 It is Wednesday, January 12th and we are meeting this morning with a bunch of folks from the administration and from other areas to talk about as a follow-up really to our October meeting but just to get a review of what's been happening since October, we've discussed language that DCF had proposed for the budget adjustment. We'll deal with that in the memorandum that we'll give them but I just wanted to get an update from everyone about how many people are still dealing with the homelessness issue, how many people are we still housing. I have Kathleen Burke scheduled to talk to us about the VRAP program which has been, which has had some new vendors or at least a new call center. I wanted to get an update on that and see if things were getting ironed out there and what the issues may still remain with that program. I guess I'd like the folks to be able to testify and then we can ask questions as a group at the end so that we can, we'll see how it plays off during the course of the morning but I'd really like them to be able to fill us in with the information that they have and then we'll go from there. After that committee will return to discussion with about the budget adjustment memo. I made the changes that you suggested to me overnight and we can review that before we hit the send button. We have a visitor here. We don't know who Tyler is. Tyler, if you are there listening, can you please let us know who you are or if anyone knows who Tyler is? Hello, I'm Tyler Moss with Vermont State Housing Authority and running the VRAP program since the start of the VRAP program was also the program manager for the rental housing stabilization program. We verified by Kathleen. Okay, now thank you. If you could change your name so you know just to have an identifier on there that would be great for us. Thank you. All right, let us start with Sarah Phillips. Welcome back Sarah. Happy New Year. My colleague, Deputy Commissioner Trish Tile, kick us off maybe with some GA data and then I can help fill in the pictures if that would be all right. Welcome, Trisha. Well, thank you very much. We provided just a few minutes ago, I apologize for the late notice, a brief PowerPoint to the committee. If people want to follow along or bring that up on the screen, I'm fine with that. It shows some of our data so I'll just go through that briefly and that maybe we'll set the table for the further discussion if that's okay. So I don't know if we want to, if someone could bring that up on the screen. Is it under Sarah's name? I see. I don't see anything under your name yet. Just came in from Macy to Ron. It's under Sarah's name. We'll follow along rather than sharing. Great. So the first slide is the is a trend line on the overall motel utilization since the beginning of the pandemic, which we show this as of April 1st, 2020. And it will move through and you'll see as the trend as some of the rules and different things have happened throughout it, it takes a look at where we are with our current utilization as well. So moving to the second slide, it talks about how many households are in motels at this point and the adults and children. So we are at 16, well actually we're at just over 1700 as of this morning. Adults, this is, this data is as of January 6th. So 1600 and 77 adults and almost 500 children are placed in motels currently. The number of households is listed as 1451. However, we have 1385 rooms. That is just a, when people look at the data, that is just a factor of our housing together policy, which is people who are not legally bound to each other as have chosen to remain to live in the same room. And they have to each qualify on their own right in order to do that. So that just means two households could be placed in one room. So there's a little discrepancy there. The next page folks will see is the payments for security services. When we were, we gave this committee some information last session about the security contracts. And this is just since July to present from the various security contractors that we've used for the motels specifically. So you'll see that total at the bottom 716,000. We are providing Green Mountain Concert Services and LaMoyale County Sheriff are providing the majority of our current motel security. And we have security in place in probably eight to 10 of our highest use motels throughout the state. So the ones with the highest number of people in them. We have that extra security setup. The next page shows those hotels where we have them in Green Mountain Concert Services is the coverage that we have there. LaMoyale County Sheriff provides as they can. There's not a set schedule and their availability in the most recent weeks has been challenging. They've been challenged by staffing issues, but they're providing most of their service in Washington County and have recently told us they would also cover Chittenden County some as well as they have and then the hours that Green Mountain Concert Services is on site. As you can see their evening and overnight hours for the most part. Average hotel cost. There's been a lot of information about how much the hotels, how much we've been paying for the motels. And then are we able to offer additional higher rates to incentivize hotels to accept more people. And we have been doing that. That rate you can see has gone up since the beginning of the pandemic. The average was somewhere around $88 a night. It's now up to $105 per night. And of course that's very regionally specific. Some of the higher cost hotels are in the Chittenden County area. And then the hotel costs per month by month. This is fluctuating because it's based on our bill payers and their ability to get those payments to the hotels in a timely manner. You'll see in February of 2021 we brought on an additional person to help with the backlog of payments to the motels. So that's why that number is higher. It's not that there were additional people. But the total payments since March of 2020, well April really of 2020, to the motels themselves. This does not include any of the other security or other motel outreach services or any of the other