 Hello, everyone. All right, it is Friday afternoon at 12.15. This is the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee from the House of Representatives in every place across the state of Vermont today. We will have folks here from Alberg to Berkshire down to New Fein, presumably at some point in all places in between. If anybody hears the planes flying overhead, please let us know. I believe they're going down the western side of the state and then up the eastern side of the state. So I don't think I'll hear them. They should have passed. Okay, yeah, so they should have passed mine. They passed Central Vermont, so I won't hear it. And those are being flown in honor of the frontline workers in the medical specifically in the hospitals across the state. So today we are going to discuss two things in committee. We are going to meet right now with Commissioner Josh Hanford from the Department of Housing and Community Development. Commissioner Hanford was here two weeks ago to give us heads up on some of the programs that the Department of Housing was working on with respect to really homelessness prevention and what forms it might take. Also an expanded VHIP program. And the VHIP program is VHIP is Vermont Housing Incentive Program. And those goal posts have shifted a little bit I think in response to the COVID crisis. And so Commissioner Hanford is here to just sort of walk us through with the caveat that the full plan has yet to be released. It's still being developed and we expect to see something by Tuesday, Wednesday, next week in terms of what the administration's proposal will be for not just, of course, not just for housing and homelessness and eviction protection, but also for the many other things that they released on Wednesday, which included protections for dairy, small businesses. But needless to say that there's a lot of details that are gonna get worked out over the next couple of weeks. And so I appreciate the commissioner coming in just to give us a preview of what the scaffolding is, at least of what the proposals are when it comes to housing. So with that, I will pass the microphone to you, commissioner. Thank you for coming in. Sure, thank you. Good afternoon for the record, Josh Hanford, Commissioner Housing Community Development. Yeah, it was, I guess two weeks ago that I was sort of previewing the things we were thinking about from what we were hearing, talking to partners out there about what the needs are in the housing world for some of the corona relief funding. And as we talked to more folks and realized how dramatic the needs were, a plan came together. And as you saw, the governor released the proposal on Wednesday, the first phase being 310 million. There was 50 million of housing assistance in there. And the basic concept is this is immediate funding. So this is provide immediate financial assistance to stabilize the rental housing industry, prevent families from eviction and possibly homelessness. And it really comes in two parts, the first being the most immediate in the largest amount of dollars. It's 42 million proposed for a rental housing stabilization fund, which is really based on providing emergency rental assistance and rental or rearage funding. So paying past due rent to help both property owners and tenants that have been unable to pay the rent, property owners that have received a lack of rent payment to prevent evictions. You know, you dealt with the eviction moratorium in this committee a lot, you know, S33 is passed. There is eviction moratorium that will go 30 days past the, when the governor's executive order ends. So for right now, that could be as early as July 15th. What's going to happen after that date? And what that means for families. And the last thing we want to do is to increase evictions and any family homelessness if we can prevent it. And a way to do that is to help people cover these expenses. There was a recent report from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston talking about, for Vermont specific, that, you know, as many as 23,000 homeowners and 21,000 renters in Vermont due to this crisis will likely miss rent or mortgage payments. And if it wasn't for the corona relief funding, they were namely referencing the additional UI benefits and the stimulus checks that came out, that there, they did modeling on what percentage of that was used to pay for mortgage payments and rental assistance. And that that will help tremendously, but there's still more need. And so that sort of overarching plan and then talking with many of our other partners, this 42 million seems about the right number to try to make a difference. We've based this on a three month per property, you know, based on the gross median rent in Vermont being about 9.55 a month, but really allowing for $1,000 a month payment for three months. I think that we're open to also, if that adjustment needs to be a little more than three months, what that means. And that this would be distributed by housing service providers, be it statewide or regional or some sort of collaboration amongst many in that we would offer some sort of NOFA for a competitive grant application. Hopefully we've been on calls nonstop with partners out there to let them know about the program and hope that they are talking and collaborating and thinking about partnering in on a common grant application to