is certainly something that's ongoing as well. Hopefully that answers your questions. It's probably more complicated than how you want to answer your neighbor. I might need to circle back with you. Sure. Yeah, no problem. And I think Representative Bloomley, I think there's a part of our work is going to be reviewing what we can do with the $200 million that the federal government has focused on it. And because these programs that we approved this year all expired. And so figuring out how to continue those resources or get this money into the resources is going to be a key part of our work in the next few weeks. Which is different from the on, as Sarah was saying, is different from the programs that already existed that were perhaps under-capitalized. Representative Byron and then Parsons. Thank you. So my question is a little bit about an associated impact on housing insecurity. And I was curious what your organization saw with working with the food insecurity organizations, especially around the emergency housing, hotel scenarios, the shelters, whatnot. Did you see success with working with Food Bank, Meals on Wheels, everyone eats is a newer thing. I'm just curious to get your feedback on that. Yeah, that's a great question. So first, let me say that part of what we're doing with the non-congregate sheltering is also ongoing meal delivery. And that was actually a critical thing that we needed to begin immediately because a lot of what folks experiencing homelessness rely on for food is our community meal sites. And those all shut down. So our community partners first launched into meal delivery very rapidly and sort of redid their systems of care essentially, right? And so they went to delivering meals to motels. And then we as a state were very quickly able to take that on and to issue some contracts. And so we, every single household that is in a motel through the GA program is also eligible for meal delivery as well. And that work continues. And I don't have those numbers today, but I can follow up. Certainly not everyone chooses to participate, but that's an important part of the food security work that's happened. And then I think, you know, I think also a lot of these agencies are also the agencies that are the primary agencies in their communities doing food security work, right? So I think of like GroundWorks Collaborative in Brattleboro, Vermont and they operating year round shelter there. They also typically operate a day shelter and a seasonal shelter. But since last spring they have been providing 24-7 services onsite of the quality in Brattleboro where they serve a lot of households there. They also operate I think the largest food shelf in that area as well. And so they're very connected in with the food security work as well. And I can follow up with the numbers on the meal delivery though, if folks would be interested in seeing those. Okay. Yeah, thank you. I work a lot in getting the Everyone Eats program up and running and then helping sort of like it move through the pandemic. So I kind of dove a little deeper into the food insecurity dynamics. So I just wanted to get your feedback on that. So that's really warms me to hear that it's been successful partnerships. Yes, for sure. I think that the Everyone Eats initiative definitely reached this population as well. Yeah. And the partners have been working closely. I'll keep going just to hold on, Sarah. We got a question on this one. We'll go with them. No, no, then we'll get to this next slide. Representative Parsons. Yeah, thank you. My question was something I've heard from quite a few people actually. Is there any sort of tiered system to this approach at all? One thing that I hear a lot is you when you make enough to be off the program, you're in that flux of now losing those funds from the program to help with the rent or something. Now you lose those funds, you're kind of back in the exact same spot you just were. So instead of I mean, I understand going from temporary to a voucher, a more permanent voucher for assistance for housing. Is there a more tiered approach so that as you do make more, it slowly decreases? Or is it kind of that cliff edge where you lose the voucher? Now you're right back to where you were struggling just to get by to pay the rent. Can you unmute, Sarah? I was muted. I didn't work. Sorry about that. So in our rental assistance program, folks contribute about 30% of their income towards their housing costs. And so as your income increases, you do contribute more, but it's the same percentage. And that's the way that if I go back, that's the way that a lot of our permanent housing rental assistance programs are structured. It's how the housing choice voucher, the Section 8 program is also structured to contribute 30% of your income. So the Vermont Rental subsidy and the CARES housing project are both in that way. In some ways that definitely eliminates the cliff. So your income is increasing, but not every dollar, only 30% of that next dollar is going towards your housing costs. That's the most general answer there. I think as opposed to other public benefit programs where there may be a greater cliff, I think generally in our housing programs, that's largely abated. Did that answer your questions? I'm not sure if that was... Okay, great. You know, there's a lot of other work and I think Representative Kalaki alluded to, and others were asking about the BHCB piece of this. So obviously we needed new units also and the rental rehabilitation program that the Department of Housing and Community Development has implemented with the homeownership center. So this is where there's been funds available for landlords to renovate their empty units that may be off the market to bring them up to code and then to use those units to house homeless Vermonters. And so that's been a really great initiative to launch and an important piece of this work and we've coordinated closely with them on that and our community partners as well. And then new permanent housing units that the BHCB was able to create in partnership with the affordable housing network as well. And those funds also went to create new and improved shelters. So we did