 Damien responds, I'm sick and trying and failing to get some rest. What do they need me for and can't wait till next week? You may respond to just go back to sleep and don't worry about general housing and military affairs. I will say those words exactly. Thank you. I'm turning my camera off and I'm still here. Okay. All right, everybody welcome back to committee. Just a couple of housekeeping things we are in the process of working with Catherine is in the process of working with it to schedule for next week basically when we need to have people from it and and from ledge council on board to make sure that we're doing what we need to do and that we feel comfortable with what we're doing with zoom. When when we feel comfortable with that and that's basically all of us are comfortable with getting hooked into it. When Ron and I are okay with co hosting and hosting, then the training wheels will come off and we'll be able to schedule more meetings at our own convenience and not just the convenience of when it is available. I see that most everybody's here. I do know. Again, Lisa, I can see you but I can't hear you yet. What I'm hearing what I'm seeing is that there's that your audio is still connecting but I haven't, I haven't heard you yet. The other issues one of the things that Tom, can you hear me now. I can. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I'll unmute. I'll mute myself again. Okay. One of the things that I learned this morning in terms of in terms of our process when we are ready to pass a bill. It's it's complicated now but the fact that we can vote on it is one good thing but the question would then be how does the bill that we're working on then gets the clerks office with a signature and how does it become how does it get printed. And one of the issues that we've been dealing with on the bills that we have in front of us that is that the committee bills and committee bills tend to have to go from when we vote on these out of our committee they would go to the clerks office and they'd have to be introduced be given a number and there's a 24 hour lag above and beyond the notice. So we may have to work with our attorneys to when we're done working on the language that we're working on right now. We may work with them in terms of finding a bill that's already exists that has a number that already exists is germane and then strip the language out of that and put this language in and that'll just make the process a little bit easier. Except for the signature page part of it which will, you know, so the speaker and the clerk are going to work on a process and that'll be forthcoming sometime, I would imagine by early next week. So today we're going to just concentrate on hearing about the bills that we've been working on. Yesterday we heard a lot about the proposals being put forward and the new language being put forward that that really did tighten it up and I do want to hear from again from. Angel, but I want to start with Chris because Chris you. You basically had expressed two weeks ago that having the word foreclosure in this bill is a difficulty in many different ways and so I wanted you to explain that and just from a committee's perspective I think, I think, if this if this is a banking issue a foreclosure has to do with banking law not only Vermont but federal, the correct committee for that aspect of this would be the Commerce Committee, but I also understand that the federal government has made some provisions for foreclosure protections and Chris I hope you can just share that with us. I'd be happy to so good morning Mr Chairman good morning committee members. If I can just digress for 30 seconds. One of the messages I want to leave you with today is that the banks are open for business as we are designated as an essential person if you will for our industry. So it looks differently as far as having to conduct business through drive ups and ETMs and online banking and so on. We are open for business. We are well capitalized so that we do have capital that can be made available we know that there is a significant that is going to be coming from the federal bill that passed the Senate soon to pass the House and we know we have a significant role with the way in the distribution of those funds, working closely with our partners. I would ask that if you have any constituents who are outreaching to you and expressing concern and looking for relief. If they have loans with financial institutions both business and individual. We need to get a hold of those financial institutions as quickly as possible. We want to try and work with them to minimize any potential problems, better to do that before you're 60 days behind 30 days behind. We have been given a great deal of flexibility by our regulators that includes not only our department in state but our federal regulators to try and do what we can to work with our followers while keeping in mind the safety and soundness of the financial institution. We are continually every day seeking greater clarity on how far we can stretch these limits. There is, as you all know this is completely 2008 looks like nothing compared to what we are seeing out there right now in the growing demand. The longer this continues, the greater the demand becomes. So again, they need to communicate as we are being aggressive and communicating with people to try and work through these issues sooner rather than later. With regard to the topic of foreclosure. I would start with saying that foreclosure is very different than an eviction process. Foreclosure in Vermont takes quite a bit of time to go through there. You start with a delinquency point where the borrower is not paid, but you can file your paperwork and then you have an extensive mediation process that you have to go through. Sometimes it can take upwards of two years. I've seen some given circumstances that take longer than that. I can assure you, I can assure you that nobody is being thrown out on the street because of COVID-19 circumstances. We have seen our members who have who are not moving forward with foreclosure. I have seen banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase who have put moratoriums on foreclosure. We have Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and any federally backed mortgage now has a foreclosure moratorium placed on it. There is language, because I know Representative, you asked me to comment on this if I could. There is language in the federal package that deals with homeowner protections forbearance and moratorium on foreclosures. There's also language in that package that deals with moratorium on evictions. So both of those are being dealt with as we speak by federal authorities. We are trying to take a case-by-case approach to our individuals, again, recognizing the severity of the environment that we are in right now. I should also add, listening to you, testimony yesterday, even if we were to file documentation with the courts today, the courts are not going to be moving forward with those documents, with that process, if you will, because of the circumstances they find themselves in, in the rules that they have been releasing. So do I think you need to do the language in the bill? I think the industry is already beyond your language and has already implemented your language. So honestly, I don't see a need for it because that's what we're doing. There is a time when circumstances change and when this ship gets righted and you begin to move forward with those foreclosures that are currently in process now, but I can again assure you if it's in process now, either the courts have slowed it down or, again, we've made the decisions. We're not throwing people out of their homes because we know the severity of the stay in place order from the governor's office and the administration. So I saw your bill language. I also saw some language that was circulated by legal aid this morning. At this point, I, again, I think we're beyond that from my industry's perspective. So I don't see a need for it to be in there. I also recognize that there is a feeling as policymakers that perhaps you need to do something. This falls into the ballet wick of the age of the Commerce Committee. It also falls into the ballet wick of the Judiciary Committee because we touch upon both of those. The overwhelming majority of foreclosures go through a judicial process here in Vermont. That decision was made years ago when we put the mediation program in place just to basically automatically go through the courts. You know, I guess that's where I'm at at this point. I did see the language that Angela and her folks worked on with legal aid. And I know it's trying to strike a balance there. Again, I would submit evictions are different than foreclosure because we've got a much longer process and interactive process with the bar that we have to go through. So I'll stop there and happy to answer any questions you may have and pledge to continue to work with your committees and others as this moves forward. Just a quick, there we go. Just a reminder for people to use the raise your hand function if you if you want to ask a question. And then, but Chris just quickly what about the commercial side of life when we had a conversation yesterday about the about commercial rentals which our attorney was David Hall was sharing that that's it. That's not part of the residential landlord tenant law at all, of course, but also about commercial loans and what does it mean, what do you think is going to be going on with commercial loans. Federal package. So, in 30 seconds to digress I'm, I'm, I'm capturing three buckets right now, the individual bucket, the business bucket, and then the municipality bucket. We're going to see a growing problem with regard to homeowners and business owners being able to pay their property taxes. And that's an area that we're going to be concentrating on I've had many conversations with the state treasurer about that, very similar to what we try to do with the municipalities during tropical storm Irene, from a business perspective. We, I guess we're on two sides of this if you will we've got the business owner that has the relationship with the financial institution. And then we have the property owner who may be leasing the property to the business. And they may have a financial relationship with