 Okay. Thank you. This is the second half of the meeting of the House Human Services Committee and House General on hearing testimony about the state of the state of unhoused individuals and housing. And I'm Representative Anne Pugh and our first witness for the second half is Becky Gagne. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Becky Gagne. I'm the Executive Director at the Clarina Howard-Nickel Center. Clarina provides emergency shelter and advocacy services for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, stalking, and human trafficking in the Moyle County. Thank you for taking the time to hear from me and others around the state. And thank you for all that you have done and will continue to do to alleviate homelessness in Vermont by creating affordable housing, providing funding for critical services, and much more. As of last week, there were 97 adults and 29 children in the Moyle County who were experiencing literal homelessness and staying in emergency housing through the State Economic Services Division, the LaMoyle Community House, and the Clarina Howard-Nickel Center. This number does not count the individuals who are choosing not to seek emergency shelter and are living in tents, cars, and other unsafe situations. It also does not count the individuals who are unstably housed, such as sleeping on a friend's couch. I applaud the state's efforts to provide emergency housing for everyone during the pandemic to support safety and slow the spread of COVID. This effort has also helped us to understand the true depth of homelessness in the Moyle County and throughout the state. I'm incredibly grateful for the state's use of federal coronavirus relief funds to support long-term housing stabilization through rental and mortgage assistance, utility assistance, housing vouchers, and comprehensive housing and navigation services. As a member, organization of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, I am grateful for the federal coronavirus relief funds awarded to our organizations by the Vermont Legislature to help ensure that services for survivors of domestic and sexual violence continue to be available during the pandemic. I'd like to share a bit about Clarina's experience over the past year. We've actually experienced a number of successes. Clarina's services have remained available and we have continued to operate our shelter during the pandemic, although initially at reduced capacity to minimize close contact. We've received timely and critical information and guidance from the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, the State Office of Economic Opportunity, and the Vermont Department of Health regarding shelter operations, safety precautions, available resources, and much more. Clarina's staff and service users have had access to adequate PPE thanks to our community, business leaders, and state partners. Implementation of safety procedures has resulted in zero confirmed cases of COVID among our staff and those we have served through our shelter. Clarina's staff are working more closely than ever with our community partners, including the Lamoille Area Health and Human Services Response Command Center. LAWSROCK was formed in response to the pandemic and aims to coordinate local efforts to address the pandemic. I participate on three weekly meetings and two monthly meetings focused specifically on housing and homelessness in Lamoille County. Some of the key partners involved in those meetings in these efforts include the Lamoille Community House, Capstone Community Action, Lamoille County Mental Health, the Morrisville District Office staff from the Department of Health, Economic Services, and Family Services, Lamoille Family Center, Lamoille Restorative Center, Community Health Services of Lamoille Valley, Hopley Hospital, North Central Vermont Recovery Center, United Way of Lamoille County, our Houses of Worship, Meals on Wheels, Lamoille Community Food Share, our local schools, and of course our local legislators. None of us could do this work alone. Clarina's staff have been able to assist several survivors in securing housing funds and housing vouchers funded by the CARES Act and administered by the Champlain Valley Office on Economic Opportunity and the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence. We were able to access rapid resolution funds administered by the Vermont Network to assist survivors with rental assistance, moving expenses, car repairs, debt payoff, and more. Clarina was very fortunate to receive $175,000 in CARES Act funding from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to fund shelter renovations that address COVID health and safety issues. These funds allowed us to install air circulation units, replace worn and dirty flooring at a bathroom, and update four other bathrooms, install touchless faucets, soap dispensers, and hand sanitizer dispensers, and more. We also increased our capacity from six bedrooms to seven bedrooms during this project. So we can now house up to seven households at any time. With all those successes, we've also experienced some challenges. Our communities have faced isolation, food insecurity, skyrocketing unemployment rates, a complete upheaval of our education system, and fear for the physical and emotional health of our family, friends, and neighbors. These conditions have created an even more dangerous environment for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. The opportunities for survivors to reach out out are much more limited during a pandemic. In spring 2020, calls to our hotline stopped. We worked with our community partners and local media. We hung posters and we did whatever we could to ensure that survivors knew that our services were still available. Slowly over the summer, calls picked back up and requests for shelter started to come in again. Over the past six months, Clarina has provided emergency shelter for 15 households with 15 adults and 11 children. Providing shelter is more than a roof over someone's head. We provide safety and emotional support. Advocates conduct housing assessments and housing navigation services. We provide food and other basic needs. We provide advocacy services and assist with goal setting. Clarina provides a safe space for survivors to take their first steps towards