 I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. I'm so flattered. Let me know. Let me know. He's a pristine. $4. Is that her bill? Is that her bill? Yeah. She told me that. Nothing I gave you, but I don't know if it's right or not. I don't know. So it was $3. $3. $3. $3. $3. $3. $3. $4. $4. $4. $4. $4. $4. $4. $4. $4. I didn't know we had that. $5. $6. $7. $9. $1. $8. $1. $7. $9. $10, $14 for $4. It didn't need to be announced anymore because a lot of people are already out of the field and already have appointments or already have things they can do. And so because I'm so happy to be able to have a relationship with my kids, I'll go ahead. We're all here just to say thank you. Every field is being reviewed. We just tested our plan. We just said that we'll come to the operation again with what we've learned. So we'll go through every once in a while. We're a different community. You have to continuously go to that list for five. Everything in New York City. It's a lot of people. It's actually up to us. It's very important. It's very important. It's very important. It's very important. It's very important. It's really important. So there's a company of operations that's where we displace the hard-of-the-peak. Then you have the state emergency management. And then you have all these different things. You have a place to go to systems. It's very important. So I'm interested in the field of alternative use today and the person I have on it. And not look at the affected responses to this. We'll be looking, we'll be looking, we'll be looking at it before we head on practice. I had an experience 15 years ago. How do you do such a thing? What the fuck do you want me to do? Because if a small business owner or an individual can't take any kind of size 5, then you know, they're sitting there getting traffic laws and it's obvious what's going to happen. You know, it's no transfer because the corporations and the local government are a business owner and you do an asset sale and you roll a statement. It's obvious why. You know, you have to spare a truck and you say kind of things like that. You just forgot the true law sign. You're going to be fine. You don't have to pay for a car. You don't have to pay for a car. I'll put a piece of glass there. I'm going to put it in New York and you see if they can take it and you can put it on the car. I don't know, like if you could bail, like if you still want to pay for a car, then you can put it on the car. I think it's contrasting. I think it's contrasting. I don't know if that's what I saw. I know that. I don't know what I was thinking about. I'm trying to think what kind of a transaction was it between the five... Yes, I love the Boleroes. They're going to see an asset sale. And I don't know, I mean... Yeah, I said, is that right now? Somehow I expected to watch it. I said, what kind of sale? We talked. I just found like that. I just found like that. I need to have a full statement about the closing time. Okay, how are you? Nice to see you. I'm in KL. Well, we did have fun together. So much. Thank you. At all. Think about Jake's appearance. I designed it. They have great stuff. I know, I don't know. You're new. Maybe Velveteen. I saw that and that was beautiful. I almost got Velveteen. Someone told me they thought it was just too much for the states. I saw you rocking it. I thought maybe it was nice. I think not. I took good care. I took good care. We had a good report. He tried to wrestle the microphone away from me at one point playfully. And I wrestled it back. Is this with Jim? We did. I thought that was a good parent. We have a good report. He can really dive into the details, but not have any intentions. He is not a very contentious person. Okay. Good morning everybody. Good morning chair. In this committee we've touched around the edges of several housing bills that were carried forward in some way from last year with short term rentals, housing covered enforcement, home improvement, contractors. But we really haven't gotten into the guts and core of the quality and quantity of housing and the problems or the challenges we face in this state. Good morning is about. We had also wanted to talk a little bit about the federal shutdown and how the landmine happens, but that's we'll take a backseat at this point. My goal on the street board is when the pro tem said something about we need to take big this year. I was already thinking big. In housing. Perhaps at some point combine some of these other separate bills in this housing. So with that I thought I would start off with just another brief review of the executive rents proposals for this year which I am appreciative of. I wouldn't label them as any person. Boo. Oh. You were your name came up. Which Gifford? The hospital. Are you from Randolph? Yes. From Rochester to Randolph about two years ago. My company TC they are delighted that you're there and we were talking about housing. Yes. Anyway I was just here last weekend of last week. So it's helpful to hear what you'd like some more details on. I can pass out reference material. A lot of this you've probably seen but just to have to go over to reference one big packet. Everything you need to have. Actually you heard that all our files went up with the milder mold issue here. So this is actually good. I'll start with the big full data infographic for the new priorities for this year that we gave a brief overview of last week. Specifically for housing once again this is housing incentive package we're calling VHIP which involves the downtown tax credit increase of $200,000. Some technical changes my latest understanding is that downtown tax credit there's a sponsor in house commerce that will be working up through the house side as a starting point and then the rental rehab program combined with the land gains this incentive fix we're calling it may have some interest on the senate side and we'd be happy to consider combining it with other packages or considering some changes here and there but the basic premise is we have a excellent housing delivery system we are recognized nationally as having a top notch non-profit housing coalition of folks that do great work all across the state and we do an excellent job of that and in the housing investment report in that packet it really lays out how much is spent each year what the main funders are how we get