this. It's it's my understanding. If I heard her judge Greerson yesterday correctly, that he interprets their activities within a judiciary right now to include businesses as well. In other words, they're they're not making a bright line distinction between individuals in businesses. So, if somebody were to file or try and go through an eviction process and have to utilize the courts I'm not sure they're going to get very far at this point. We are seeing unprecedented request discussions going on with the business community right now to try and help them. In our understanding there's about $350 billion in the federal package that will be made available through the SBA small business administration program to try and help businesses get through this. It's under what they titled the paycheck protection act. So it can be used as a pass through from the lender to the business to cover payroll expenses during this period of time. Some businesses can't take on additional debt. It's as simple as that. It is not going to be beneficial to them. Some businesses need outright grants, and we're still trying to figure out what that might look like. The challenge I see is we've got current disaster program under SBA which is trying to get money out the door quickly we've got $350 billion coming from the feds, and there are literally no guidelines right now. There is no structure to try and get those funds out the door. So our industry with SBA and others are going to be working over the weekend to hopefully build that roadmap so that when people see and hear about this package being passed at the federal level, you know they're going to pick up the phone and ask how do I get into the program. And we are trying to get ready for that, hopefully by the middle at the very latest the end of next week to try and bring some relief for these businesses that are out there in the marketplace. Thank you Chris. Anything else for Chris right now this is, it's all very sobering and I think it's, you know, one of the issues is this day by day thing. I mean it still has to this package still has to pass the house which I guess is expected. It has to pass has to be signed by the president and then rules are going to be determined is that is that your understanding that that it's just not necessarily rules but just the guidance and the guidelines for implementing the program, because we don't know right whether you're going to apply through SBA, whether you're going to apply it to us as lenders, whether you're going to walk in the door as a business having a designation already given to you by SBA. Are we doing bridge loans not doing bridge loans. If we're doing bridge loans does the SBA funding then go to the financial institution to pay off the loan. I mean it is mind boggling how much is going to be a part of this program and how much needs to be put in place to implement it and we know we're on the front line of doing that, or playing that implementation role and it's frightening right now, not having that in place already. Well, and you mentioned that one of your buckets is municipalities. Yes, and property taxes obviously is a big part of that. What are you, but but you do the banking industry does much more than that I mean we're talking about bonding issues we're talking about. What are we talking about besides basic fluidity here. Okay, well really it's it's about cash flow so if we go back to tropical storm marine you'll remember the losses were really related to infrastructure. We needed to get the roads and bridges and culverts put back in place. So what we did there was to provide the short term funding to those municipalities so they can make those improvements immediately. And then we worked with the bond bank to put in place the long term financing that the municipalities needed. It's my understanding the bond bank has shifted a little bit over the years that they're looking at capital improvements, rather than cash flow issues. So what we're working on right now with the Chargers office and trying to get from. Yeah, we lost you. And then the biggest cities and towns is what what's the estimate up there again, our lender sad municipal relationships all over the state. So we're looking at what's the short term cash flow that they need because there is an expectation of having to not just run municipal government, but also make the payments to the state on the Education Fund. I think they are obligated to do that under statute. So where do they come up with the funds to do that if they've got homeowners who and businesses who aren't able to pay their property taxes. So we're looking at some type of cash flow mechanism that we could put in place with the municipal with the municipality short term borrowing, and then again working with the treasurer and others to figure out what the long term piece looks like. What's your worst fear before I let you go. Turn off the recording. What's your comfortable answering. Thank you. I am very, very concerned about the volume of people being impacted individually and business oriented. We have never seen anything like this. We are while our industry as a regulated industry is prepared and has pandemic programs in place and keeping the doors open. I am fearful that the need will outstrip the resources that we have available to us. I am fearful that the longer this goes and rightly so with regard to stay at home and so on. The deeper the damages and the longer it will take to recover. And I know that there will be business owners that won't be able to come back period end of discussion, no matter what we're able to do for them. It's wonderful overall of how devastating this will be to the Vermont economy, and how we manage the $2 billion that's supposedly coming to our state in this bill, knowing they're going to have to be other bills look that stimulus packages look that down in Washington because this, the effects of this will not go away quickly. Thank you. And thanks for weighing in on on these issues I'm sure you'll be. I understand you'll Commerce Committee will be taking up some of the same issues next week as well. But I'm sure the world will have shifted two or three degrees between now and then as well so if there is information that you think we need to have please don't hesitate to reach out so that we can get you back. Absolutely do that and greatly appreciate your time this morning I'll stay on for a little while. Alright, thanks Chris. We'll shift over now to Jean. If that's okay. Jean, are you ready. You are you are unmuted. Welcome. For people who don't know me, I am Jean Murray, I am an attorney at Vermont legal aid. I practice extensively in landlord tenant law and as have also practiced some foreclosure defense cases. So, in this bill. And we've been working since yesterday to reach agreement between the legal aid version and Angela has provided some really helpful suggestions from the Landlord's Association. I want to get her name right. And so, I just kind of like to explain what it is that section nine of the bill in front of you is doing. My idea is to have a moratorium on evictions. Eviction means that a landlord or a lender mortgage lender is using the power of the state through the courts to involuntarily remove somebody from their home. In the usual course of business, this happens actually quite frequently. In fiscal fiscal year 2019, there were 1761 evictions filed and 852 foreclosures filed on the eviction side that's about 150 evictions get filed a month. And on the foreclosure side, I haven't done the math, but about half that so about 75 foreclosures get filed a month. So we're not in the usual course of business. So the idea of this section nine is to go to the one place and in Vermont the one place for evictions and for rits of possession due to foreclosure, the one place that that happens is in the court. So the idea is to go to the court and to say to courts, stop, just don't do this right now. Don't do this during the state of emergency. Or a short period of time after just pause. And it's, what are you pausing, you are pausing anything that could lead to a rid of possession. A couple of weeks ago, the judiciary passed a new emergency rule. The administrative order 49 in which they suspended all non-emergency hearings. But that means that things that any people think of as an emergency could happen. The cases are still pending deadlines are still running. And non-emergency. Before the state of emergency, there were a number of rits of possession outstanding, where somebody already in a landlord tenant case had been served with a rid of possession, or had agreed to a rid of possession, thinking that after a certain period of time they'd be able to go out and find other housing and leave the housing that was in dispute. There's still out there right now happening every day. And at legal aid we know of a number of cases where people who had a rid of possession served on them or they'd accepted one, haven't been able to find a new place to move and to stay under the emergency order are not really allowed to leave their houses to find a place to move to, so that individually case by case people have to go to the court and ask them to stay the rid of possession. This is not the courthouse doors are closed. It's very difficult for pro se defendants in both foreclosures and evictions to get anything accomplished. And most people are pro se. As hard as we work at legal services Vermont and Vermont legal aid. Not everybody comes to us. I mean, I'm at home. This is in my kitchen. We have to figure out, just like everybody else scrambling and ways to figure out how to help people. So the bill to stopping everything that's happening at court during the state of emergency will stop people from being put on the street during a public health emergency. And that's what we aim to stop the homeowners who have mortgages to pay. Certainly there has been relief for the federally funded mortgage programs that have been offered. And certainly I absolutely understand that our local banks and credit unions are also not going to start foreclosure proceedings and are going to do whatever they can to put people in in for forbearance. There are already a number of foreclosures that are out there with time clocks running on them. And so that this bill would stop the ones that have already been filed. So that none of them