a life free of violence. The lack of safe affordable housing has only increased during the pandemic. We work closely with our local housing partners that I listed earlier to coordinate efforts, build relationships with landlords, and utilize all available resources. Unfortunately, in many instances, funding has been available. Vouchers have been awarded, but folks have remained in emergency housing due to the lack of available units. Our final challenge has been related actually to the court system. There is little to no movement in the court system due to the pandemic. Family court cases involving parental rights and responsibilities, parent child contact, and divorce are stalled. This impacts not only the safety of survivors and their children, but also their ability to move forward with housing decisions, such as obtaining financing and the ability to seek housing in a different town if it involves changing a child's school. In conclusion, I'd like to thank you again for all that you do to support the health, safety, and well-being of all Vermonters. To end homelessness in Vermont, we must continue to invest in funding to create more affordable housing, rental and mortgage assistance, and other housing-related finance supports and support services for those with the greatest barriers to housing success. Specifically, increasing funding for state programs, including the Vermont Housing Conservation Board, the Housing Opportunity Program, Family Supportive Housing, Vermont Rental Subsidy, DMH Rental Assistance, and the Department of Corrections Transitional Housing is critical to ensuring that all Vermonters have access to safe and affordable housing. Thank you. Becky, thank you very much. Appreciate your comments. Uh, Kylan, um, from Divas Transitional Services Coordinator. Hello. Yeah, I'm here. Hi there. My name is Kylan Vayu. I'm the Transitional Services Coordinator for the Divas Program. Divas stands for Discussing Intimate Violence and Accessing Support. We are a project of the Vermont Network against domestic and sexual violence and function as an advocacy office for women who are incarcerated at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility. I want to start by thanking everyone for making it possible for Divas to be able to share on the perspective of housing for incarcerated survivors of domestic and sexual violence and human trafficking. Since 2017, a passion of mine with the Divas Program has been ensuring that our service users have safe and stable housing to exit incarceration, the safeties of our service users in escaping intimate partner violence and interpersonal violence while intersecting with the criminal justice system can be especially scary. Without stable permanent residences, the likelihood of recidivism, exposure to additional violence, and substance use is significantly higher. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Divas's office had no community presence. We were only in the Correctional Facility. Due to large releases from the Correctional Facility in March and April, almost half of the population of the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility was released back into the community quickly to mitigate the possible spread of the virus within the facility. During this time, Divas did not have access to our service users, leaving over 50 women without the safety planning and advocacy services we would normally provide. Divas was able to access some CARES Act funding, as well as a hop grant, which we plan to use to stabilize those who are homeless, living in motels, or other transitional living spaces into permanent residences, while also working retroactively to identify those service users who were struggling since the mass releases in the spring. With the CARES Act funding and assistance from the hop grant, Divas was able to provide services to over 30 women who were released from CRCF within the past year who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Divas is a small organization working to support women statewide between approximately two full-time positions. We had the pleasure of being able to work collaboratively with Vermont Works for Women, the Women's Justice and Freedom Initiative, and Mercy Connections on reentry efforts for women exiting the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility. Alongside the Vermont Network against domestic and sexual violence and DOC staff, Divas alone was able to meet, like I said, with a total of 30 participants pre- and post-release from incarceration. We provided over 350 client direct service hours post-release in advocating and meeting with them in their transitional spaces, permanent homes, and anywhere else in the community. We provided housing, moving, and rental costs, and sober living home fees totaling over $12,000. Provided direct support services, surpassing $8,000, and did over 1,500 miles in travel across the state to meet with our service users. While the majority of Divas funding was reserved for housing, costs in, like, moving, storage, rental payments, and security deposits, a huge struggle for our program and many of our service users is finding a physical apartment space that meets supervision, transportation, and reasonable living requirements while still being affordable. Finding housing with previously incarcerated individuals can be especially challenging as finding employment and housing is limited with a criminal record. Individuals on furlough, probation, and parole facing unique set of challenges, often in trying to balance a schedule of meeting the requirements of new supervision, receiving substance use treatment, meeting with Department of Children and Families requirements, attending therapy or intensive outpatient programming, maintaining employment, all while trying to find housing, and maintain a quality of life for themselves and their families. Many of our service users, we worked with needed months to stabilize just in homelessness before being able to start the application process for a voucher, coordinated entry, or other housing program. One of our service users worked for months just to get her most basic needs met on a weekly basis. She, like many of our service users, faced multiple challenges with the motel system and other temporary living, finding a place where a