actually have a new place and steps in Burlington. Both have new facilities, which is great and meets a long-term need in some ways for a permanent home for the seasonal warming shelter, which is now year-round. And then also for the steps of domestic mountain shelter, which just never has had enough capacity. So those are some new projects that came online through that work. And then we talked about the state housing authority. So just to say that there's been really an incredible amount of collaboration and coordination with our state partners around these initiatives to really try and braid them together more so than we always work together, but in this moment in time more so. So wanted to just talk a little bit about some successes and challenges as we're thinking about sort of what we're doing next, right? Because we have a lot to be proud of and feel really good and obviously we're not done yet. And so the work continues. One of the things that I think we've really learned is that on-site motel-based services really matters. And that's something that we have I think never done. With the exception of granting funds to our domestic violence shelters who then again do their own motel overflow, they provide services to those households, but the expansion of our motel-based services has really been good. The amount of local collaboration coordination is just really incredible with leaders coming together weekly on the phone and in different meetings to respond to different situations, but also to sort of proactively move forward in different strategies. The work that our community partners have picked up and really leaned into this crisis is really incredible in our housing world. The statewide collaboration coordination, even before this testimony this morning had a call with our statewide nurse. I mean that's ongoing work that we are doing. And then I would just say there's been a really major increase in housing retention services and also in rental assistance. And it's been an incredible opportunity I think to think that we could really make a dent in family homelessness in this state in a big way. So all that to say what we're doing in particular with non-congregate sheltering in motels is truly unsustainable for us. 1,800 households in motels is unsustainable for those households. Let me just say that living in a motel long term it just is unsustainable for those families and individuals. I think it's also pretty unsustainable for our communities and it's definitely unsustainable for our community partners as well. Not to mention financially really unsustainable for us in the long term. So our biggest challenge is lack of housing. That is number one challenge that we're experiencing. And then I think another challenge for us and this is really ongoing work is how we braid together those different resources. It takes a lot of effort. We talk about our three-legged stool of unit or capital of rental assistance and of services. And for us to be successful all three of those need to braid together. And so that takes a lot of work to do that effectively. It needs to braid together at the systems level. But when it comes to having at the systems level think about the effort it takes to braid it together for each individual household and family one at a time to make it happen. So that's a huge amount of work. It's something that we're continually working together on how we could better integrate these systems of care to just be more effective and just to be able to be more streamlined and move faster. So looking forward to come up probably I don't know half dozen times already in this testimony but there's 200 million dollars for emergency rental assistance. I think it's really important that we move really fast to mobilize those funds. There is some prescription around them coming from the Treasury and they can really around rental arrears utility arrears, utility assistance and rental assistance ongoing. There's some eligibility criteria that's different than what we had been doing with the state housing authorities program. But there's a huge opportunity there. Some of the funds can be used for administration and some of the funds can be used for housing supports as well. So we're working really really closely with the Department of Housing and Community Development which we expect will be a lead in this work and with the state housing authority to really quickly figure out how we're going to administer these funds and get them out the doors. And I would just ask I think that the legislature equally help us move really quickly on that and that we don't want to spend a couple months figuring out what we're going to do. We know what we need and it's really about figuring out how we're going to administer it really quickly. I think we learned a lot about the rapid resolution flex funds that I talked about and how critical that is and so we're going to look to do a 2.0 on that. We did have some under spend in our CRF funds for homeless assistance for DCS in part because for a number of different reasons and so some of those funds I think will be able to look to to help us continue this work. Jeffrey I think you were going to talk a little bit about the summit. Sure so just very briefly and I'm happy to talk more about this but back in November right before Thanksgiving we brought together stakeholders from across the state including folks with lived experience providers, service providers, housing providers or legislators, president, policy makers, funders because we thought it was important to have an opportunity to come together and talk about what had happened so far even though we're still continuing to do the work right but a moment of reflection to see what have we learned so far 9-10 months into this that may or may not inform the way that we're moving forward with the folks to talk with each other and hear from each other. There were over 100 people on a Microsoft Teams meeting, it was kind of wild and then we had where we had communities report on their successes and takeaways and ahas and then we had small group discussion that cut across those geographic and sectors. What was interesting that came out of