us if it ends up being in that form. You know, we know this has to go through, you know, several committees and there might be tweaks here and there. One of the other elements that we also put on the table as a starting point under this rent stabilization program is to think about making sure that money is distributed widely and it isn't used by any one particular property owner that may have thousands of units that have had some rental disruption to sort of spread it to different owners across the state. You know, I think the language has a maximum of 20 units assisted per owner in there. I also think that's a number that we can adjust or move about and it doesn't define an owner. There's different structures for ownership, limited partnerships, different corporations that if folks have significant number of properties, they may have put them into different ownership. So it doesn't speak to the details of that. So that's a high level overview on that piece. And I'm happy to go right into the next and then come back to questions and details. Okay, the other element, so that's to prevent future homelessness in evictions. You know, elder prevention, not old saying, it will save us a lot of money and a lot of heartache out there if we can keep people housed and deal with right at the source rather than put people into homelessness. But we have significant number of folks that are homeless that have been impacted by this crisis. And we're temporarily, are temporarily housed in motels and hotels across the state because we know congregate shelters are not a safe place. The partners across the state and AHS did a fantastic job of really ensuring that the virus didn't spread amongst that population and did what was necessary at whatever the cost. But here we are both for a number of reasons. You know, financial we can't keep up with the $800,000 a week expense. And it's not the best place to have people housed, you know, in motel rooms for long-term. It's becoming increasingly challenging for a number of folks to administer this. So we need to start rehousing folks in a more permanent solution. And this program, this piece is not going to solve that, but it's a start. It's something that is real. It seems to make sense. It sort of is trying to address two issues at the same time. Obviously rehousing homeless families and then also dealing with our aged poor quality housing stock that exists in some parts, many parts of the state. You know, we already know Vermont has the first or second oldest housing stock in the country by number of reports. And we know from the most recent housing needs assessment that we have over 19,000 housing units in Vermont that are substandard and in poor condition. Many of those being, you know, vacant or temporarily uninhabited at times. But we have a significant, even amongst our affordable housing crisis and shortage in the state, we have significant units that could be available. I have talked to homeless service providers in every corner of the state that, you know, they may have a state rental voucher matched with the family and they go look at five units. Not one of the five units can pass housing safety code. And so they can't find someone a housing even though they're looking at five vacant units right in the same neighborhood. That is something that take this challenge we have and find a way to make it a better opportunity for folks, as you know, the governor has been interested in the VHIP and rehabbing existing housing for years now. It's a win-win. You boost a neighborhood by reinvesting. You provide housing. You provide an owner of this property a chance to, you know, revitalize that property. And so that's what this is trying to do. The basic premise here is if we can provide more assistance than what the VHIP was planning on doing and not just limit it to vacant or abandoned, open it up to properties that have code violations as well. And we provide significant more resources, say a $30,000 per unit grant or $30,000 per unit forgivable loan in exchange for rehousing homeless folks and serving low and moderate income Vermonters in the longterm, we can get interest out there. I was on a call just before this with Sue Minter from Capstone and their housing program director, you know, that they have dozens of homes in Barrie that they know are vacant and could use a program like this. Same conversations with folks from the homeownership centers across the state that they know that these homes exist. The challenge is, how do we do this fast? Work crews eliminate the red tape that slows these projects down. These federal funds come with opportunities that other funds have not in the past that there appears to be a few less restrictions that typically slow down this sort of work. And so our hope is working with these statewide and regional housing providers and maybe others that used to be in this sort of business that the reason we're reaching out to so many cap agencies is, you know, they run weatherization programs across the state. They have existing work crews with experience that they employ that could be put to work on these units on these properties in partnership with the others that do this sort of work, the housing land trusts and others. The only way we see this level of work happening in short order is incredible cooperation and collaboration amongst numerous folks in this