get to the rid of possession point. The foreclosure process in Vermont. After there's a judgment of foreclosure and the redemption period is run. The next step is a foreclosure sale. If you are a homeowner, and your property was going to go to foreclosure sale to pay off the amount of loan that you owed. It would not be a good time for your property to be auctioned. So you would not be able to pay off as much of your loan with the price that property would get. So it's just a better idea during a state of emergency to stop everything. What else was I going to say. There's a lot of emotion back to the eviction side. There has been some talk about. There are some tenants who are creating such a problem that there should be an exception to an eviction moratorium. And we've thought about this. And for There's two ways of thinking to two thoughts about it. But let's just think about tenants who are supposedly creating such a problem that it's a risk to the health and safety of other tenants in landlord tenant law. There is a grounds for eviction. Where a tenant is violent or engaged in criminal activity, or is doing something to threaten the health and safety of other tenants that's a regular grounds for eviction. If during the state of emergency, someone is doing that. There are ways to enforce The governor's order. That is not eviction of a tenant. So If there are too many people coming in and out of someone's house. The governor's order says nobody is supposed to come in and out of a house they're not supposed to be moving around the you're just supposed to go to the grocery store in the pharmacy and that's it. So there could be things in place to enforce the governor's order for that kind of behavior. So having a mental health crisis and is so behaviorally disordered that they are a danger to themselves or others. The police could be called the mental health screeners could be called, and that individual persons problem could be dealt with by those other agencies short of eviction, which may involve taking somebody to the hospital or some other place. So, we view it as not necessary to carve out an exception to an eviction moratorium, because for folks whose behaviors are extreme. There are other ways to get those behaviors in control, rather than dispossessing them from their homes. The other thing to think about is whether or not, if an eviction moratorium happened. This particular bill the first thing it says is that there is nothing in the bill that says that people shouldn't pay their rent or their mortgage payments. People have money to pay their rent and mortgage payments they should pay their rent and mortgage payments during the state of emergency. It is not nothing in this bill says that people will not eventually owe the rent. And it has been said that perhaps tenants particularly would would would think of this as a free ride. I think that is a very negative view of who tenants in Vermont are. I think tenants just as well as homeowners understand their obligations to pay rent and will pay it if they have the money to pay it. And right now, because some people are out of work, they may not be able to pay right now. And while there might be rental assistance coming right now we don't know just as Chris was saying, we don't know exactly how it's coming how it's going to be applied for how it's been attributed. And so what needs to happen is everybody just needs to slow down and put everything on pause until we get for relief money. Until we get. I'm sorry about that I don't know what. Just one second to make this go away. Yeah, did you hear something was ringing and it needed to stop ringing sorry about that. So, we, since we've changed the, the bill yesterday, we have worked out how a bunch of specific details about staying the Kate, you had a walk through the bill yesterday and what the changes are today mostly our details about exactly how that would work. The end of the bill that got walked through yesterday is all intact. We have added one extra thing, which is a way to, for people who need to sign notarized documents that go into court, just the ones that go into court would be able to instead of them affirm under pains and penalties of perjury that their affidavits were correct. This already exists in the court system for electronically filed documents there is no need for notarization, and this particular section would just expand the ongoing of notarization for affidavits that get need to file in court. I put in the committee documents the Secretary of State's change to the notary rule to allow for remote notarization, which is, it's five pages long it's incredibly complicated it requires video and secure channels and things like that, all of which are not accessible for low income people. So we have added that to this bill just for the kinds of things that need to be as to go into court that to suspend the need for notarization for those. I'm not I did outline the same testimony I gave I'm giving now in a written document that I sent in yesterday. Also, one of the documents that I sent in was excerpts from the law of the governor's power so the governor enacted his state of emergency under certain powers that are given to him by statute, and those powers include the ability to enforce the orders that that he makes and so I've excerpted those statutes for you to look at to. Okay, those are on our website. Do you have time for a couple questions. Sure. John and then chip. John. Hold on I haven't been able to get you on muted yet hold on. Mine was for Chris if he's still with us I don't know if he is. Yep. Chris are you still there. Yep, still here. Chris when you said that your industry is already beyond the bill why not have all the banking institutions. That statement regarding for closures. Because that that creates. There are, if you can hear me there are unintended consequences with that it creates a greater expectation for people in the marketplace. The approach has been, and it's worked in the past very successfully is to have those conversations with individual borrowers based on their unique circumstances. The federal language will more than likely get quite a bit of press, both here in Vermont and elsewhere around the country so it's just managing the message so that you don't create unexpected unintended consequences and expectations that as Jean said if somebody's paying their mortgage or able to pay their mortgage. You know they should be able to continue to do that so I hear your thoughts but that's the approach we're taking at this point case by case. If the if the if the industry is beyond the bill and you can't something public if the parameters that we have in the bill currently won't be a problem to your industry, because you're already ahead of it. Well that's true I mean I don't, I mean, I would defer to other people who deal with foreclosures as well. What I've heard from the courts is that even if you file your paperwork it's not going to go anywhere because they're not moving forward with it. I've got others who are not moving forward with foreclosure at all. And when you've got people who are under a stay at home order, you can do a sale, because you've got to have people who are out there on the court steps if you will conducting the sale so that's not going to happen. I mean, that's why I don't think you're all in the same situation. I don't think we're oppositional I'm just trying to get my, because the judiciary has said that they. It's how people are working in this emergency but it's not standardized either. Each of our court systems so it's an interesting issue of how do we do this altogether. I understand I've, I've often had frustration with the lack of standardization in the courts because you can get same case very different outcomes and two different jurisdictions. So I, yeah, we're all working toward the same end game and I'm, please don't take me as being confrontational at all. I just think at this point where we're focusing our attention is to make sure that we're working with those customers individually to make sure they understand clearly what's going on. And again, I'll assure you that our industry has no desire to throw people out of their homes at this point at all. Okay, thank you. Thank you john, you are up. Yes, a few things that occurred to me. Regarding Jen's testimony. I have to read it. I guess I had read somewhere that sheriffs or had also issued some sort of a statement that they would not serve process regarding displacing for not foreclosures but evictions. And how that played in or if legal aid was aware of that and how that may play in. I also had a question about when you speak about affirmations in, in, in place of notaries. I'm familiar with oats of affirmation and those seem to be somewhat complicated language for pro se litigants to be asked to do and I was wondering if you had any suggestions as to what might come about how that language might be presented in the community to make it available to folks that may need it. Um, I, I, we reached out to the sheriffs. I understand they had a statewide call yesterday. I'm, I wasn't part of the call, I haven't seen a written statement from the sheriff's but my understanding is that they. That some sheriffs would rather not be saw serving the civil process that is currently in their hands. They don't want to send their personnel out and go door to door for service in hand. In terms of any final decision about what they decided to do. My impression was they were waiting for either this legislation or an executive order from the governor about it. Um, but this legislation would say would make it clear that let me back up a little bit. A case in, in the civil division of the superior court. So circumstances get started either by filing or by service. If it is started by filing. In the usual case, the plaintiff has 60 days to serve. If it is started by service, the plaintiff has to file within 21 days. This legislation would say, go ahead and file your case to preserve your statute of limitations or any other thing that you need to preserve. But so the case is commenced but stayed immediately and a prohibition against serving it until the state of emergency is over and a prohibition against serving any order or any sort of process until the state of emergency is over. So, and if we did that with this legislation, then the