that was just in some ways it's unsurprising a focus on the need for collaboration, how much that mattered in communities and bringing folks to the table who may not have been at the housing table before but were critical partners whether that be healthcare, whether it be private landlords whether it be clients or whether it be other types of providers. The flexibility and creativity was really important as well as the folks including and the presence of those on-site services that Sarah talked about earlier. One of the biggest themes that emerged from that conversation was housing as healthcare and kind of the opposite as well healthcare as housing it was just people were really looking at the ways in which a public health crisis may have shifted the conversations about housing and healthcare and the need for housing and the need for healthcare when you're in housing etc etc. It was an interesting lens to hear people talk about. I mention this also because we expect to and we intend to continue these sorts of conversations. I don't want to check the box and say that was a great summit. See you all in 2022. Instead what we should be doing is going back to communities, back to folks and continuing to engage in those conversations especially as we move forward because that's just a critical part of how we transition from what we're doing now to what we're doing in the future. One final piece that we just want to make sure we mention today is that pre-COVID we had a plan to end the general assistance emergency housing program and move the funds and some support and collaboration to our community partners so that they can really, that two part system of care would really be a community-based system of care where DCF is partnering and funding it. That is still our intention in the next fiscal year 2022 and so a lot of effort is happening right now to plan and think about how do we get from where we are now in this very large non-congregate shelter program that GA has become with 1800 households and what does it take what does it look like to phase out of that obviously in conjunction with the state of the pandemic right because the whole reason we're doing it is to meet a public health need and the vaccination implementation is going to be a huge piece of that so what is it, what does it look like to phase out of that and then phase towards a community-based system of care which we absolutely are still committed to as a department and as an agency and so being thoughtful about what that looks like to our community partners and planning around that as well so that's all a part of the work that we're also starting to re-engage in at this point in time so we just want to make sure this committee is aware of that still a policy priority for us. Sarah, if I can end on, I have three quick points that I just wanted to make very precisely. One is that I think we've done incredible work and I say everybody now this isn't about the state capital S. We have done an incredible job during the pandemic with regard to keeping folks experiencing homelessness and housing and security safe during the pandemic, safe and healthy. Having this many people in motels, having 2500 people in motels is not ending homelessness. This is a transitional thing right this is a holding tent because we're in a crisis. What we really need to do is keep our eyes on the fact that ending homelessness is about moving people into permanent housing so I just want to remind people about that. The second piece is and Sarah touched on this when talking about the related housing recovery initiatives. That collaboration that intentional collaboration is really important and keeping in mind the three likes of the school that we talked about the rental assistance, the stock and the services and then the final thing I wanted to mention was that just to continually contextualize that it's really easy to kind of get into the people in motels, services, rental assistance that sort of level of detail when in reality this is in the context of a public health crisis. What we have done is in response to that not necessarily what we could have or should have or were planning to do prior to the pandemic. I think we've done an incredible job and I think it's really informed a lot. We've learned a lot out of it and I think that will inform things going forward. But I just wanted to make those points as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. One thing I was going to ask about is the plan that Sarah just outlined that's going forward because that was a big consideration a year and a half ago to move to community partners. And at the time I was a little bit skeptical maybe but I really want to give a shout out to those community partners and teams. We have a local team in Saint Albans called the community housing response team. They have been meeting three times a week and it's a group of professionals with people from DCF and OEO and the shelters and they're really working hard to make sure that every individual in Franklin County who needs something is being taken care of. So I've been very, very impressed with the community response and I just want to give a shout out to Matt and that everyone eats program because food insecurity is really high on my list of priorities and I have just seen people reap the benefits of these programs. So yes, I do support people being able to get out of these congregate settings and into places where they can call home and I do believe now especially having seen in an action that the community partners and collaborators are really the ones to help move this forward. So thank you very much for all your efforts. I appreciate it. I was just going to say thank you. I think acknowledging that I have the privilege of sitting before you talking about this work in the state but I don't do any of it. They do it and they do the hard sacred work that is the day that they work with people and in communities and it's hard work and it's good work so thank you. And thank you Jeffrey for pointing out that this is triage basically. What's happening with the motel units is triage and it's definitely in between where we were and where we need to go