field quickly. And that there's a reason that much of the framework for this proposal, all the details and mechanics is not already in place because the folks that are gonna do this work and make it successful have to tell us what they need this program designed to look like so that they have a chance to make it successful. So that's been the outreach strategy we've had to talk to folks here. One is this addressing the need you're seeing from your organization, the people that are showing up at your food shelf and asking for rental assistance and landlord liaisons and someone talking to Legal Aid about what's gonna happen when the eviction moratorium ends. Is this the right design? I mean, is this the right addressing the right need? And across the board, we've heard yes. This rental stabilization for past rent due, future rent due is absolutely necessary to prevent a massive problem going forward. The housing recovery piece is something that we need it hits two sort of goals at the same time but clearly it's not enough to house the 1300 families, 2000 people, we need more. And there's other work being done around that side of rehousing the homeless. But our goal is to get the very folks that are likely to ask for the privilege to administer these programs to design the details with us so that when we put out an RFP, it has all the components that they said need to be included to make this work. Last thing we wanna do is throw all kinds of ideas and requirements in here from the state and then have the folks say, that's not gonna work. This isn't gonna work, et cetera. My understanding is very draft skinny legislation on this whole package may actually be already available and submitted this afternoon. The original goal was for Tuesday right after Memorial Day but various folks, general counsel in our agency are drafting this whole package. And their goal is to have it done by the end of today and to offer it to those that are gonna take up this work from the legislature and your ledge counsel. I don't know where that's gonna go first but just so folks know the goal would be to have something by the end of the day today. So at least there's a framework and you'll see this is very high level. It's got authorization language, it's got basic parameters, dollar amounts. It talks about putting this out via grant awards and contracts and mentioning in coordination with the service providers, they'll deliver this to develop some of the specific program elements. Trying to think what else I should hit on as far as things we've thought that should be in there just as a starting point. How did we come up with the $42 million? We were trying to hit above 10% of the rental housing stock, knowing that just like on the financial side, they're not gonna be able to hit everyone in need but what is a percentage of rental units out there that is real that could have a positive impact on the needs and people can make a goal to address. That's all that sort of that number is baked into. And as I said, the three months period, that's also something we're open to a changing. If what we're hearing is really you should be deeper with that rental assistance, go up to six months, you're gonna go down to maybe 9% of the units or something, but it will actually prevent the homelessness you're trying to prevent. Then I think we're open to that as well but we wanna have all those conversations and right size this as well as the rental rehab program. Maybe some of that is, some portion is also for different scenarios, you hear partners across the state talking about maybe ADUs or some sort of standalone small housing unit that could be stood up fast or a mobile home on a vacant lot in a park. I think we're also open to some variation of this, but I do know that the governor has a strong goal to use this unique opportunity to address some of this poor housing stock that is not being addressed within the systems we have now and that the striking thing in that recent housing report that Vermont Housing Finance Agency did is that despite our investments in housing, even the new housing revenue bond, the 80 million roughly we were able to support into housing construction development each year, we are barely building enough new housing to replace the housing that's lost each year. It's barely above 0.018%. That's all new housing that we're getting when you take off the housing that's taken offline each year and so we have to address this poor housing stock that is being lost each year in some fashion. So I will sort of stop with that larger overview and see what sort of questions or thoughts you have on this sort of basic concept. We have a number of people who are ready to ask some questions. So Representative Walz and then Triano. Yes, thank you chair and thank you commissioner. I'm really glad to hear most of what you say, but I have a question or two, you mentioned Barry and boy, do we have opportunities and Barry to do some of this rental rehab. And so my question is the amount of eight million and what I read was that this was aimed at maybe rehabbing 256 units. Obviously that's not enough just to take care of the homeless population we have right now. So my question is, I'm not clear if that eight million is the entire funding for VHIP or is that additional funding? So I think this program changes so much of the original elements of VHIP that this