sheriff's wouldn't have anything to serve. And I understand some of them don't want to anyway. So, and the second thing about the complicated language, well, the current version of the bill that David Hall is posted this morning, which has some things to work out. But he wanted to have something for people to look at has the language it precisely has the language and this is language that is actually already part of the statute about affidavits and and things that need notaries because the judiciary already suspended the requirement of notaries for things that were filed electronically. And so we would just say, instead of just for things that are filed electronically it would be everything. And there's just a little recitation of swear swear or firm under pains and penalties of perjury. And it would be part of a judiciary form. Thank you. All right also with that ship. Yes. Great. Gene, are you all set for right now. Will you stay on the call for a little while or do you have more for us. I will definitely stay on the call. I don't have anything else right now. Okay, thank you. I'm going to shift over now to up to Angela and see if there's any further comments that Angela had on the comments that were shared and worked on. Thank you for showing up again and for and for working with the other folks on these changes. Hey, you're very welcome. I just want to ensure that everybody can hear me okay. We work through these technical difficulties. My name is Angela. I'm the director of the Vermont landlords association. I'm also a practicing attorney and I represent landlords throughout the state of Vermont. We, I have been working with the folks at legal aid with their section nine proposal. I think with the various edits that we've come up with it creates this balanced approach that will preserve the rights of landlords. So it's going to allow landlords to continue to send termination notices. It's going to allow landlords to file an eviction case. And then at the point at which the eviction cases filed the process stops. So it's being mindful of the fact that the governor has issued a stay home. Stay safe order. And so we do not want people turned out of their homes at this time in keeping with that order. So it, it allows the process to continue to a point and then everything stops. What the bill or the proposal also does is addresses sort of these other outstanding issues cases that have already been filed. What happens to some extent when the state emergency is lifted. And from the landlord's perspective, a very important part of all of this is section seven, which is the appropriation and the funding. And I know the difficulty now is that no one knows when the funding is coming, how much funding is coming, but having resources available for tenants and landlords to ensure there's not also a financial crisis. In addition to this is going to be very important and paramount that I think this section nine that legal aid and I have been working on is about as fair as we can get to both parties given all of the circumstances. Well, thank you. And again, thank you for working with it. Any questions for Angela. And the, the draft that they're talking about will will, we will try to get that posted a little bit later on today. To make sure everybody can see it for the afternoon conversation. Thank you, Angela. John, did you have a question. Thank you, Angela over over the evening I was reading what other regions have done and Governor Newsom in California had a stay of evictions until the end of May and let each city decide how to do that. But in Seattle is ending 30 days after the emergency. On page 11 of your suggested notes, that's posted you want to your suggesting any at 15 days after the termination. I just wondering how we're being less generous and other communities and I'm just wondering how you came up or how the group came up with 15 days. That's my question. Sure. And I think in the meantime, with conversations with Vermont legal aid and myself, we had settled on a 30 day time frame. So I think you're, you're looking at yesterday before the two parties that had a chance to talk and in the meantime, we had come to an agreement on on 30 days. I love 30 days. Thank you. Okay, Chip. No, I'm good. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Angela. If you could just stay on the line for a little while and see what happens when when we get through with as we go around. Are you here. Are you still here. Hi, more. How are you. Very good. How are you. Thank you. I'm not sure. More is had reached out to me last night with some concerns from the Vermont housing and finance authority that we did not hear anything about until, until I heard these, these concerns that more ahead and I just wanted her to have the opportunity to share those. Thank you so much for your leadership and perseverance in these times. As Representative Stevens said, my name is Mora Collins, I'm the executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. I completely support the broad goals of this legislation, and I want to be on the record with that. The evidence of the role and importance of housing is reflected in the governor, just the name of the governor stay home, stay safe policy, and that Vermont residents can only abide by this directive if they have a safe home to shelter them. I also echo Christelia's comments about foreclosures and evictions being very different from each other, and that the risks of homelessness and perpetuating this public health emergency are very different if you're talking about foreclosures or evictions. VHFA is a mortgage lender, both with single family mortgages. So we do participate in foreclosure actions directly, as well as we have mortgages for multifamily rental buildings. And so we watch our borrowers go through the eviction process with their tenants, sadly, sometimes. And with foreclosures, Chris laid out the long time that it takes when courts, even when courts are open and systems are functioning well. The foreclosure process is just a very long process. In Vermont, we do have a judicial foreclosure system. So the role of the courts is imperative. And as we know, the courts are closed to a lot of business. I've seen a lot of estimates of mortgages covered or not covered by all the existing foreclosure protections that have already been announced by the feds. So I'm not going to throw my own estimates on top of all those other estimates. And Chris spoke, but I will say that some of VHFA's mortgages are the ones that are not covered by those federal actions. A lot of our mortgages are, some are not. And why that would be is that this gets really complicated really quickly as Chris was laying out. And so I agree with him that so far VHFA has taken the action of not having a public decree explaining what we're doing is that we have stopped all foreclosures initiations, absolutely. And we have held and stopped action on foreclosures that were in process from some of them going in and out of foreclosure several times. And so they could have been going on for years. And we have stopped all actions so that there is no chance that we will be pushing people into homelessness or impacting their ability to stay safe and stay home. But we have stopped short of being public about that and initiating a big PR-based announcement because, as Chris said, of the potential unintended consequences. When I say it's very complicated, it's because sometimes it is the lender who may be stopping the foreclosure action. And sometimes you have to think about the mortgage insurance on the property and neither abiding by those rules or not going afoul of those rules. So it's far better. And what we've been directing is for all of our borrowers to individually talk with their mortgage servicer or VHFA about their situation. I know that I have read a bunch of social media comments in different community groups I'm a part of where people have heard of the federal actions and have interpreted them as much broader than they are. I see people saying, oh, thank goodness the feds made it so I don't have to pay my mortgage for the next 60 days. That's not true. And they are interpreting very complicated mortgage industry speak and making up their own interpretations of it. And I worry about those who are not talking to their servicer and understanding what exactly applies in their situation or not. So going to the bill that you all have in front of you, I really support the funding for the state to provide emergency housing related assistance. I don't know if $5 million is the right number. I'm going to trust that other people came up with that number based on the need. But I do hope that the eligibility for that assistance is broad enough to cover the broad base of need that I think may be what we see in reality. And as others have said, we're still trying to assess the impact of the federal stimulus that's passed, the third federal stimulus. There is some direct money for housing subsidies for affordable housing projects. Previously, there was an expansion of the unemployment benefits and expanded family leave and even health care premium coverage for employers. And so all those actions are going to help not only Vermonters, but the housing that we're talking about today of Vermonters because all of those income relief programs and income support programs will help stabilize our housing because we'll have the money to pay our mortgages and rents. When I reached out to Tom, it was because mostly I'm concerned or I want everyone to be careful about the messaging of what you all are considering. So while I have a lot of support for it, there are I'm worried that a big public announcement, whether it be from the administration or from the legislature or from everyone, talking about these broad-based moratoriums could be perceived as different than what I'm reading in your bill. And I appreciate Angela's testimony confirming that there is an expectation that everyone still, and Jean, you said it, everyone still has to pay their rent and there's no forgiveness of that. And instead, there's this emergency assistance fund available. I'm just worried about what people are going to read into this. And to the extent there are affordable housing programs that VHVA administers that it seems to maybe have slipped through the cracks in terms of the federal stimulus bill