but I appreciate the fact that you are all still focused on the fact that this is a public health crisis and needs to be dealt with in that way. And a year ago or nine months ago I expressed a concern or hope that as we collect this data that we'll be able to when things slow down that we'll be able to collect the data and do something that is and have that book or have that the necessary backup and research to continue to make the argument for permanent housing and I'm just curious to know how is there someone, does your department have the capacity to do the intake on the data and try to work on what an output would be? I guess Jeffrey that's for you. I think what you're asking is and correct me if I'm not a representative part of what you're asking is are we able to have more detailed information on a number of people who are currently in motels that can inform policy going forward knowing who's there and why and then the second part of that is what then could help? What is the intervention that would help that situation? If that's the question that's being asked and I would say that part of one of the remarkable things about what has been going on is that we have been doing our community partners have been doing enormous work getting folks into coordinated entry and collecting information and prioritizing folks understanding who's in the motels and putting them on the master list in their local communities and I think that that diving into that data is I think that that's the piece that you're asking about. Now that we have all these folks in motels and they're in coordinated entry. What is that telling us about why people are there and who's there? The short answer is like it's complicated. There are a lot of people in for various reasons but I do think you're right. I think we need to continue to look at that going forward and help that and dive into it more deeply. I don't know if Sarah wants to add anything to that. For those of you who are new on the committee, coordinated entry is just this term that we use in our system of care to refer to the way that we all agree that we that people access homeless resources, homeless housing resources. Not emergency shelter, emergency housing, obviously that needs to be different but it involves sort of a uniform assessment and partners have specific roles to play and folks complete the assessment in their place on what's called a community-wide master list and that is the list of who's homeless in your community and then community partners come together and they understand how we have a better understanding at the community level and then at the statewide level who's homeless and what their housing needs and resources are and then that helps us plan strategically around what we need because it's not enough to say we need more housing. It's what kind of housing do we need it's what kind of services do we need, who needs long-term support services, who needs just a little bit of help and the differences in that. So we actually know a lot about what the solutions are to end homelessness. It's really about at what scale do we need each of those different kinds of tools in our toolbox and coordinated entry is part of the way that we get that information and importantly it's the way that individuals and families are connected to housing help so participating in coordinated entry gets them connected to what we call a housing navigator who helps them navigate the wide array of housing programs that are out there and helps them find and find housing so that's coordinated entry is sort of the short form for that. Thank you. Representative Kalanke. Thank you and you know Sarah and Jeffrey I so appreciate the presentation but as you both talked about how the community has collaborated for me as a first-time legislator last spring and the summer I also saw that this caused the House and the Senate to act differently and the different committees we were less siloed suddenly we were working alongside human services and our chair was working with Soraka and the Senate and we all worked together with the administration and you know you talked about you were sorry it took so long well this just happened since March and you know we put together this $85 million package in about three weeks time but I think what's important the lesson there is we can act differently in the House and the Senate as well and we don't have to dismantle each other's work and we can work collaboratively with the administration so as we look to move this $200 million or whatever we have for this part of it I think the same thing will happen again and we will all work now this is only my second term so maybe it existed in the past but it was new behavior for me and I applaud it very much and I appreciate it so thank you and to that John I would say Representative Clark I would just say that so often I mean what we did was a response to a public health crisis period and we were given funds and the funds were presented in a way to address and need and that's a without that public health crisis we would have had a completely different conversation last year about trying to end homelessness or trying to help alleviate or create new housing and so on the one hand what we saw was a budgeting process in this case that was based on need and there were funds available to do it as opposed to what we see with the normal budget in the state which is to be based on a number where we have a certain amount of money that we have to fit everything into so that is which is a fundamentally different way of looking at how to address you know are you looking at the need or the number and so we were able to do this in a way I think that is special it is something that hasn't happened before it's nothing I've ever experienced here. Question for Sarah and Jeffrey the idea that so we're talking a lot about numbers here we're talking about there's a certain number of people who needed assistance and they needed a place to stay and they needed to be safe and now we're in transition and this number of people will hopefully will find units for them to live in but it's not addressing so much what it was like on the ground in those places to