to our housing policy between the QAP allocation plan which are for the loan composing tax credits both the federal and the state tax credits and then the consolidated plan which is the plan our department submits to HUD for the roughly $11 million which includes the community development block grant program the home program which we contract with VHCB to administer the emergency solutions grant although that doesn't come through that allocation there's a connection there to ensure that the homeless shelters and their coordination with providing housing and services for homeless folks and so this that all comes out of the $11 million that's it a lot of stuff coming out of it is and then there's also in this report all of the rental assistance and services so this there's several charts in here I think that is the most comprehensive overview of housing funding both bricks and sticks so with the charts start on page 11 and see that for the Department of Housing and Community Development state general funds we actually receive very little $122,000 and that's a part of staff time to administer the federal funds that we put into housing this includes all sources of funding through all agencies local agencies not just stuff that you touch this is supposed to be a comprehensive report of all housing dollars that go through us the HSD Housing Finance Agency Housing Authority and AHS when you get to the chart it has combined state and federal state and federal funds this doesn't encompass private charitable foundations that support housing but you'll see that there's that would be like Habitat for Humanity is there a lot of money in this state I would say not a ton but Habitat also does receive some federal and state funding we funded Habitat programs in Charlotte in other areas around the state to build housing so they also receive federal and state funds but they certainly raise I mean there isn't money coming there's no inflow of the state from those but you'll see under the state and federal combined funds for housing assistance and subsidy AHS is a big player in housing support so this is an attempt just to show folks what is happening the administration's proposal is to deal with the 87% of the rental housing stock that doesn't receive any of these funds in a way that is very efficient small incentive our proposal if you've seen the white paper it is a $5,000 to $7,000 incentive grant that has to be matched at least 200% by the private owner per unit this is each unit that's based on an existing program that's run by one of our non-profit housing partners and in fact is actually started in all of the five non-profit homeownership centers around the state they all receive funding from our federal funds to do low and moderate income home repairs and also up to 10% for rental rehab the proposal deals with the 87% of housing stock that's not touched by public funds are you saying that any housing that's touched by state or federal funds is not eligible for this new program I'm not saying that I'm just saying that currently the system the resources we have a program like this doesn't exist we think with a $1,000,000 incentive we can and sent at least 122 units to be brought back online that aren't currently online they're either vacant or blighted or they just aren't in use I see it in communities all over the state that we talk to but right now their options are go borrow against that property and they're just not doing it so we think some government being part of a solution here a small incentive if we can get that sort of impact is worth a try I think you've mentioned that you served on the rental code enforcement task force as well well our department and that's in this pack as well the final report the rental housing advisory board recommendations some short-term ones and some longer-term ones and one of the main longer-term goals to actually address the problem is to support a program like this I was wondering there seems to be some connection because we merged as we go forward we're trying to enforce you know, substandard housing and you're proposing money for substandard housing seems like there should be some jointer maybe not so long absolutely centered on page 27 there's a discussion for resources for rental housing advisory board report the one without a pretty cover I don't know, this is funny, Sarah brought this to us so the resources needs for landlords on page 27 is essentially laying out this exact program and references the one pilot project that this is based on down in Bennington with the neighborhood well you know, I have to say that I look at this document and I haven't read the cover certainly but it really gives me comfort that there's a lot of actual numbers and action plans and clear descriptions and I wish you could go over and work with workforce development for a while and get them to produce something similar Sarah brought this like a suit I'm on a page workforce development I will claim is not something I have the expertise Mr. Chair, can you just ask a further question so you're saying this is only for units that are currently offline? That is how the program, the pilot that we have now is run and that's our proposal but this wouldn't be encartment, this would be Exactly, I just wanted to be clear that it does partner with our other goals but it's different because people are not currently in these units and so it's about bringing more into into use into use. This is addressing our rental housing shortage as opposed to people who are currently living in substandard apartments we also have work to do there but if the enforcement of those substandard apartments becomes somewhat professionalized then they might go offline and we need to have a response and it also is addressed and you don't have this but I'm sure you've heard from Vermont Legal Aid and their evictions in Vermont and they have a similar recommendation on page 19 about some sort of expanded rental subsidies in affordable housing programs to address the same problem so it comes up from a lot of different perspectives a lot of different organizations a lot of sides of the housing crisis this is not the type of money to build new units it's not an attempt to try to take part of the pie away but add to it unfortunately if you look at the statistics for building permits in Vermont they're not going in the right direction