previous intimate partner could not locate her. Living in constant fear of her and her child's safety became a priority and looking towards permanent and stable housing in her future became more and more unattainable every time she had to start over at a new motel. Her story is unique, but not uncommon to the women who leave incarceration. By the time applications have been processed, finding landlords to work with our service users can often pose a challenge. Despite these challenges, Divas was really pleased to be able to provide, like I said, over $12,000 in housing supports for our service users this year. Because of these diverse challenges to our population, a large sum of our money also went to what we referred to as soft supports. Many women leaving incarceration only often are leaving with the clothes that they came in with, which we know seasonally might not work in Vermont. So a lot of our money went to seasonally appropriate clothing, basic needs including hygiene products, toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, just the very basics to have someone set up in a temporary living space, food and gift cards to grocery stores, cell phones, and minutes for their cell phone. This proved to be the highest need area for our service users being released as well as those who had been released months earlier. Service users struggled with consistent access to food, warm clothes, cell phones and Wi-Fi service, which was even more essential to keeping up with supervision requirements, healthcare appointments, and substance use treatment because of COVID. Like I said, Divas was able to provide over 8,000 in unique supports by the end of the year. Moving forward, as we continue to work with our clients who are incarcerated at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility pre- and post-release, we urge Vermonters to look at alternative housing options for justice-involved persons. During the pandemic, the Department of Corrections has lost three more sober living homes and transitional living spaces for incarcerated women. This means more women will be sitting at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility away from their children and families waiting on substance use treatment and access to other community housing. Many of our service users often tell us that they dream of having a space to call their own without the threat of reincarnation hanging over their head if they were to lose it. Models in Seattle have utilized tiny homes and mobile home communities with case managers and other service providers on site have seen great success in reducing both the rate of homelessness and recidivism and were built almost entirely by volunteer labor in those spaces. What Divas has seen over the past 10 months in light of this pandemic is Vermont's dedication to finding solutions to homelessness and we believe that alternatives to lack of physical infrastructure for justice-involved individuals could be great alternatives for not only previously incarcerated but homeless communities as a whole. Alternatives to incarceration can also include community-based supports, substance use treatment paired with affordable housing, residential spaces for folks to address complex trauma and more affordable and subsidized housing that is accessible to previously incarcerated individuals and individuals with complex histories and criminal records. I'm really grateful to be able to speak on behalf of the survivors in any setting but want to thank this committee again and the women especially for letting me come and advocate for them for this basic right today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much Kylin and I appreciate seeing you in this perspective. It's nice to see you too Ann. Sue Minter and I understand uh Sue that you and Eileen Peltier or Peltier will be speaking together potentially. Yeah I'll start off and hand it off to her. Thank you. Okay all right. Okay well thank you all so much I want to just start by saying thank you for this your service to our state through these incredible times and also just for inviting us to join you on this really important day. For the record I'm Sue Minter I'm the executive director of Capstone Community Action which is an anti-poverty organization in Washington, LaMoyle and Orange Counties and part of a network of five community action agencies around the state that are dedicated to poverty relief and to advancing social and economic justice. But today I'm here really representing the Washington County homelessness response team which has now really become an ongoing task force and we work together really as a collective force since the first days of the march shutdown to stand up what we saw as critical supports for our homeless neighbors in our county. I am pleased to be joined by the amazing Eileen Peltier from Down Street who worked with me actually early in the disaster in the pandemic as a unified commander of our incident command center and now is a key leader in our ongoing weekly task force meetings and work. We're submitting written testimony but we just want to provide briefly some insight what's been happening on the ground the data what our current needs are and also our ideas on what we do from here. So I also just want to pause for a moment and express how important I feel it is that we all take the time as you are today to reflect to listen and learn and advocate for solutions to homelessness and housing insecurity because as I know you're learning here being homeless is deeply traumatic it's also stigmatizing and results often in long-term negative impacts to a person's physical mental and financial help and I truly believe that our community is only as strong as its weakest members and that we have a moral responsibility to do all we can to address these societal traumas and I thank you for taking this responsibility forward with your work today and throughout the year. Even hearing how each region of our state has responded to this crisis in different ways but what's critical to understand is that we've all been stepping up and working tirelessly to meet these extraordinary and unprecedented demands of our time and that we have worked very closely with our state agencies and I want to do a shout out and commend the tremendous work and dedication of staff