so far, you've heard me testify in the past about the federal tax credit program. This is the largest rental support program that we have in this country of creating affordable rental housing with federal tax credits. A lot of those apartments may finance the federal tax credits, have deep rental assistance with them. And so I believe they're going to be covered by the federal stimulus bill. But there's about 3,300 apartments funded with tax credits that don't have deep rental assistance. And about 1,000 of those have a VHFA loan on them. And I'm not sure what help will be for those projects. And so that's why I'm saying I really support the money that you have in this bill to help individuals like those tenants who may be eligible. But I had a call with the state treasurer yesterday that brought this to the forefront where I don't know yet, but if by mid-April it's clear that a lot of the tenants in our housing that we have loans on the mortgages on the property, if they do not pay their rent, then it's possible that the property owners won't be able to pay their mortgage to VHFA or to other lenders. And if VHFA, I can only speak for us, that if those mortgage payments, we can absorb some of our borrowers not making full mortgage payments. And we are kind of stress testing that scenario now. But at some point, depending on the length and severity of this crisis, at some point, if our multifamily borrowers are not able to pay us those mortgage payments, we take that money and turn around and pay our bond investors with those mortgage payments. And we have payments due to our investors. And we will need to keep paying those investors, because as I have seen now, I don't see any legislation addressing existing bonds in that way. So if we get to a point that we can't be paying our investors who we sold bonds to, many, many years ago, we may have to call on the protection that the state offers VHFA's bonds. And that's called the moral obligation of the state. And if there was a situation where tenants aren't paying their rent, so the property owners aren't paying VHFA, so VHFA can't pay the investors, and there's not enough money to pay the investors, then the state has agreed that it will step up and backfill that money to the investors. And that was a reassurance that those investors knew about when they bought our bonds, however many years ago, could be decades ago. And at this point, we see this risk as low. And in fact, I really echoed that to the state treasurer when we spoke yesterday. An example of what I'm talking about, we're quantifying it now, but she was asking, should we have weekly calls to get updates on the status of this? And I said, this is such a low risk. We could talk about this monthly. This is not something that I expect will happen anytime soon, but it certainly is an outcome that I wanted to raise as a possibility, because it is possible that we may at some point have to call on the moral obligation of the state in that way if this all happens. And so my concluding comments are, I support so much of this legislation. I appreciate that it includes the kind of emergency housing assistance that I think is really what's critical, because we do not want anyone to become homeless or be without a home when the governor is telling us to stay safe, stay home. And so keeping people in their housing is critical to stop this public health emergency. And at the same time, I think that the messaging of what is being done with this bill is going to have to be very clear so that it does not leave anyone with the impression that what's in the bill, we need to reassure people that what's in the bill is in the bill, which is leaving people with this impression that they have to pay their rent and mortgages if they're able. And if they're not able, the state and the feds need to come together and make sure that they are able so that it doesn't create other financial consequences for the state that it can't afford. Thank you. Any questions for more right now? John, you have your hand up. John, go ahead. Laura, so for the foreclosure part, are you with Chris saying that's not needed to be in this bill? Or are you with Gene saying that's essential to be in this bill when you support the bill? It's a good question. I have the same concern on foreclosures I do on the eviction piece, which I'm worried about what the average Vermonter will read into the media coverage of this bill. And so I know it's not necessary for VHFA. I know that we have stopped everything, as I explained. I hear Chris saying that all his members have stopped everything, so in that regard, it doesn't sound like it's necessary, but do Chris and I represent 100% of all possible scenarios? I'm not confident of that. And I do want to make sure that people do not get involved with us at this time. So that's a non-answer. I'm sorry, Representative. But it's hard for me to imagine how people will hear of these broad-based moratoriums and not read into it what they want to hear. OK, thank you. Good. OK, further questions for Mora right now? All right, Mora, if you could just hang out here. Next up, David, are you able to chime in? Yes. So, David, there's just a, if you could, I don't know if you're prepared to share the screen and kind of go over some of the changes that were made from yesterday and just to confirm or just to perhaps show us what has been worked on, that would be great. Sure. The sharing function working for everybody. It was rapidly shared. And just quickly, when we're done, I think with a direct conversation on the bill this morning, we do have Earhart, who is listening, who is going to share some of the numbers that he is aware of from the federal package that we're still waiting to see if it's going to be approved by the House and move through its process. But I just wanted to recognize that that is still ahead of us. So, David, please go right ahead. Sure. It's not a lot. Be quick. David Hall Legislative Council. So this is a new draft. The changes that are highlighted are relative to what you saw yesterday. You'll see the first change here in the definition of the emergency period that had been 60 days after the governor declares that the emergency state is ended. That's reduced to 30 days. By the way, these changes are all sort of a common proposal negotiated between legal aid and the Department of Justice Association. So there is just a little bit of work still being done. But this is what we have so far. And I think it's fair to say they obviously agree to this as they proposed it. So yesterday, we talked about the treatment of pending foreclosure and ejectment actions. D, relate to new foreclosure and ejectment actions. So the addition here in D2 for an action filed pursuant to subdivision 1A of the section, the deadline for completing service of process pursuant to BRCP, 3 is 60 days after the emergency period ends. So remember that for new actions, you could file them with the court. And that's how you would commence it. You cannot commence it by just service of process to a defendant, but you have to actually file it with the court. And you can do that to commence it during the emergency period. But remember that it is stayed automatically as of the date of filing. So what 2 does, it's consistent with the current rules of civil procedure that say if you commence an action by filing in court, you have to complete actual service to the defendant within 60 days. So that's what this says. The 60 day period begins to toll at the end of the emergency period. It's fairly straightforward. I think this is either here or somewhere around here is where it's probably going to be advisable to just expressly say that all service is also suspended for the period of the emergency period. I think that's something still, the language is still working on that. But I guess it wasn't clear to everyone. And then on further reflection, it wasn't really clear to me. I think it should be explicit to say that even though you can initiate a lawsuit, not only it stayed, but service is going to be stayed until the emergency period ends. I'll flag that for now and we'll come back to it, I'm sure. These are all the same. So that language along those lines was added here. Page 14, this new subdivision to the effective date of a writ of possession has stayed as of the start date of the emergency period and resumes running when the emergency period ends. So again, remember that there may have been cases in which rits had already been issued but not served or accepted. And this just states explicitly that those rits will also just be frozen in time until the end of the emergency period. So I think it's good to have that clarity in here. It's consistent with what was in the draft previously. So G, resumption of rent escrow hearing. So remember that right now in the statute, there can be an expedited process for nonpayment and plaintiff can file a motion for an order to pay rent into court. At that time, the court will shall require the defendant to pay full or partial payment based on the amount of rent that is accruing while the action is pending and then the sooner of the filing or the service. So what this change in G1 is wanting to do is to tell the court how that accrual method is going to work for the emergency period. So I don't think that this language is final, but I think that the plain English version of it is if you had served this motion for an order to pay rent to a defendant before this act takes place, then the court would use the date of the end of the emergency until the hearing as the period of accrual. And if you serve it after this act takes effect, which would happen after the emergency ends, then that period of accrual would be from the date of service until the hearing. So I think just in plain English, that's what's trying to happen here. Still working on the words with Jean and Wendy and Angela, but that's just inside baseball at this point. And subdivision two, one addition here. So we had already said in calculating the amount to be paid in the court, the court may consider attendance and ability to pay due to circumstances arising in the emergency period and whether the tenant may good faith attempts to secure available emergency rental payment funds. So remember, the function of this is to give discretion to the court on how much it can require a tenant to pay in the court. Really trying to avoid the situation in which a proceeding has been stayed or has been filed, but nothing is happening for six months because the emergency is still going on and then they show up to court. And the court says, all right, well, it's been eight months, so you owe us eight months of rent. That's what one and two are trying to do. Two gives the court flexibility, but it also says the court is allowed to consider whether the tenant attempted to mitigate the loss by going through some of these channels for emergency relief. And again, that's a consensus proposal from the advocates. 