the Housing Data website through Vermont Housing Finance Agency has just done an overhaul there's credible data on there now that you can drill down to your community level look at the age or housing stock how the price is going between single family multi-family mobile homes manufactured and you can see the number of building permits for single family homes and rentals issued each year in Vermont going back to the 80s and the last bump was 2004 the last bump before that was 1984 so we have been in a decline in the number of building permits issued since 2005 for new builds which is not all building permits because building permits are also for rehabs and renovations these are for multi-family and single family new building permits reported by the municipalities so some municipalities might not report anything but for example in 2017 there were 1,700 total units that's multi-family and single family permitted and that's slightly less than in 2016 and slightly less than in 2015 hopefully a lot of the new initiatives with the housing revenue bond and all the private building going on in Chittinham County in 2018 numbers when they come out hopefully we'll see a spike but even with that sort of incentive we can't build new our way out of the problem we have to bring our existing units that are offline back into use the upper stories of our downtowns all those sort of properties need to be part of our landscape for housing and we're not making progress there so we need some new innovative ways to try to turn this around and that's what this is so do you label this or consider this like a pilot project and what I mean by that is it already in your knowledge that it's far more demand for this kind of program than being put out with a million dollars now? we believe so the challenge here is there's always a balance when I have small landlords call me and they I've got this eviction problem or my building's falling apart is there grants available or is there loans available I hear about affordable housing crisis but I really don't have any equity in this property I can't really afford to raise rents in my neighborhood where do I go I don't have a good answer for them but the challenge is the incentive has to be right-sized for the commitment we're going to ask of them and that if we have too many barriers they won't accept the funding and work won't get done so it's a balance of what we offer and what we ask in return and that's good the granular stuff but I guess I'm just concerned if you had another million dollars and put the same parameters on it could that work as well? I mean I think so but I think it's a smarter plan to learn best practices learn some mistakes fix we have to partner with local housing groups on the ground we can't overwhelm them too fast and dial this in so it's the best program we can have an example of what you're talking about is a number of years ago we did a housing study in Woodstock about rental housing there was a need immediately tomorrow for 300 million units we have vacant second and third floor space in our wonderful historic downtown walking distance perfect for what we're talking about that are going unused for a variety of reasons but would really significant be I think affected by this kind of program my concern is is this enough these units are unused for reasons is this incentive enough for the problems that they're going to have to be addressed I mean I would welcome you to invite Ludi Biddle in and so on from her staff I've seen a lot of great before and after pictures the entire house was 7500 but it has some federal but they started at 8500 and they've been able to drop it to 7500 and still have interest and you know these apartments this wasn't cosmetic I mean this was entirely new kitchens new bathrooms outside looks wonderful you'd like to live next to this house now that was an eyesore before and other incentives efficiency can provide some rebates for new appliances and it starts to grow and feel that the state is supporting their efforts to bring quality housing to the community without overburdening their efforts really and so that's the balance we're trying to strike here the question I have for you is the 122 units you're hoping to affect is there a plan or a set of criteria that will ensure that they are done around the state and how what's the selection what's the selection that is a great question because I personally don't think the best strategy would be just to scatter across the whole state I think we need to focus on a few regions to economies of scale to give the nonprofit folks we would oversee this at the local level a chance to be successful you know we don't spell out exactly how but my thought would be if this money is approved and we have the flexibility we would work with our partners that do this work that are already getting federal funds to do this put out an RFP let them propose the solution it might be that they sort of sub with each other somewhat but I would venture that this would work best to focus on a couple counties so if we do this bill as a committee bill or however we do it we could put those parameters in because it's just important to track how success you know see what our measurables are at the end of a year or two and the time frame is a year I mean it it would take more than a year to get these units rehab and online it takes a couple years to we're talking about you know someone holding an escrow the property owners money dispersing it to make sure they have codes and you know we don't want to see this money be given out as incentives and it's going to be managed in some so how long did the pilot program so it's a year and a half in and they're proposing 22 units and they're about halfway there are about 12 have been done and they've got the others you know people are online but it takes a couple years so we gave it two years and tracked with this is the beddington so you mentioned the housing bond were you involved in that I guess I'm going to want to know from all the witnesses because we did that work here and we want to know the fruits of our labor how did it go have they run into problems I think that would be best for Jen to speak to you know we certainly were involved but we're not managing it we're aware of the great projects are being funded with it a lot of them are joint efforts with the federal CDBG