at the agency of human services particularly department of children and families the office of economic opportunity the department of public health mental health as well as the emergency operation center all who've been dedicated and great partners in this response you know it's been critical that state partners stepped up proactively agreeing to place our homeless neighbors into hotels taking over the feeding of the hotel guests that many community organizations like capstone actually took on responsibility for for many months for us it was six months most significantly they have supported our teams with the resources staffing for housing counseling mental health supports and medical supports safety and security at the hotels and the programs that you have funded through our CARES Act dollars have absolutely been essential from additional housing vouchers to rental assistance and rental rehab funds to create more units the rapid resolution funding which has been essential because it's been flexible around its use and eligibility for funding helping move people forward and all of these collective resources have truly made the difference for our community and we are optimistic and hopeful that this work can continue for at least six months and hopefully longer I really want to express as others have the incredible gratitude for the fact that Vermont as a state has stepped up in tremendous ways to meet the moment keeping our hotel guests safe addressing health needs and also looking to the root causes of homelessness but we also face really dire numbers today and our task force is prepared a two-page impact report Ron is it possible for you to put the slide on the screen for members to see that we sent you yesterday coming just a moment a wonderful just the page one the colorful slide I think it really represents um in a graphic way what we know now as he's putting it up I'm going to kind of point to some key data up here we go great can you all see it okay I think what this demonstrates is a number of things if you look to the bottom it really points out the critical work why it's been a collective effort because home and having that home is a part a key part of the solution but all of the services that you see that we have been providing in Washington County as others have in other counties of the state in their own ways all of the different needs that folks have looking to the top left you can see the the chart the data before the pandemic we had in Washington County on our coordinated entry list a total of 128 households that has escalated so dramatically by 153 percent now we know 324 hotel guest households which includes 396 adults and 91 children this these folks are scattered throughout seven different hotels in our area that we continue to work with on the very positive side we have managed to permanently house 65 of those households that's a huge success for us as a collective and we've built 67 new units again tremendous success and we're really pleased by that but we also want to make sure you know the need is so much greater than the capacity to support folks to move on our shelter the good Samaritan Haven has gone from a 76 bed capacity pre-covid to now just 25 beds so there's a 51 bed decrease that is not automatically going to come back post COVID they're also notably our only emergency shelters for individuals not for families with children so this is an overriding challenge I want to recognize all the members of our task force as you see at the bottom it's another way the agency of human services capstone and down street the family center of washington county good Samaritan Haven our shelter and washington county mental health all of us are a collective we know that these numbers are overwhelming but if there's something that this year has taught us it is that we are stronger than we think we are more capable than we believe and we are even more resilient than we ever imagined most important what we know is what is possible and that we have to commit to using this pandemic this crisis as really a transformational time a moment when we continue to move forward never backwards to address the tremendous disparity in our state and nation thank you and with that I hand you to Eileen thank you Ron you can take that down good morning everyone thank you Sue I am Eileen Peltier executive director of down street housing and community development thank you for the opportunity to speak today on homeless awareness day my role today is to share some specifics about we the washington county homeless task force together believe is needed sorry to you all I usually do the verbose inspirational speech but not today today we need action so here we go first I will touch on the three-legged school stool of housing supply subsidy in case management supply in washington county is tenuous and totally inadequate I don't overuse the word crisis especially these days but I do think it is time to think of our housing supply challenge as a crisis capital funding is critical for our region we can immediately use capital funding to support development like our upcoming project in berlin that will serve 30 families as well as the many pipeline projects waiting to queue up for funding we can use capital to bring more offline privately owned rentals back online which would mean a continuation of the rental rehab program that was so successful over the past year we also believe there is a strong potential to successfully house individuals in a single room occupancy model with peer support washington county mental health has leased four buildings and is currently housing a total of 14 individuals with great success we would use capital to expand on this model yesterday's news that the governor's budget includes an overall 34.8 million dollars to Vermont housing and conservation board is very welcome we hope you all will support the governor's recommendation which we truly believe will begin to address the housing supply crisis the second leg of the stool is subsidy we need more and we need it to be committed early to projects housing supply and subsidy are codependent with the biden administration signaling they will be increasing voucher availability and the governor's increased capital proposal there is a reason for some hope case management is the final leg of