15, H is highlighted, but it's similar to what was there yesterday. It says that the judiciary working with landlords, legal aids, stakeholders, they're going to come up with a plan for the orderly adjudication of state ejectment and foreclosure actions. This last piece, this new section, this is new to the bill, section 10. This is the part that Jean was speaking to earlier. So the change here is the notary requirements, and it's expanding it from electronic filers to all filers, as long as they include the statement that it's true and accurate to the best of your knowledge, and if it's not, you're subject to penalty per jury. So policy choice, and then the effective dates are the same for now. So that's what we have. David, we've got two hands up right now. Tommy, you're up. Let me just unmute you. You go ahead. Thank you. David, you just touched on something that I've been thinking about since yesterday. You're looking at the accrual of rent, particularly in the case of somebody who's been stayed in the pension process, but I'm perhaps more concerned with the people who were not involved in eviction process before the state of emergency. We're not able to pay rent. The state of emergency exists for six months, and now suddenly they owe eight months rent. And I wouldn't want them to be facing eviction because of that. And I just don't know if there's a way to address that at all, or am I getting way too deep in the weeds? I don't know. But that's a concern of somebody. If I hear your question, you're not necessarily talking about the rent escrow requirement. You're talking about somebody not paying their rent. Right, yeah. And perhaps there was no eviction process or ejection process filed before the state of emergency. It's just they've lost their job, and they can't afford to pay their rent during the state of emergency. And so perhaps they're not forced to pay during the state of emergency. When it's done, they owe several months rent. I just don't know how to address that. So they're not facing eviction because of that. Well, so remember that this this bill does not negate the duty to pay rent. I mean, right, just still supposed to pay rent, even though there is an emergency period. I understand that. But if they have lost their job, they may not be able to pay the rent. Of course. Yeah, for several months. Yeah, no, I think that's the fundamental economic problem that you guys are wrestling with. I don't have an answer for that. I mean. OK, well, I'm just wondering if there's something we can address, but I don't know how. But thank you. OK, Sean, hold on a second. John, are you on yet? No. All right, John, you're on. OK, thank you. David, I have just three little points that I just want to make sure I'm understanding. In page 12, we talked about it 60 days after the emergency. But then on page 14, on lines two there, should it have the effective date of state start date of the emergency and resumes when the emergency period ends? Should that be 30 days after the emergency period? And I'm just not sure I understand. Sure. So the reason that it's emergency period plus 60 days above is because that relates to the time that you have to complete service after filing an action. So again, right now under the rules of civil procedure, if you initiate a court case by filing a complaint with the court, then within 60 days, you have to send a copy of that filing to the defendant to complete service of process. OK, but isn't our framework here 30 days after the emergency period ends? Right. So the emergency period, as defined, will be March 13 until the declaration plus 30 days. OK. Got it. It'll be 60 days beyond that to complete service. Perfect. Thank you for that. And then one last one on page 15, when it says during the emergency period the judiciary consultates with landlords for another realm will still design a plan. Doesn't this bill say what the plan is? And so does the judiciary normally meet with, for what, landlords and legal aid? Or is this necessary? I'm not sure what this gives us. That's a question. Sure. I think you could try to put a whole lot more shape on this if you wanted to. But here's the basic problem this is trying to address. You're going to have an emergency period that lasts, who knows how long, plus 30 days. And at that time, when that emergency period ends after those 30 days, you're going to have however many tens, dozens, scores, hundreds of cases that are piled up and waiting to be adjudicated. And those are going to involve evictions on top of all the other things. It may include foreclosures, depending on what you do here. But basically, this is telling the courts to work with all the people who are involved in these kinds of cases to say, once the floodwaters are released, how in the world are we going to accommodate several hundred cases that are all backlogged? I don't know what that's going to look like. It could look like emergency rules that the court adopts. It could look like they give priority to cases based on when they were filed or whether you have kids or I don't know what. I think nobody knows. And so the purpose here, and I can certainly let Jean and Wendy and Angela and others speak to this, but my understanding of the purpose here is to have some kind of plan in place for when this is hopefully all over, we figure out how to manage the backlog of work in the courts that will inevitably arise from this. Yeah, I guess my worry is that the judiciary is already putting this in such low priority because it's so stressed with not being open and all the other cases that in the middle of this, we're asking them to come up with a plan for a low priority thing for them. Maybe worth hearing from Judge Geerson about. Yes, thank you. OK, I think you're right. Thank you. Thank you, David. Chip, go right ahead. So David, I just want to make this clarification here. So at the end of the period of emergency in 30 days, it is anticipated that there'll be an open and evidentiary hearing in the court to determine how and how much the payments will be to accommodate these arrears. Is that what I'm seeing? If a plaintiff exercises that right under 12 VSA 4853A. So it may not necessarily, it's not every case where that's going to happen, but the purpose of that provision of law was to try to expedite the process of hearings for nonpayment of rent and to try to give security to the parties by having the court serve as an escrow agent. And then if the tenant doesn't follow through with the requirements to pay into escrow, then the landlord gets rid of possession and cases closed. But at that time, a determination would be made as to you suggested that all cases will not be a declaration by the court that all cases will be all rent is due at one time. These are considerations that, as you suggested in response to John's question was situations, families, I mean, actually families and children are taken into consideration on eviction processes at this time. But so those considerations would be offered in a hearing that would somehow mitigate the amount needed to be paid at one time. That's definitely the purpose of this subsection. Gee, I mean, right now the court has the duty under statute to determine how much it will require the defendant to pay in. And this tries to put some shape around, you know, what is the accrual period? And then what are your circumstances? That answers my question. Thank you, David. Sure. All right, Jean, you're up. I'm going to unmute you. So I wanted to respond to Representative Walts's question, which was what happens when we come out of the state of emergency and somebody simply hasn't done anything? I agree that we need to work on the messaging that people should be during this time paying what they can. If someone has lost their job, they should be applying for unemployment compensation, which isn't going to be perhaps as much as they earned on their job, but it's going to be something. When rental assistance programs get up, they should be applying for those and giving the rental assistance that they received to their landlord. And is it possible that somebody who is renting an apartment and lost their job and is sitting home during the state of emergency has panicked and withdrawn and not accessed services that they could be accessing during this time? It is possible, but that seems to me one of the reasons for one of the earlier thoughts, which is to have the federal relief money that's coming to our housing agencies, beef up the housing agency so that they can help people who, for whatever reason, become hard to house, maybe because of inability to pay, maybe because of mental health issues, and maybe even new mental health issues that come up because of the crisis. So hopefully, most Vermonters will be able to avail themselves of the programs that are available to them. But I guess we can expect that some won't be able to, and they'll need extra help from housing agencies. And maybe that will become clear at the point where we go to court. So right now, Legal Aid is working in a pilot program in Franklin County that brings all of the helping agencies and Legal Aid together at the time of evictions. Maybe we're going to need to expand that to help some of these people who have become unable or whatever panicked, I would say. So we'll just have to see how that plays out. But the intent here is that for people who can pay, they will continue to pay as much as they can because they are going to owe the entire amount at the end of the state of emergency. Yeah, I took a note about Representative Triana's question, but not a very good note. So I don't, I'll stop there. Thanks, Jean. And I think that's the program that we've talked about in committee where there's a rental or rearage