funds the home funds the tax credits and there's certainly some of the projects that have benefited from the housing revenue bond have been the transformative projects around the state that we all needed to get done but they would be best to speak to that okay and then yeah we'll spend a fair amount of time with them on that but from the administration's perspective have you seen that as a big winner a big problem area oh no a winner for sure and these are properties that when you're building brand new you know 30 unit multifamily apartment building where you're renovating french block in downtown Montpelier a nonprofit housing organization we're building these to last to be under ownership forever and it's an intense undertaking there's a reason that the costs are different than what we're proposing with a small rental rehab where staying in private owners hands we're not taking any you know mortgage of the property we're not putting parameters around those that we think people would turn down that $5000 incentive in a second if they felt like they actually couldn't manage their properties in the long term do you think we move too fast on that bond? I don't think so I think that everyone would love to even move faster but things take time there's permits there's other resources that are needed to pull those projects off and some of these resources are committed a year or two out and so we can only put together projects as the resources come together so it's been nothing but positive from the administration's perspective on the results of the housing revenue bond but it was a big deal for you know the state, big undertaking and you know if we I mean I think we would all love to see that sort of investment be available continually and ongoing but there's you know priorities for funds and that's it's hard to make that commitment each year well and now one organization is shouldering the burden of that quite honestly the large measure it would be great if we had a way to roll it in two years and have the burden of it born by the state the other thing I would just point out is that in the packet also the other housing programs and things we work on the blue infographics are you know meant to be a snapshot of the work the department does in all areas but I can point out the housing pieces and give you a sense of what those numbers mean so the Vermont community development program is the federal CDBG program that's all we have housing at the department for housing production both rehab existing units and new and you know with our modest resources we're going to split this between infrastructure and economic development and planning and public services and all sorts of projects we end up doing about 60 to 70 percent of our funding each year for affordable housing but last year we were able to support 426 units with our federal funding that's both net new properties to purchasing building both and also our home ownership centers taking low income homeowners because homeowners are still 70 percent of our households live in home ownership situations but many of them are low income as well they have no equity in the home there's drastic need for repairs so we spend a lot of our funding through the non-profit housing organizations and their home ownership centers the neighborhood organizations to give deferred loans grants in many cases low interest loans financial counseling weatherization around the state is that the 3,611 people touched that would be that number is a conservative 2.2 persons per household of the 426 that makes sense and what's the universe look like how many are low income Vermonters are eligible to be assisted in that I mean so what's there's no shortage of I think you know Brenda's certainly here from one of the groups that does this work there's no shortage of applicants but there are very tough decisions that we made because a lot of people have no ability to pay back any of the funds and we can only grant so much right but is this half half so just less than half in another piece because we like I said we loaded you with resources the Vermont Community Development Andrew Report has all of the every single grant that was awarded and there's a listing of the housing projects that were funded on the back of page 2 and you can see which municipality what was the project and how many units oh yeah so for example the the Champlain Housing Trust Home Repair Loan Program that was 50 units we fund mobile home parks all sorts of housing across the state and a lot of these projects are the same projects that receive a lot of funding so these are I can't claim these are unduplicated 426 units these are investments that a lot of us have made across the state but we do support the mobile home park program which is not represented really anywhere else in either reports and that is that so on the infographic the mobile home park program itself is on the back of the second page up right at the bottom and with a small so that $72,000 is part of a majority of the salary of the administrator of the program which is collected from lot fees each mobile home lot registers with the state through the mobile home park owner their private nonprofit or cooperative home and that pays for a lot of services and assistance and outreach back to the residents we have a grant with CBOEO to provide direct resident assistance and the 4,946 housing units preserved that is not every unit that is just the ones over the last year that we directly assisted with a lot met lot rep mediation a park sale notice a closure notice or had habitability complaints that we had to work with the owners to resolve so it's really for small general fund investment touching a lot of low income from owners these are stressful transactions when mobile home parks are up for sale or closure we fortunately had a lot of good results over this past year most of all the sales have resulted in agreements to go co-op and have the residents own them there's not without problems and some of those have been the final paperwork has not been solved but not been signed but they're headed in the right direction in all those cases so we hear a lot of direct from from owners about mobile home concerns every time the lot rate goes up absolutely it's a circle of communication isn't it Dave? so Josh have a couple of specific questions and then a general question we're