is almost a new program. VHIP had a lot of very specific requirements and required a two to one match at a minimum to get people working quickly and to have a chance at spending this money by December 31st. From what we've heard, the people that actually work with owners on properties, those barriers have to be sort of wiped clean to get people to take this up quickly. There are possibly some other solutions out there, other support that can come, maybe some other low interest loans if $30,000 per unit isn't enough. In some cases it will be, but from a few of the pilots we've run out there, the average sort of rehab on a unit in the private sector that's serving low and moderate income folks is more around $40,000 per unit need. But we think with some of the efficiencies, what I worry about, we have to be very deliberate about this program and not add on a number of other really good policy ideas into it, think weatherization. Of course, some of this work is going to benefit weatherization, but if we put a hard and fast requirement that they have to add X percentage, then that's a barrier and that slows it down. If we have to follow the typical historic preservation, for example, which is under my department, which I love, we do historic preservation tax credits in downtown, if we have to go through that process where a consultant has to come in, review, make them replace this in kind to that in kind, boom, another month lost, another $3,000 added. We have to be very careful about adding the wish list that we would normally do under normal times where we have more time to bring in those ideas and find those other resources for a program like this. And this, the other, I didn't talk about this, but the phase two has also money for housing. The details aren't there, that's coming next week. And there's a program that I came up with the name, Vermont Home Forever Fund or something like that to deal with the mortgage foreclosure. We need to have the next phase of this money be available to help with mortgage counseling, mitigation measures, and so forth to prevent foreclosures. As you all know, we have the highest rate of home ownership in the country with more low and moderate income Vermonters as a percentage owning homes than most states in this entire country. Those folks are one paycheck away from missing their mortgage payment. And you start down that road, we know how expensive it is to deal with foreclosures once they've entered that system. We did that with the neighborhood stabilization program. I managed $20 million from that program to buy the homes after they were foreclosed back from the bank, fix them back up. And in many cases, sell them back to the very families that were foreclosed from. It was a tremendous waste of money. We need to stop the foreclosures from happening first. So that's phase two. And I know that there's homeowners in Barry that also have tremendous needs and they don't want to lose their home because they've been forced to not go to work. You know, let's think about this. And so it's same with renters. They've been unable to make money to pay their rent. We have to put money in the hands to keep them housed. Yeah, thank you. So the 8 million then would not be dispersed according to the same rules as VHIP. But will VHIP still continue as a separate program? Right now, it's still floating out there and several bills, I was in Senate Finance the other day and others, everyone's wondering what, because that was funded with general fund. Everyone's unsure what general fund's gonna be there. We have hiring freezes. We already have an 8% cut, you know. So I can't speak, I think if this was funded in this format, probably that would be a really good start and a win. And if folks found VHIP in its existing form is still a priority. I'm sure the governor would support it, but you guys have a lot of decisions to make about how to spend the existing general fund money. So I can't be here right now and tell you that I've got instructions to advocate for that on top of this as strongly as this. Okay, thank you. Yep. And I think Tommy, Representative Wallace, I think the first major difference between what's been considered with VHIP and this besides the size of it is, this money is working under the conditions that we're assuming are, that has to be spent by 1231, you know, rather than an ongoing budget issue. And that's, and that makes sense to have a streamlined process. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. Representative Triano and then Kalaki. So I wanted to thank you for being here today. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's Representative Triano then Hango, then Kalaki. Okay, thank you Mr. Chair. Thanks commissioner for being here today and with the enthusiasm in which you presented this to us today, so much of it is what we have been talking about for the last few months and including renovation of out of code apartments, grants to do that. I think that's really a good direction to go. We all know that rental arrears problems or issues are very important as well to keep people from being homeless. What I haven't heard though is we know that support services are very important in keeping people who are often chronically homeless in their apartments once they get there. I mean, just, you know, help, you know, just paying the rent, you know, socializing, just the problems are quite deep. So I guess my question is what do we have to address that here? Or does that revert back to our general fund spending that we may need to rely on? Yeah, absolutely. You need the unit, you need the services and you need rental assistance for folks with very low income, clear. So, you know, the thought with the units that will directly serve homeless folks is that would all be matched up to work. It would have to. The local, many of the local service providers through the continuum of care and others, they have some resources in their hand right now. Some of them have various rental assistance that they could match up with the unit. The other piece we're hoping is coming very soon, I've talked with my partners at AHS daily. They also are working on a plan to deliver with COVID relief funding. Some of that support services and a creative way to add rental assistance here. So we need that component. That is clearly an element that's not addressed in the straight rehab area. What I'm hoping is even the Housing Stabilization Fund, we've built in some administration dollars for folks to run this. Some of the groups that are probably gonna partner on this, they sort of run landlord liaison programs and sort of navigator programs. They have those connections to the service providers that my hope is that there's a real collaboration of groups that come together, apply for this in unison, both funds, and that some of those services are provided under the admin to make sure those connections happen and no one's being put in a unit. I mean, it just wouldn't work for both the tenant and the landlord. Let's build, let's fix up this unit and then rent it to someone and they have no income to pay the rent. One idea I've heard, and I know there's other models for this is maybe because you're giving someone some assistance to rehab a unit, maybe some of rental assistance comes for a period, but there's also a commitment to rent that unit as substantially lower rent for a period of time as some of the other bridge rental assistance gets in place. We have the Vermont rental assistance last a year, which is supposed to be a bridge for permanent rental assistance from the Vermont State Housing Authority to try to get creative on some of those solutions. We know that a part of those services include assistance applying for disability insurance, for instance, for mental health issues and substance abuse issues and that sort of thing. So that's a very important thing. As you say, someone who comes out of a tent and is put into a refurbished apartment is likely to encounter difficulties that would be instrumental in their inability to stay there without any income. Everyone on the committee has certainly said this before, but affordable housing is not affordable if you have nothing. And so I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Commissioner, appreciate it. Representative Hengu. Thank you. Thanks for being here, Commissioner. Representative Walts asked a little bit of my question. So I'm just gonna make it really quick and ask another question, which you may not have the answer to, but out of the $8 million, if you're talking about 250 units that could possibly benefit from this funding, how would that address the approximately 2000 individuals who are currently housed in motels? Do you have a percentage or an idea of how many of those folks could be helped by this? Yeah, so I do only have a partial answer. So early on, weeks and weeks ago, we were having coordination meetings with other funders in this housing world, VHCB, VHFA, AHS, from the city housing authority and sort of reviewing the information that we actually have a lot more information than we've ever had. All of these homeless families in motels, we know their needs, we know who they are, we know the communities they come from. And AHS was planning out a sort of staggered way to address and re-house folks transition out of motels. And one of the places that we matched up nicely with this plan is they had sort of targeted 175 to 190 households that they thought could be re-housed in existing rental units out there that needed some form of code improvement, rental assistance. They know this because a new place or the Rutland homeless program, they are constantly trying to re-house people. And often the only units that are available are in the private sector. The nonprofit owned units are better kept and they're least up quick and they're available. And so they know from experience going out and showing people how many units are just can't pass rental housing safety code. And so they can't use that voucher. So from their experience looking, what could we do to bring those units up to code to immediately house people? And so the way this is planned with the $30,000 per unit up to 250 available to re-house homeless families, the thought was we can make a good attempt to try to get every unit to re-house a homeless family, but we probably won't be 100% successful there. So knowing that AHS was hoping that this program could serve 175, let's just say, we wanna make the incentives attractive enough for the property owners that they are pushed to try to meet that goal. But in every case, it might not be the best situation. Let's say for some reason there's a 10 unit apartment building that most all the units are in poor condition. Is it really the best