go from I mean being experiencing homelessness is not anything anyone really chooses there may be a very small percentage of people who feel like they can't there's also mental health issues or physical health issues that play into homelessness there's economic issues there's some demographic issues that play into this and yet so are you the folks that we should talk to about what happened at the motel or the hotel in Morrisville or in Montpelier you know in terms of the management of what happened I mean again it's being in a homeless shelter is not an easy problem since those shelters went away they went to hotel rooms how did people react did people have isolation problems were there cultural problems within the hotel where they're a little I guess it's a broader social question gets away from just the data that you've presented are you the folks that we should ask about that or should we be talking to our community partners who can give us feedback on that yes I think you can imagine what it would be like to be a family with children trying to remote school your kids in a hotel room that you all share maybe you can imagine what it feels like to live without a kitchen or even a refrigerator or microwave and rely on meal delivery where you're not really choosing your meals in any way so I think there's definitely a humanitarian aspect to this as you said Representative Stevens that I think is worth deeply understanding and I do think that your best folks to help tell that story would be some of our community partners that have been really close to this work and and I would say that I'm happy to help identify some of those agencies that I think would be great to provide some testimony to your committee if you're interested in hearing more isolation is a huge piece right that's a huge piece across all of our community all of our state and certainly for folks experiencing homelessness as well you know it's interesting to think around how did folks find themselves in a hotel room during the pandemic right and to try and understand that story a little bit especially during an eviction moratorium right it leads you to understand that while eviction prevention is an important part of homelessness prevention that a lot of people come into homelessness not from moving their own permanent housing right they come into homelessness because they're pushed out of housing situations due to violence or due to other issues where they might be doubled up with with other households and I think or because they're unsheltered but but but that's not the you know these these folks weren't all coming from the streets into the GA program right they just weren't and we didn't have that level of unsheltered homelessness so trying to understand where people are coming from and how they enter homelessness is I think really important work and certainly not everyone will exit the GA program into permanent housing some of them I hope will be able to return with to living with family or friends potentially with some support around mediation or additional financial resources we've already seen that happen and I think that's an important piece of what we need to do moving forward it's about safe exits and just because someone is no longer in a motel doesn't mean that they aren't so connected with housing help to find other permanent housing right so it's a complicated story for each household and certainly as a system of care as well so I encourage you to invite some of those partners and to hear from them on what it's like in the motels I would also add on if I may I think what Sarah's talking about is really important because oftentimes we work really hard to get quantitative data right and something that should go along with quantitative data is qualitative data you know what are the narratives that go along with those numbers what are the people what are the experiences that people have and in part of that is what Sarah's talking about how might someone find themselves in a motel and how might someone find themselves in a motel what's their experience while there in terms of social isolation etc etc one of the things that can't one of the pieces of feedback we received regarding that statewide summit was that the folks who were in a small breakout group that had somebody with lived experience in it had remarked about the power of that conversation so I might also offer that in addition to our community partners that folks with lived experience might be a valuable voice to our community partners to help identify some folks who could teach about and I think um I mean last one last question for me anyway for today just on a on a data perspective we talked a lot last year about what the percentages of homelessness or individuals households experiencing homelessness are there's x percent who are I forget what the classifications were that we had but we had sort of a short term medium term and long term essentially is what the breakdowns you may have used a different vocabulary could you just give us that as a data point so that when we again when we try to take in this whole picture of who is experiencing homelessness in the state of Vermont there are definitely different among the complexities there's just that you've broken it down into short medium and long can you explain that a little bit not maybe not the most beautiful language but that is what we talk about short medium and long so it's really about thinking about in terms of what's the housing intervention right so someone's experiencing homelessness what's the housing intervention that's going to help that household and generally it kind of falls into those three buckets where short term is really focused on you know one time or maybe a couple months of assistance whether it's rental assistance or services helping get people connected some people really just need a little short term assistance and they're going to be okay and then what we might call like medium term is really up to like two years of rental assistance right I talked about the rapid rehousing strategies of the CARES housing project and Vermont rental subsidy those are medium term interventions housing interventions and those