going to turn it over to the next witness but where's the one million dollars coming from which program? general fund it's built into our budget budget build is it an addition or is it reading some other topic? our department our agency budget is level funded we have kind of I don't know where it was found within the entire enterprise of the state budget it's built into ours without rating any of our existing housing funds or any of our programs I think I'd be interested just to get back to us where do you find that money I know Senator Brock always asked the question well found the money maybe he didn't need it neither that and then the second question I have is getting rid of the land gains tax is there in your mind any thought given to as opposed to totally getting rid of it maybe shortening the period because I'm going to think the land gains tax was originally established was to deal with speculators and people flipping things we're opening the door to some of that again you know and I Doug Farnham is coming with us on Friday for testimony to talk specifically about this so I don't think I could speak to it okay and my general question I don't know if you can answer or if you can answer you look at these numbers here and I love the word leverage I love the word action funds I love using federal funds and as an advocate you know those are the kinds of numbers I always used to lead with you know give us a million dollars and we'll give you 50 back right and all these housing programs does that mean that none of the leverage dollars would have been spent other than if you put the state put its small incentive in I guess I would answer that very carefully in that many of these housing projects are leveraging lots of sources complicated pro forma and if you take any one of them out it could be a risk of not being built at all so sure some project may be able to figure out a way to make up a couple hundred thousand dollars in their budget if they didn't get one of the various sources but in general they all kind of work together to pull off all the housing that we're able to do in this state and if you take one out I'm not sure where we'd be and how many on average did these projects leverage how many different buckets of money on average did these projects leverage it's like ten probably I mean on average and it's as small as the little local Revolving Loan Fund the housing trust fund it's all the way federal it's across the board a lot of hard work to pull these projects on and just really I'm going to look at a number like your community planning and revitalization six million dollars invested three hundred sixty million dollars leverage I look at that and I say unless there's some federal requirements or strings and stuff like that couldn't it just been that those leverage dollars just went up three hundred sixty million dollars and it didn't need the state dollars to such a multirange crisis well you see that in the downtown program that's huge where there's a lot of this is coming from the downtown tax credits you know and that would clearly Chris Cochran that runs the downtown tax credit and the community planning and revitalization division could give you lots of details and you know it's hard to say but certainly the reports we get back are that it made a difference for them to at least go this big take it to that level they have to go through a complicated process I think if they didn't need the money they wouldn't take that extra step and bother to report to us it really does make a difference just from a cynical perspective when I see an investment that turns over sometimes he might as well just put all our money into that program and it would go absolutely I hear you I think if it was that easy we'd be able to solve all of our budget problems around here but in addition to leveraging the additional cash to make these projects happen it really puts even if it's a small amount of skin in the game it's Vermont skin in the game you know it's essential to show the support thank you very much we expect to be doing a lot in our housing excellent thank you do you need a chair Jim you can get your one so the thing for me and you have us and you will ask for the other questions is you know sort of light on everything does a little bit more detail on how the housing bond has worked out and where we go from here with your experience what more can we be doing well thank you very much Mr. Chairman so for the record I've got Celig I'm the Director for the Vermont Housing Conservation Board with me is our Policy and Special Projects Director Jen Hollert and we will focus primarily on the housing of New Bonn I'll give a very brief overview and so if you turn to the second slide the second page this is our statutory mission to do both housing and conservation but what's important to me about the mission statement is the reason we do it is because it's to promote the economic vitality and quality of the state and we really do focus on economic vitality I think when the board was elected we were viewed both as a the state jumping into areas that the federal government had to treat it from both in the housing and conservation world back in the 80s we were a non-regulatory tool to support good land use the photo you see on this slide is actually North Bennington and Shaftesbury and the body of the water is called Lake Parin about 10 years ago a group of interested citizens worked with us to conserve some land around the pond to help the recreation area this year that same group has come back and where that red mark is they are selling to Shaftesbury housing a site for affordable housing it's just over the North Bennington line you can walk down not on the water but near the water it's actually on or near the road is where the housing will be and they will build 23 homes there with the housing revenue bond and the school in North Bennington all the services there are quite walkable from this site the next slide just I will not dwell on but tell you what we've done over the 30 years we've been around for both the housing and conservation part of our mission and I would just say there are not enough but there are other tools such as the wet based paint program that does work both with homeowners in a manner you were recently discussing most folks going to the next slide think of us as two programs housing and