pieces that went along with it is $76 million today. And then the last slide was just a reminder. Some folks may remember that there were essential payment checks that went to people as rules changed over the last year, back last June. As July 1 started, the rules changed and shifted the eligibility and reduced the ability of some people to access hotels. And that group of people received an essential persons check of $2,500. And that was the first round to distributed to 630 households. A lot of those people ended up going into the shelter system at that point. And then in the fall, there was another 132 checks that were issued between $2,500 and $4,000 depending on the household size. And that coincided with the just before the pause was placed, the governor paused the program when there was a lot of pieces going back and forth. And then we were heading into adverse weather conditions. So people were able to choose the essential persons check. If they had an additional, if they had a plan for permanent housing and they opted for the check, 132 households chose that instead of remaining in housing. That's what I have for current data to say where we are right now. I'm happy to answer any questions. And then I think Director Phillips has some additional information about people in the program. Yep. Representative Trana. Thank you, Chair Stevens. Just two questions. 1,372 people in the motels plus 500. So that is that 1,800 total individuals in that? I'm a little confused. Or is that 500 in the 1,300 figure? No, that is cumulative. So there are 1,372, or I'd have to look at the number adults now. And sorry, 1,677 adults as of January 6th and 489 children. Having that up is over 2,000. Okay. And the other question is the spike. I think we heard last week or earlier this week that there were considerably fewer motel stays. Is there a spike due to the weather? Yesterday, I mean, because of the cold weather, the extreme temperatures, there was not. We were able to house everybody in hotels that we were very lucky. Some of the hotels opened up additional beds because of the cold weather. So people were able to access. We only transported two people as folks may be aware. We're now this is new to the program. We're transporting people to other districts if their current district does not have a bed. So on Monday, we transported an individual from Burlington to St. Albans. And yesterday, we transported an individual from Bennington to Rutland. And that was it. People didn't either choose to move to another district and found alternatives or we were able to place people. Okay. And just one other question. Last year, one of the motels had opened up with some volunteer medical people as a sort of a makeshift infirmary. Is that still running at this time? I'm not sure. Are you referring to the quarantine isolation site at the Ho Hum in Chittenden County? It could be, yes. Sarah, do you want to touch base on that? Contract with the Champlain Housing Trust who operates the Ho Hum as the state's alternative housing site for folks who need to isolate or quarantine due to COVID. That's, it's not staffed by volunteers. It's fully staffed. It's a professional site. It's a housing site, not a medical site, but the community health centers of Burlington does provide sort of medical oversight and support sort of planning around people's margins based on their status and environment. We lost your audio. That is what I was referring to. And thanks for clarifying that. Thank you very much. Just to be clear, we don't, that data is not included in Deputy Commissioner Tiles' data about the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program. That access to that program isn't, it's not GA. It operates outside of GA. Okay, Representative Murphy. Thank you Chair Stevens. I have a question about the next to last slide, the hotel cost by month when, when it was referenced that that February spike was just there were extra people to pay bills rather than extra requests. So I am curious as we look at the decreased amounts, whether there are outstanding or a backlog that hasn't been compensated yet so that this actually isn't to date quite the full figure? This, this is to date. There are a few, because we have 68 different hotels, they have various abilities to track this well. So we, we had to have a cut off in November because of our first FEMA claim. We had to wrap all of that up and send it in. So there was a hard stop at the end of November to say we have to have all the bills and all the invoices from you so we can pay those. And so we did a big push to let all of the hotels know that we needed all of their back bills. So we believe this is everything current since November. And then we continue to be, we have no backlog at the moment that we're aware of. Thank you. Senator Clay. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. And thank you, Trisha, so much for all the work you're doing here. I want to make. Sorry. Sorry. Anyway, thank you for my apologies. Okay, the chair was trying to silence me yet again. There we go. Anyway, thank you, Trisha. In your last slide, the essential payments, is that the same as the rapid rehousing support? No. No. People that had the essential, were eligible for essential payments, were also still eligible for rapid resolution funding if they had a plan for permanent housing and a need up to $8,000. Okay. And the total numbers now are very close to what the total numbers were a year ago, like 2000. And so with the people that have taken the... No, Sarah? You're saying no? If you look at the height, if you look at the chart that Deputy Commissioner Tile shared, we were close to 2,000 households at the height. We're at closer to 1,300 households right now when I look at that chart. Deputy Commissioner can correct me if I'm wrong, but... Yes, we're lower than our height, but certainly approaching the higher end. But are the drop, are those people, I know it's hard to track everyone, but has anyone who's left the housing, emergency housing, come back into the system? Or once they've left with any support they cannot come back? How is that