program that already exists through the HOP grants. And that there's been a request to continue funding it and to try to expand what you've done in Franklin County to further counties across the state. All right, any further questions for David Hall at this time? So seeing no other hands up right now, David, thank you. We are going to move in. So David, I think our conversation on this bill will probably be ending right now. There will be, I imagine, some more information coming from the apartment owners and legal aid, hopefully early this afternoon that we can make their final adjustments for today on this bill. I think it's clear that with everything changing all the time that we'll probably hear more early next week when we meet next, whenever that will be on this bill and on what the federal stuff is. I mean, there's pretty sobering information to hear from the banking side of it about what the dangers are, what the processes might be. But I think there's also a strong desire to make sure that everyone is covered as best we can so that no one goes homeless. I mean, it's great to hear that no one is pushing foreclosures or evictions at this time. That's the right process. But we want to make sure that, especially when, as things move on, that people are covered. So thank you all, Gene and Angela and David and I know there's been others who have been working on this as well. Thank you. I want to shift over to Earhart. I had promised him some time to go over the information, the money, the processes that he's aware of with the federal bill as it stands right now. So Earhart, I will pass you the microphone. We are scheduled to finish up by 12.45 just to give everybody a time frame. So Earhart, please, thank you for waiting and go right ahead. Thanks, Representative Stevens. Much appreciated. Again, for the record, Earhart Manka for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. Hope everyone's doing well today in surviving the crisis in place. I just as a quick kind of caveat, I just want to say that I was not able to listen in directly to a lot of the prior testimony. So hopefully I won't be repeating anything, but I was on a call of pretty much all the nonprofit housing providers this morning and listening in on that and hearing what folks out in the field are dealing with. And so I will focus on the federal relief package as it relates to housing and homelessness. But I know you guys were not able to hear from either DeAngelis or from Mark Lee yesterday for a variety of reasons. And you did hear from Chris Donnelly, who I think gave a pretty good picture of what some of the housing and homeless service providers are seeing around the state. But Mr. Chair, if I may, Rita sent an email to both Ron and me apologizing for not being able to be there to testify yesterday. And I think if you could indulge me for a moment, if I can find it, I would like to just quickly read it because I think it gives you all a better sense of what actually folks that are at the ground level in the homeless shelters are dealing with. So I looked into yesterday's documents if people are looking for it. Yeah, I think there was one email that was not on yesterday's documents that I didn't see the whole thing, but let me just quickly highlight it for folks. So this is Rita Mark Lee from the Committee on Temporary Shelter just emailing to say she can't join yesterday's call. Right now, I'm coordinating the Burlington COVID response team for homeless people. That means helping with new quarantine and recovery site, logistics, supplies, support for all Chittin County shelters, the flow of referrals to isolation units dealing with the mayor's office, the University of Vermont Medical Center, and so on. All of that on top of keeping the four emergency shelters that COTS is running on very depleted staff, backup support for our skeleton crew. So it's not even certain that I'd be able to make the call at 10 a.m. tomorrow. So that was in regards to her not being able to make it yesterday. And I think that the urgent nature of what folks have been dealing with, and I hope you've had a chance to review the materials that Rick DeAngelis submitted, what they've done in Central Vermont is just absolutely herculean in terms of having three homeless shelters, one permanent and two seasonal temporary shelters relocated to a motel. And now providing 24-7 support to the people in that motel is just a tremendous effort. And I think all of that gives you a sense of what our housing and homeless service providers are dealing with around the state. And I would urge you, as you continue to take testimony, I think I mentioned this yesterday, to get Sarah Phillips on and to have Sarah give you all a sense of, because she's coordinating this together with Jeffrey Pippinger in DCF commissioner's office and just a whole array of other folks. They're coordinating this effort statewide. They have weekly call-ins and are obviously in touch. I think those folks are working long hours every day, including on weekends. And pretty much the same is true for our affordable housing providers who, in so many different ways, are supporting that network of homeless service providers as well. But yeah, basically, the shelters really, in order to comply with all of the CDC and the health department guidance on social distancing, have had to either empty their shelters or significantly reduce the census of those shelters. And also, beyond shelters, a number of our affordable housing nonprofits are owned and operate congregate housing and or single room occupancy, where there's shared bathroom and kitchen facilities. And so those are a critical issue as well, because people are not able to maintain all the social distancing when they have shared those kinds of shared facilities. That's just a quick snapshot of some of the issues that folks are dealing with. Let me also say, having heard some of the conversation around lost rental income as a result of COVID-19 related job losses, I would also urge you to hear from Chris Sanders from Leahy's office. He gave, I thought, a really good analysis of the COVID-19 federal relief package provisions as they relate to unemployment insurance and leave. And they're really actually very substantial. And my general takeaway, though I'm not a specialist in that area, my general takeaway is that there will be opportunities for people to lose less income than one might imagine in this crisis and given the number of unemployment insurance filings. So I think having Chris and obviously the commissioner of labor maybe come in as well to talk about those provisions, one of the materials switching to the federal package itself as it relates to housing, I just wanted to draw to your attention. There's a number of materials that I submitted to Ron. And Ron, I don't know if you're able to pull these up. The one that I'd like to maybe start off briefly focusing on is I'm trying to pull it up on my own screen here. Yeah, it's been announced by the National Long-Term Housing Coalition. Go ahead. Sorry. No, I'm sorry. You have the capability to share what's on your screen. Got it. If you're on your laptop, just go down to the bottom of the screen where it says share screen and you may be able to get there. OK, let me make sure I have the right thing on my screen. There we are. OK. Sorry. This is taking a little bit. There we go. I can do it if you prefer. I've got it. I had too many things on my screen. Can you all see something entitled congressional leaders agree to coronavirus response package? No. All right, let Ron do it. So that's the one you want to see. Yeah, I've actually lost somehow I've now lost control over my own screen. Sorry. That's dangerous, Earhart. You don't have any control over your own screen. So yeah, so Ron's going to bring up the congressional leaders. OK. Now it says that Earhart Ronke has started sharing. All right, so I'm scrolling. Yeah, so this is an analysis by our National Association National Long-Term Housing Coalition. It's pre-detailed and itchy for us housing folks. But I think it is worth taking the time to read this, because it has a lot of really good information. Some broader information also about the federal relief bill, which again, it hasn't passed yet. It's hopefully going to pass the House today. And first of all, as I think you all know, it's a $2 trillion in direct spending. And I'm going to just scroll down to some of the major provisions. So there is a quick summary near the top of page 2 of the Hydro-Rated Weekly. Yeah, Earhart, I'm going to Earhart. I just have to cut in. So actually what we're seeing is Ron's screen and not your screen. So if you can be specific to where you want to go, then Ron can get us there. OK, so can we go back up, Ron? It's unfortunate, because I highlighted the sections I wanted to review with you, you folks on my screen. So do you see it from Ron's screen? I do. I'm on it now. Thank you. OK. So Ron is controlling this as opposed to me. That was a question. Yes. OK, so Ron, if you could start scrolling down and I'll ask you to stop. OK, maybe right there, right there. All right, in the paragraph that begins with overall. So there you get an overall picture of the HUD funding at a national level. There's $12 billion. And just again, by way of reference, HUD Housing and Urban Development is the major funder for housing and community development through the federal government. $12 billion for HUD. It breaks down $4 billion for emergency solution grants, which provide a broad array of assistance to homeless service providers that money filters down. And one of the other things that I sent you guys was a press release from Senator Leahy's office. Because, of course, Senator Leahy was pivotal in negotiating all this as vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. And a polly major, I'm sure, would be happy to speak to you guys in more detail about some of this. But that $4 billion in emergency solution grants for homeless assistance filters down to approximately $4.7 million to the state of Vermont. The next item in that paragraph, $5 billion in community development block grants. This is broad assistance that flows through the Department of Housing and Community Development and Burlington. The city of Burlington gets its own small allocation. That filters down to about $4.7 million also for the