solution for that property owner to fix up every unit and commit to having all 10 of those re-housed homeless families? So we wanted to leave some space for the two, three, four unit properties where maybe they commit one unit to serve a homeless family and another, the commit here would still be below HUD fair market rent. So it's still be rents that are affordable to folks in all cases at 80% of area meeting income and below and that the thought was on the non-homeless units because they would have to be an MOU and an agreement, a partnership with a local homeless service provider that meets requirements in order for it to be considered serving the homeless, out initial lease up for it to be a grant. Those other units would be a forgivable loan where each year that they commit to keeping that unit affordable, the loan then 10% is forgiven, 20% is forgiven. So that it keeps an affordability period in place by forgiving elements of the loan. And let's say someone sells the units after they've been fixed up with these resources. Well, we'd have a way to recapture some of that and reinvest it is the hope here. So a lot of these details aren't, all of that thinking isn't presented here in the pages and some of that won't be spelled out in that level of detail even in the draft legislation because the folks that are gonna be administering it this need to have a say in sort of designing that that works for them. Can they maintain those commitments for 10 years and what level of paperwork and income statements and so forth. We wanna be careful about drilling down and defining every little piece of this knowing that this needs to be moved on the fast track for approval and implementation, frankly. So this might not be, this isn't the only solution for those families that are in homelessness right now. There's other folks talking about other solutions specific to different regions in Burlington. There is not as many units that fall into this condition obviously. So there's some different solutions that will bubble up and hopefully complement this element. Thank you. I'm gonna go to Representative Byron first because he has to get off the call in a minute and then Representative Kalecki. All right, thank you very much. Commissioner, in all the information we've been tossing around about different dollar amounts getting put into these different buckets or line items. Has there been mention or I'm curious if there hasn't been mentioned is there a cap on the per unit grant amount? It was $30,000 per unit. Okay, that's where I thought you were going with that. Okay. That's what we thought anyways from talking with some of the folks that have run pilot programs, that seemed to be enough to get someone's attention to say, yeah, I'm gonna do this. At the $7,000 VHIP model where they have to match it two to one with their own money, it takes a lot longer to move that through. So we thought that's the right amount. Once again, we're open to changing that up a little bit. If it needs to be in the people that run these sort of programs will help influence that final decision and you will help influence it. Okay, yeah, no, just as all this stuff has been evolving, ideas are turning into actual concepts on paper right now, so I'm just trying to make sure I wrap. I know a lot of landlords and property managers, so I know they're very curious about this component. Excellent. Thank you for the clarity. All right, Representative Kallaki. Thank you, Commissioner. And I have a couple of questions on the rental area support. Is that only for landlords to apply for or could tenants apply for it as well? Great question. I think as we've envisioned this, it could be either or. And some of the draft sort of legislation I've seen that the request to access this fund could come from either or or both. And that how these programs are run across the country existing long-term rental assistance or short-term, one element of our department is already ahead of this. So we have a small amount of CDBG COVID money coming into the state that amendment to access those funds is already in DC pending their approval. And that a lot of the HUD programs require that the payment go to the property owner on behalf of the tenant. That's the way you ensure that it went towards the back rent and the future rent. And then our thinking is that there would be some sort of simple mechanism here where the two parties that the family's living in the units and the owners agree, yes, this is what hasn't been paid. This is what you owe. This funding is being applied towards that so that everyone knows where the money's going and what it's for. So that's sort of the sort of standard practice of how to deal with rental assistance and rental reage payments. And then I think I've been hearing from many landlords saying this is really hard on them because they're certainly to pay their mortgages. So this is not to help landlords help pay their mortgages. But you said that's gonna be another proposal coming. And will that come next week as well to be in the skinny bill? So a little clarity on that. So the rental assistance, rental reage payments that go to landlords, they're depending on that income to pay their mortgages on those properties. And so money's fungible at some level. I imagine that many of these payments back rent is going directly to landlords so that they can pay their