working? No, people are eligible to come back in if they have another homeless event for sure. And people that have moved on to other situations do tend to come back in. There's a lot of churn in the Motel voucher program, to be honest. We serve, right now we have about, as I said, 1,380 rooms maximum, but we served probably 2,000 households over the course of the month. So various people coming. There are some churn within those numbers that come in and out. Okay, that 2,000 is what I was trying to get my head around. So thank you. Thank you very much. Representative Toronto. Thank you. Do we know the situation that presents with these individuals coming to the motels? Do we know if they have been evicted due to the moratorium, the lifting of the eviction moratorium? Do we have any figures at all that may represent folks that have been displaced as a result of that? We know for the Motel voucher program that I think one of the slides that I gave was also showed people by category. So we do have information on everybody that comes in about their situation and why they're homeless and they have to meet certain categories. So we do have some, but as far as the eviction moratorium, no. We don't know that people have been since the eviction moratorium. So I couldn't give you that straight data. I don't know if Director Phillips has anything in that area. The data that I would be speaking from would be data from the coordinated entry system or broadly not specific to the general systems emergency housing program. There is some information that we can pull which relates to someone's housing history and their past experiences of eviction. We don't have that data this morning and it would take some time to work with the coalition that homelessness together. I am happy to see what information we have, even if it can't answer exactly the question you're looking for could help. Okay. I mean, the reason I ask is that we have been presented with information that there was a real considerable spike in individuals that were displaced as a result of the moratorium being lifted. Well, thank you. If you can pull anything out for us, that would be great. Payments that were made, the emergency payments in July and the recent ones. One of the issues that one of the questions that came up way back then seems like so long ago was how many of these folks were quote-unquote unbanked so that they had to receive a check and they had to have help perhaps getting the checks cashed. I mean, was that something that came to fruition, a worry that came to fruition in in terms of safety issues, theft issues that happened with those payments, especially going back into the shelter system? Sure. We did not see any safety and theft issues that I'm aware of with those two checks being sent out. The first group was a large group and we learned from that that what we needed to do was provide people's bank, because that is where the state of Vermont banks, so all of the checks were actually drawn on peoples. We needed to provide them with people in our system for them to call when someone was in the lobby to verify identity because the lack of identity proved to be a stumbling block as well. So they were unbanked but we thought we had solved that by saying people could go to people's bank but then there was an identity problem. So we had people, the bank personnel would put the person on the phone with our staff and we'd have them answer some questions that only they would know from our system and then we approved them to authorize the payment. So it ended up working well and we didn't have any problems from that. Some people, there were lines at some of the people's banks where they got their checks and walked down the road together. Representative Blumlee. Thanks. I'm just curious when looking at these numbers it appears that half of or nearly half of the folks who are housed through the program fall into the category of those living with disabilities and I'm just wondering is that a, is that typical given the GA history? Yes, that's our largest group and has been all along. And what kind of supports do those folks get what's possible through, you know, something like the GA program? So the Motel Voucher program really isn't the support piece, so we're providing the room and then I think that this might be a good segue and to Director Phillips and some of the coordinated entry and the case management connections and the services out in the field if that's all right. Absolutely. As I share some other information, happy to talk about it, but service funding to support community organizations that provide housing navigation services and other motel-based outreach and support services. Generally, we are not the Department of Aging and Independent Living and we are not the Department of Mental Health and we are funding organizations who are making connections with people and then helping them to access resources, for instance, choices for care or some or residential care settings or connect to a mental health agency that may be able to do an assessment to determine eligibility for other resources. So we do have some providers who are so we would call that more like outreach and referral services, right, and then they can support people in engaging in those other systems of care, but rather than creating sort of a parallel system of care for mental health and disability services, the role of our housing crisis response agencies is to connect people to those. That's generally how we would support and fund that. We are right now funding housing navigation services and motel-based services through essentially three different programs. One is we have some contracts that we call non-congregate wraparound service contracts. Those are FEMA reimbursed and we have two organizations at the height. We had, you know, close to a dozen organizations receiving funding through those contracts. They've been moved on to other funding sources and programs that were more appropriate or they've changed their model and so on, but we have two organizations still funded that way. We also have a number of organizations receiving