state of Vermont, of which I believe about $500,000 goes to the city of Burlington. So both of these sources, I would say, are two of the first line COVID-19 response sources for emergency relief funding for what the homeless shelter and provider community is doing in response and what the housing community, the nonprofit housing community is doing in response. A lot of the provisions of the regulations around both of these programs have been waived. The analysis goes into that a little bit further on in the analysis. But for instance, one of the community development block grant rules that is waived is that that money can be used for rental assistance for folks who have are unable to pay the rent as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Also, it goes back to allowing people to receive benefits from before retroactively, which is a waiver of a standard provision. So there's a lot of flexibility that's being granted in those funds. Also, there's normally a percentage limit on how much of community development block grants can be spent for public services. That percentage is lifted as well. So they're trying to make the money as flexible as possible for homeless and housing providers to address the crisis. Jumping back to the emergency solutions grants, those can be for anything from helping to fund the motel, the motel housing that is being procured, additional staffing costs for cleaning and supplies. People are experiencing homeless shelters that are remaining open, as well as in the motel. There's intense greater cleaning requirements due to the coronavirus. So people are experiencing a lot of additional costs across the board for what they're doing. So hopefully, we don't know exactly how this is all going to flow yet. But hopefully, these sources will provide some relief. Also in this paragraph is $1.25 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher Program. This is what the program that's also normally referred to as Section 8, as tenant-based sectionates. So these are the vouchers that individual households may have. And so as those folks who are losing potentially their income, their rents can be adjusted upwards. And the source for the additional emergency funding for anyone within the Housing Choice Voucher Program that's lost income as a result of COVID-19 would come through this source. There's also in the next item in that paragraph is $1 billion for project-based rental assistance. And so we have a number of our housing nonprofits, as well as some private for-profits have what are known as project-based Section 8 contracts where the operating subsidy, the rental assistance, actually is tied to the unit. And so to the extent that folks in those units are losing income as a result of the crisis, this money would be meant to help make up the difference in their lost income so that those folks are made whole for rent. There's also money for public housing. We still do have some public housing in the state of Vermont, though a fair amount of our public housing is being converted to something called RAD, the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program. And RAD units are now under project-based assistance for the most part, so they would hopefully be made whole that way. Let's see. And we obviously don't know exactly how much would come to the state of Vermont under the Housing Choice Voucher Program or the Project-Based Rental Assistance or public housing. That is something that those are analyses that are being done on an individual basis by our affordable housing providers and the public housing authorities. Those, I don't know if Moira is still on the call, or on the meeting, but VHFA and I believe VHCB are collecting those analyses as they come in to aggregate them. I will tell you I've done kind of a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation on units that are not going to be covered, which are there are quite a substantial number of federally subsidized units through the Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program that do not have this kind of rental assistance in them. And those are probably right now I don't see a whole lot other than some of the general coronavirus relief funding that goes to the state and counties and local jurisdictions. That is very flexible funding and can be used for rental assistance or for making up for lost rent. That is a potential source for our developments that just have Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits in them without operating subsidies like Section 8. I am concerned and the whole network is concerned about those units and what their rental losses might be and that's still to be determined what that amount might be. But some back-of-the-envelope calculations that I've done lead me to believe that those are probably in the $10 million plus dollar vicinity for, say, the next four months. But we're hoping to get that fine-tuned by the nonprofits themselves and aggregated by the funding agencies like VHFA and VHCB. The other thing, obviously, that is of deep concern would be for the private for-profit landlords that are members of Angela's Association and we fully support all the work that's been done, the good work that's been done on the moratorium aspect of the bill. But what makes it work is the need to make sure that folks are made whole, whether they be nonprofits or for-profits. I'll stop there and see if folks have any questions right now for anything that I've covered so far. Any questions for Earhart? I'm just going to do a time check here. It is 12.38. So if there's any questions before we can wrap up, then I see Representative Gamash. I'm going to unmute you. Go ahead, Mariana. Thank you very much. Thank you, Earhart, for that wonderful breakdown. I can't write as fast as you spoke. So I'm wondering if you could supply us with a breakdown of those within that paragraph, all the topics that you mentioned, the energy emergency solutions grants and the community development block grants, et cetera, all the subcategories under each of those blocks, if you could provide that information, basically just listing the amounts of money and for what they were within those particular items and make them available, that would be extremely helpful. And very much appreciate it. Thank you, Representative Gamash. Ron, if you could briefly scroll down a little bit further. So stop right there. So this is a very, I would say, high level and yet detailed analysis. And Ron just stopped on the moratoriums, on evictions and foreclosures section. This gives you a little bit more information on exactly what the bill does. I know you heard from Christelia this morning. And Ron, if you could keep scrolling down. So here you have the emergency solutions grants, if you could stop there. And there's several paragraphs that sort of detail what emergency solutions grants can fund, what some of the regulatory relief or regulatory waivers that are being provided are here. And Ron, if you could keep scrolling, there's another section a little further down. There it is, community development block grants. So most of what I covered was sort of high level synopsis of what you can get in this analysis. If you have time to read the whole thing, I think it would provide a wealth of information for you. And I don't think I said anything that wasn't covered in some way in this analysis. I'll also quickly just refer you to two other things that I sent to Ron. One was just a quick budget chart that breaks down in a table format. The federal, excuse me, the line by line, the HUD aspects of the bill. And that'll give you sort of the, there it is, how much for tenant-based rental assistance, how much for public housing, et cetera, et cetera. And then the third thing that I provided was a press release from Senator Leahy, which provides to the extent that they were able to analyze the breakdown for Vermont, how much Vermont would receive from several of these. So if you scroll down on that, Ron, near the bottom of the page is a bulleted list of the breakdowns for, stop right there, for Vermont. And it goes beyond HUD, but on the second line there, you see the 4.7 million for community development block grants, there's 5 million for community service block grants. And I'll just quickly mention that, because I didn't before, that goes, that is core funding for the community action agencies, the CAPS, the five CAPS around the state, and that will flow through the Office of Economic Opportunity directly to the CAPS for their COVID-19 response. There's also $4.3 million in additional child care development block grant funds, which flows through DCF to our child care centers for subsidies for low-income folks around the state. You have 4.6 million for housing assistance grants through HUD. There's LIHEAP dollars, 4.1 million for low-income home energy assistance program, that's money that also flows through DCF for both heating and cooling. That's gonna help folks who may have, we're still not quite out of the heating system, excuse me, out of the heating season. So folks who may be accruing bills right now as a result of job loss, they can get assistance for their fuel bills through that. So it's just a very large array of funding through this bill and it's really a lot to wade through. It's not just housing, there's thanks to Senator Leahy's mantra of small state minimum, the state of Vermont is getting $1.25 million in broad-based relief that is gonna be usable for a variety of different COVID-19 related responses. And that is not money that can be used to replace existing revenue losses. So it really does need to be for COVID-19. And it's for any COVID-19 related expenditures that come from March 1st, right through to December 31st. So that's a substantial pot of money that is very broad and very flexible that supplements these individual line items that I've mentioned, which as I think I said before, could be used also for lost rental income to assist both foreign non-profit landlords for their losses. Okay, so you've got that representative Gamash. I'm gonna mute you, John. Yes, thank you. We have like one minute left, John. You all set? Okay. All right, everybody. I really wanna adhere to the schedule because it's lunchtime. We have about, we're gonna be back here at two o'clock. So, Ron, if you could take us off of YouTube, that would be great.