the stool to be clear case management directly impacts housing retention which is the household's ability to stay permanently housed this is no small issue in vermont for some of our neighbors an apartment is a temporary respite between episodes of homelessness permanent housing is a misnomer for far too many Vermonters our task force is working hard to understand the many in varied ways in which we case manage our vulnerable neighbors but we can do more we need the flexibility to use our funds in an innovative innovative ways and we need more funds to meet the growing need for case management speaking directly to the emergency shelter beds for individuals as sue said we lost 51 beds due to covid restrictions in the near term we need to develop 40 to 50 new beds to make this happen we need both capital to develop the building and a commitment to ongoing operating support from the agency of human services for families we believe expanding family supportive housing vouchers and associated program is critical this program combines vouchers and case management and it works the family center of washington county has increased case management in the hotels but more is needed both immediately for the hotels and is a long-term solution for families if we can address the supply issue putting families directly into permanent housing through the family supportive housing program is a far better option than hotel stays with funds we can do more for the 41 children in our hotels today to ensure we coordinate effectively and efficiently we need financial support to invest in the development of a virtual hub for homeless services in central vermont our task force has built a sense of purpose and a partnership and we would embrace the opportunity to develop a virtual hub that provides cohesive coordinated programs for people experiencing homeless across washington county we are committed to our partnership and strongly believe we can have a greater impact if we can get capacity support to move this vision along many of these risk requests can have an immediate impact others will take time time we may not have at this point we understand that the whole cell system including the enhanced case management will end sometime in 2021 we want to say clearly that we believe this would create not only a short-term disaster but would critically reduce the long-term success of the programs I have just highlighted continuing to invest in the hotels while simultaneously funding the innovative solutions identified is the only humane option this is not to suggest we don't have problems at the hotels with so many people congregating together but we are working on that through a joint approach of security and supports with other community partners certainly it is a costly solution but we believe we have the opportunity in this moment to permanently reinvent our system so that the likelihood of homelessness will be greatly reduced and the quality of life for our neighbors will be greatly improved before I close I do want to speak briefly to the agency of human services proposal to transfer the GA general assistance hotel funds to each county although we understand there's much more to discuss and understand about this proposed program we want to say at this time our task force has very serious concerns and we do not support the proposal we would be pleased to testify more specifically on that in the future in closing I want to thank the community the committees for your time today your dedication to helping our most vulnerable Vermonters and your support over many years we certainly can say these are challenging times they are but for too many Vermonters every day is a struggle that begins and ends with a worry about whether they will be able to rest with a roof over their head in a warm bed too often we stigmatize individuals and families experiencing homelessness we believe that focusing on housing our neighbors as a systemic challenge is a moral imperative for vermont moving the conversation from homeless to unhoused neighbors speaks to the need to address the system as a whole with that we stand ready to continue our current work and to do more much more thank you thank thank you eileen and thank you sue and kylan and becky the four of you who spoke at the second half of this hearing everyone who spoke today has really helped both paint a picture point out what what were one steps forward or two steps forward the bright lights and pointed out what we need to do differently so thank you thank you very much this is the beginning of an important day for all of us i do look forward to not having a homeless awareness day that's not a day that we need to pinpoint and with that i would like to turn this meeting over to the chair of house general tom stevens thank you and and thank you everyone who came out to testify today um it's really incredibly moving testimony on all ends not only um from from shon and with the lived experience but to the providers who are working many many hours to make sure that that there are folks who are experiencing homelessness are getting the services that they deserve and that they need to to remain stable during not just during this crazy time but but you know past this um as well and and to folks like sue and eileen who are um and and becky and kylan and and um emily and gene and everybody who's providing uh representing organizations that are really banding together to make sure that that vermonters are taking care of so thank you all for sharing today um i know some of you may need to go to a senate hearing as well at some point very soon and we will be um signing in to see the vigil at noon um sponsored by the the coalition to end homelessness so thank you everybody thank you both committees for um spending this time together and again this is really for me this is a moment of reflection this is a day of reflection and um again while i i will always be proud of the work that we did as a state to do the right thing and then to do the next right thing um i think that it's a drive to continue to do the next right thing um and we don't do it alone and and we know that we're in partnership with everybody here so thank you all for coming today and um thank you really from the bottom of my heart for all the work that you've done and we will see you um