funding through that what we're operating an ERAP housing stability services program with ERAP funds that can provide a range of supports and services that are applying or intending to apply for ERAP financial assistance, including that program funds a range of services and supports, including help for people I'm referring to as housing navigation services, which is help for people housing search and placement support, help with help to find housing, help to access housing resources, help develop a housing plan and housing goal and take steps on that. That's housing navigation services. Our ERAP housing stability services program also funds LAM or liaison supports of range of outreach and application assistance for the general also supports legal services and Vermont legal aid work around. And then we're also funding motel based services and outreach services under the housing opportunity grant program, including, for instance, CBOEO's CORA outreach team, which is providing outreach, including Upper Valley Haven, which has two full-time staff members who do a circuit of rotation of on base services in the Upper Valley region for folks in motels. We have a variety of models and all of those together are supporting folks being in total. I have a picture. I do have some other information I want to share about where we've been and where we're going and data we have around coordinate entry, but I'll pass for a second before I go into that testimony. Great. And Chip, last question here before and let Sarah do her thing and then we need to move on. Okay. I can hold that question. Thanks. And keep moving on. That's fine. I'll start with a moment that feels more positive, which is that between the fall of 2020 and the fall of 2021, we collectively in the state of Vermont, no one program, no one department helped 1,300 households to exit homelessness. That's more than we have ever done in the state of Vermont. It's certainly not enough for us to rest our laurels on. We have a lot more work to do, but it feels incredible to think that we helped 1,300 households exit to permanent housing. I want to be clear when I say permanent housing, that that's not always referring to someone with a lease. We understand that permanent housing can be reunifying with family or friends that you can stay with for a long time. It also means for a few households home ownership. It meant for some households permanent supported housing where they have long term home based support services to help them keep housing because of their higher level of needs. And it also does mean renting. It means renting with a subsidy. It means renting without a subsidy. It means renting with support services and renting without support services. And we have that information because of coordinated entry and the way that we track and share information across the whole system of care, which is not just TA. We do know that more than half of those folks who exited to permanent housing, about 700 households did, were able to access subsidized housing either through a temporary rental assistance program like the CARES housing voucher program or through Section 8 or VASH or any of the other resources that we have available in our system. And this is incredible. And I want folks to just recognize that that represents a substantial increase over what we've done historically in a one year timeframe. And it took an incredible amount of effort of organizations across the state working together and in communities to achieve that. And those organizations are still doing that work. I also want to say we were able to do it because we made massive investments as a state in bringing rental units back online that had been taken offline due to code issues program and also because we made substantial investments in building permanent housing that's dedicated for people. Without those units, we wouldn't have been able to rehouse them. Part of that work is that we launched the largest rapid rehousing initiative the state has ever seen with our ESG CARES funds, providing rental assistance and housing support services to more than 400 households, mostly families who exited from homelessness. I'm really excited to say that nearly 100 of those households have received a housing choice voucher through a partnership with the Vermont State Housing Authority, which turns that temporary rental assistance into a permanent voucher. We also launched the Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative, which folks have referred to, which used CRS funds. Those funds have ended and part of our BAA request includes funds to continue this initiative, which we see as incredibly successful. Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative helped more than 700 households who received this really flexible pool of funds to support their housing plan. So the crux of whether something was allowable is does it help you exit homelessness into a safe housing option? And does it help you do that quickly, immediately? And so those funds though have been used to support a range of costs. And again, this was before we had ERAP and the amazing amount of funds that have come into the state to support a range of costs to rehouse people. Rapid Resolution funds can help folks purchase a car, it can help with transportation, it can help your uncle Jim renovate his home to be able to support you to stay there, it can help rent land, it can pay program fees. It does sometimes support traditional housing costs as well. It helps pay down back debt that may be preventing you from getting housing. Really great tool in our tool belt that we know our field wants to continue with. We also partner closely with BHCB and our housing development colleagues around the new housing for homelessness and around the shelter renovation work that happened that allowed shelters to reopen and return to higher capacity. Our shelters serve around 500 households in the state only varies based on COVID situations that's happening, this impacting shelters. Generally speaking, that amount of capacity is higher than we had pre COVID. We have partnered with BHCB around the