are really you know rental assistance that's temporary and some housing services that are really individualized based on the household like what services does that household need to be successful and then there's what we call long term which is sometimes called permanent supported housing right that's really more the term of art is permanent supported housing which is long term affordable housing paired with long term permanent supportive services to help that household maintain independence and so these are households typically who may have been for in our world of homelessness we prioritize households that are chronically homeless for permanent supported housing right these are households that have a disability that affects their ability to live independently and they've been homeless a number of months or years and so or in the family world we have family supportive housing which you all helped us expand actually this year I haven't talked about that at all but that's been exciting to expand family supportive housing and that's again it's long term support services to help families with complex service needs multiple episodes of homelessness in their history families with child welfare involvement and to help and young kids and to help rehouse them and then provide long term support services to help them keep their housing and all of that's with an eye towards understanding this what we call housing first principle or philosophy right which is when people have housing stability it's so much easier to work on everything else in your life it's just such a fundamental piece of what makes us able to move forward in life right to be stably housed and so family supportive housing and permanent supportive housing or with some shelter plus care is another example of a long term program so we have these buckets of short, medium and long term right and you know how many households need short, medium or long term is one of the things that we look to coordinate entry for right because that is some of the information we gather helps us understand that so I can't sort of off the cuff say this percentage needs X, Y or Z but what we can dig into is understanding from the coordinated entry data which tells us who's homeless right now what does it look like and I think that's really critical because it helps communities plan and target and understand what are exactly the gaps that we have in our system of care here and what do we need gaps across the board obviously we have gaps generally in our system of care right now we have a whole lot of money coming into our system of care and so and we have a whole lot of increased need as well and I think we've largely been able to fill a lot of those gaps not all of them because the money hasn't been able to be to fill all of those gaps so for instance permanent supportive housing right we don't have new long term housing vouchers and we don't have new long term supportive services but we're working to braid in what we do have with some of those other some of those other programs that we have and to leverage what we have already in our system of care better so I know if that kind of answer what you were asking representatives Stephen certainly could come back in a future at a future meeting to bring more of that coordinated entry data to this team as well. I think it illustrates how there's no one simple vocabulary for any of this material. So any further questions for for Jeffery or for Sarah for today your initial witnesses of the year so thank you and I think I think you know being respective of your time it's 1127 so I just and for our time too it's a long time on to be on zoom first day so I guess we'll we'll let you to leave and then committee if you can stay on for just a few more minutes we're on you can keep us on live till we're done and but thank you so much for starting this off I appreciate this and again committee if there's if there's questions that you have Jeffery or Sarah obviously you can reach them through their emails or the Iran can help make connections as well so and then the glory of having the dog is this slide show is is that it will always be in our records so we can return to it later thank you have a good weekend thank you thank you all right and for new folks the one thing I'll point one of the things I'll point out is there's going to be a lot of vocabulary a lot of lingo a lot of different names of organizations or agencies I was happy to see that on the slide deck Sarah did not we rely on acronyms so instead of saying and the agency of commerce and community development she didn't rely on ACCB which would who knows what that is unless you can see it we will try to be we will not achieve a totally lingo free zone but if you ever come across something that you don't understand and you feel like you need to get it and you can't get it in context as long as we have the chat box open or you can just raise your hand and ask I think we can train our witnesses as well to catch themselves from short hand especially here at the beginning of the session all right any further questions for this morning I'm going to go take a walk I know that sitting is sitting is sitting but I guess we'll just leave it at that thank you so much and we'll see you I guess it's 115 or 130 are we on next yes let me double check that sorry you said you wanted to stay for you wanted me to stay for a few minutes afterwards I need to talk to you afterwards yeah and representative Triana if he's here he's I think he's out of PT thing isn't he oh right he had to leave correct so to answer your question 130 this afternoon 130 because if people are interested in the tax presentation starts we'll leave it noon and goes to 115 so make sure that you get something to eat and get a walk in or what have you and we'll see you at 130 and we'll actually and this afternoon's conversation will be with the Vermont Housing Conservation Board the Vermont State Housing Authority who ran the rental reage program and the Vermont Housing Finance Agency that did the mortgage reage program and so we'll get an idea of how we spent some of the $85 million that had been allocated to homelessness mitigation in 2020