bills, including their mortgages. What I was talking about in phase two is a mortgage foreclosure mitigation plan and money to help homeowners ensure that they don't enter the road of foreclosure because of missed mortgage payments because they're not earning their full income. Some of the landlords, there's a few programs out there where they may be eligible for some reduced low interest loans and whatnot, but they have largely been left out of the PPP program and some of those others because it's not deemed as the right type of work or they don't have enough employees or what have you. So this is an indirect way to put money back in their hand so that they can pay their bills. Okay. And then I like the $8 million that you're talking about I worry about this bridging of the 2,000 people until those 250 units are ready. Like, is there a plan that we're gonna see next week, the rehousing plan for those 2,000 if any COVID dollars didn't come in there to be put into the skinny bill? Cause it doesn't seem that that's part of this right now. Is it? Yeah, I really hope that you'll get a chance to hear from some more folks from agency of human services working on that transition plan. I know it's really complicated and they're under tremendous sort of a stress around this. I think it's also fair to say, realistically the exact 2,000 people that are in motels right now that are homeless when some of these units come online in November might not be the exact same homeless family that gets paired but it's still a homeless family in need. And some of those folks that are currently housed in the motels their situations will have changed, moved on. So we can't be, you know, I've got to be clear that this, I can't pretend that this is gonna be a direct one for one with each of those. No, no, I'm actually more worried about July 15th. Yeah. Happening to all. To evictions. Yeah, you know, so that's why, you know, knowing this rental assistance is coming and knowing that the eviction moratorium will be ending sometime, maybe as early as July 15th getting a quick, you know, news that this is gonna be real is going to prevent a lot of that. You know, I've had numerous landlords already emailing and say, where can I, where can I apply for these funds? Josh, I'm sorry to interrupt, I understand that. I'm not talking about the people who are currently housed in apartments who can't pay the rent. I'm talking about the homeless. Homeless, yeah. I don't know when that, I don't know when that plan from AHS is going to end, to be honest. You know, they are, have not said we're stopping payments on this date or that date. And you know, they're working right now on moving some of those to available. There's a, there's units here and there that are either within the affordable housing network or that they already have relationships with that they're moving into. And also some of the shelters have, you know, expansion projects in the works today that were already funded with CDBG and other dollars that would have provided more like apartment settings in them. And so they're working on as many replacements from that number of folks that are in motels every day. And I just don't have the exact timeline or their exact plan to share with you. Oh, I understand that's not yours. And I just, what we're looking at is, sounds really good. And I just needed the wider picture of the populations we're trying to serve here. But I really appreciate all you're doing. Thank you. Yeah, it sounds to me like this is, this is at the end of the short term and into the medium term overall picture of what we're talking about here and that the short term is still to be developed. And then, and then of course the long term would is still to be developed too. But this is also shows up this, I was going to ask about the continuum of care commissioner and clearly that's a better question for AHS than it is for housing. So I'll reserve that question for now. Yeah, but we envision that the folks that receive these, folks that are administering this rehab program, they will be have a direct, MOU agreement with the regional continuum of care, that they're matched with the unit to the extent we can all make this work. That has to be in place. They have to know who's being served, who's in their region, what supports they're receiving, what rental assistance is there. Absolutely. And this conversation just keeps that balance too of what we're talking about with nonprofit housing agencies who are perhaps more aware of this population and more aware of how we deal with them. But we've heard from private landlords who do work with pathways and who do work with Washington County Mental Health who or who want to and who wanna work on our master lease situation. So again, this isn't, while I appreciate the need to be as quick as possible, we need to make this so that it doesn't look like it's a program you mentioned earlier that it's for somehow that it's available to the people who have the most apartments or people who have the most access to this kind of money, we're trying to make sure that, and again, it may be different, not so much for the rental assistance, but for the overall program or starting with the VHIP program is making sure that if landlords of any stripe are given a grant that the money is used primarily for homeless and high households and then they wouldn't be homeless anymore. And then they become, they move up into different category. So no, I appreciate you coming in and sharing. I know I appreciate all the time you've put into this. I know that you guys are burning the candles at both ends on trying to make sure we're doing the right thing. So thank you for taking the time to fill us in. Look forward to seeing what comes from your department also from the administration on the whole packages, the whole package that's coming out, but specifically with respect to the two pieces that are in front of us now, the foreclosure soon. But thank you so much. And I'm sure we'll see you again relatively soon. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Good afternoon to all of you. And thanks as well for the work you're doing under these circumstances. It's creating a lot of challenges and coordination for everyone. But I think the end of the day, we're gonna learn some things that will make us all better at what we do and who we serve. So thanks for your work too. Sure, thank you, Josh. Yep, bye. All right. Representative Hango. Thank you. I don't know if this was a question for Josh or maybe you can answer it, Mr. Chair, but how will we be getting the information that is going to be released later on this plan? Will it be directly from ACHD or will it be from ACHS or will it be from you? How? Yes, I think the answer is yes. I think when I get information, I think I forwarded the slide deck that was released on Wednesday. I mean, of course the administration when they release material, they release it on the ACCD, in this case, the ACCD or the specific agency's website. But certainly anything that comes directly from the administration like this will be shared. They will share it, but we can just keep trying to find out the information. Again, depending on there's news to me to hear that something may be released as soon as this afternoon, at least on the housing front. I know that as an equal body in government, the house will be considering a relief package at some point as well that will be, I mean, all of this has has to be done through the legislative process. These aren't emergency funds that either the legislature or the executive branch can hand out. But I think what's really appreciated is that we now have a parameter to work with and we now have an idea of, based on the material that the administration has received from various sectors that they view this as a reasonable package, a relief package, our work will be in the finer details and also finding out other aspects or facets of the conversation that we can address as well. So, but from the, I think to your question about the, any information that comes from the administration, it will be either as readily available. If you're not paying attention just because of real life stuff that I think if I get anything across my transom, I would send it to Ron who could post it to either, or either post it or email it as we've just done in the past to make sure everybody has it in your email box. Okay, thanks. I just wondered if we were getting something before the general public because I know all of the information from the administration goes out and press releases. I just have a constituent group that's very anxious for me to tell them what's happening in the housing world. And they messaged me yesterday asking for specifics, which of course I didn't have and assumed just like you did that it was coming out next week. So I just wanna make sure I'm on top of it or they're already gonna get it at the same time, I'm gonna get it because I really don't think I have an edge to getting information any quicker than the general public does. In general, I don't either. I mean, for the most part when it's coming from the administration, I think we're all in the same place and we just pay attention a little bit more. Maybe we know how to get to their spot a little bit faster. And I will say that is something that we were on, where were we on Wednesday morning? I was receiving a text during our meeting, I guess we were on the floor from my one general store owner in one of my towns who was telling me about what he was hearing about this package. And of course he was very excited. And I just had to text back saying, well, we were all very excited about the PPP two months ago. And so everything is many miles to go as far as any of these programs are. But I received a note today from revitalizing Waterbury and they've been having weekly meetings with small businesses and tourist oriented businesses who are very, of course, very interested in hearing what we know. And there's just a limit to what we know right now. And we're gonna get caught in conjecturing about, well, if it goes this way, then it'll be this. And I mean, we have a lot to say about it, but it's again, it's gonna be bits and pieces. And I think towards the middle of next week, we'll have a pretty good idea of what the General Assembly is gonna be looking at in terms of what our workload is gonna be on this issue in the next couple of weeks. Because if we wanna be done, if we wanna be done with these things by June 20th, for instance, we have a lot of work to do to hammer it out. So, but again, anything that you know if you're following the websites is what I know. But like I said, if I get anything across my transdom, I'll make sure I share that with us, yep. You're welcome.