home renovation work through VHIP to ensure that we can place homeless households into renovated apartments in a private market. If your support, we expand a family supportive housing. We still have two districts where we don't have family supportive housing but otherwise we're serving substantially more households in that program. We did expand motel-based and housing navigation services and including the launch of the EREP Housing Stability Services Program. Some quick data for you and this includes Chittenden County looking again between fall of 2020 and fall of 2021. I don't have the most recent coordinated entry data but generally this tracks attracts. So of households from the part we're homeless during that time period we're in the coordinate entry system. Again that would be people who are unsheltered, people in GA, people in emergency shelter. Occasionally includes a small amount of folks who are sort of imminently homeless as well. We know that 26 percent of households report a substance disorder. We know that half of households report someone with a mental health disorder. We know that a quarter of households report a chronic health condition and a third of households report that's a huge, huge amount of households sometimes dealing with more than one disability within the household. We also know that roughly 10 percent of households are returning to homelessness so it doesn't speak to GA specifically in the turn of that program but if we look over the course of the year who is participating in coordinate entry who was the best and was placed then we know that about 10 percent households within that year are coming back into the system. We also know that folks with disabilities just take longer to house. They spend a longer time in our system of care than people without disabilities. So just kind of looking forward part of our BAA request is a request to continue the Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative Fund. You'll see that in there. Part of it is to support transportation for households either through the Economic Services Division or through community partners who are able to help arrange transportation. In the case where transportation is the barrier for people to access emergency housing or emergency shelter we want to be able to coordinate and arrange and pay for that transportation. It also part of our plan includes establishing a statewide rental risk mitigation program. We've been working really closely with the Vermont Housing Finance Agency and the State Housing Authority, Vermont State Housing Authority, and the Department of Housing and Community Development to build out this program largely modeled on what the state of Washington is and we hope to be able to launch something in Quarter 4. And then we also would like very much to expand shelter capacity where we have needs. We have done, we are very much in conversation with organizations and communities where they have interest in doing that. There are a lot of challenges to moving forward new projects. We have both formally and informally invited proposals from organizations and interested parties who want to do more whether it's do more to provide services to people in motels or do more to expand emergency shelter or expand current projects or start new projects. We issued a formal memo yesterday inviting proposals which also includes outreach to folks who are un-sheltered and we will review those preliminary proposals as they come in and identify the appropriate program or department to fund proposals. I have to be realistic and say that I don't hear a lot from my colleagues across all the systems of care that they can do more right now. I think they're really stretched but we want to be clear that where there's interest and willingness we are partners in supporting people with technical assistance and funding to build out those projects. I'll pause there and take questions. I think that's great. I think the reminder as always has been the case with rehousing the homeless is that we need to take a moment to appreciate the efforts that have been done and the successes that have occurred even with all the bumps in the road and so thank you for doing that for us. Representative Bloomly? Well I echo that Sarah. Thank you and all your staff. I am and all the providers. One of the things that I hear you when you talk about the capacity of service providers to meet demand for services and I'm wondering what I know that this is not part of the BAA request to us but I wonder if in fact there is funding that AHS is providing to those service providers to boost salaries for folks working at you know CODS etc to be able to attract or retain the folks that they've got. Folks might remember that you substantial boost in our homeless assistance funding for community partners last year to expand services expand shelter capacity support new operating budgets for shelters and we did use some of those funds are absolutely being used to increase wages and whether we did it initially through someone our program cycle runs on the July 1 cycle so certainly July 1 some organizations on increase we have reached out and talked with many of our providers and invited them to bring to the table a request for additional funding to increase salaries whether that be through the ERAP program through the CARES housing voucher program or through the housing opportunity grant program and then in the memo that I mentioned where we took a more formal step to invite proposals we did invite people to specifically reach out and ask for funding to enhance their current projects to increase wages there is not a single provider that we work with that we have a need station to ask us we have increased wages as as needed and we are able to do that and absolutely really appreciate what you're saying in terms of the wages in the human service field particularly in the shelter field have been low for many many years and staff retention and recruiting qualified staff is really critical to those programs. Great Trisha and Sarah thank you I'm going to take a five minute break right now and we'll be back at 10.01