conservation we think of ourselves as running all of these programs 14 different programs and Mr. Chairman we talked briefly and I hope I'll be able to come back at a certain point really to focus with the committee on our economic development and rural community development aspects of our work which I'm not going to spend time on today but I would appreciate the opportunity to address that to go to the next slide there is more and more research not just good feeling that housing is critical to people's well-being and health over the long term the Carther Foundation has done some research on this and they show substandard housing contributing to developmental delays homelessness has clearly been viewed as something that really is disrupted for kids there's a Boston Outfit Children's Health Watch which basically views housing as a vaccine that keeps one from being ill and they've testified from your health and welfare committee a couple of years ago but there is more and more evidence that there are some societal costs when people are not adequately housed that we all have to deal with before we get into the specifics of the housing revenue bond the next two slides I'm just going to make two points about the first one which Senator Hooker is familiar with is in Rutland this is Hickory Street we celebrated the conclusion almost conclusion of a 10-year effort to redevelop that whole neighborhood it was a very poorly built and poorly managed long period of time public housing development that was not on the community's tax rolls because it was public housing and it has now been redeveloped as a high quality neighborhood the streetscape was also changed so that it doesn't dead end in this development and really I think what we shoot for the most is not just the leverage you were talking about Mr. Chairman but the transformation in the investments that we're making is multi is this a multi-income neighborhood it's a mixed income multi-unit development there are still three sites built single family homes here as well but it's a 79-unit neighborhood multi-unit so how many are rented and how many are owned all of this that's been done up to now is rental housing that is mixed income using the tax credit program built across the street from here as a single family neighborhood as well are there units specifically dedicated for the homeless here to go to the next slide this is up in Franklin Vermont and the story I want to tell you about this is a fellow named Hugh Gates former representative walked into our office in the early 1990s he had just won or his full company wanted to do something for the elders of Franklin and when he talked to people in Burlington at various funding agencies they said Franklin Vermont upon the Canadian border we don't think it's sustainable and he as many of you who serve here know more about your communities than we do in Montpelier or Burlington he knew his community we helped him build the first phase it was so successful that he added an assisted living component in a second phase and for 25 years it has been great housing up there and what I so I want to say two things about that one is that we try to make investments that are going to be permanent in nature permanently protect people from being uprooted and displaced we were created at a time that we were losing federal housing because developers came to the end of their agreements with the federal government and actually just said in Essex 100 families I can convert this to market rate housing double rents and all those families lost their housing the other thing I want to say though from a budget perspective is that 90% of what you do here is about next year and when you make investments in housing and housing through us and we're the one part of state government where you're making investments they're going to benefit your communities and your constituents long after you make the investment and so they will continue to pay dividends in any number of ways so in this case we managed to deliver lottery funds you met not only lottery funds Mr. Gates went to the cemetery commission and he borrowed from the cemetery commission to get this built so he was very creative he knew his community well to know them so to get to the housing revenue bond it was signed into law just 18 months ago the sale exceeded the expectations we expected based on the early estimates to raise 35 million we actually raised 37 million we have now committed 25 million dollars and that will leverage another just about 140 million dollars we anticipate that the rest of the bond will be allocated to various projects by the end of this calendar year the photo you're looking at tell me just a little bit about 140 million dollars what are the what are the typical sources of that 140 million probably the single biggest source is leveraging low-income housing tax credit we are doing some home ownership so we're leveraging people's ability to go get mortgages we're leveraging funding through groups like Habitat for Humanity we're leveraging in the Putnam block which I'll get to in a moment a whole different array of funding than we're usually leveraging we're also doing several public private partnerships and in that 140 million dollars I am not counting additional units that private sector builders have pledged to build on a couple sites as well so they're pledging something like almost 300 additional units that I don't count as leverage because we're not directly investing in those units but our investments are making their developments possible what would be very helpful at some point and Jen I think I asked you about some of this about a year ago is to see a graphic that would show the flow of funds in terms of what you're investing such as housing bond money you know the housing bond money and the bond holders but as part of the leverage there are a variety of borders created in other financial instruments and to see that flow of funds graphically in terms of either in total which I know would be complex but in terms of some specific situations show how this works practice would be very helpful to us we'd be happy to come up with some examples that would help it and while there are similarities we can give you three or four examples I'm particularly interested for example in the fact that part of the leveraging that goes on results in a continued increase in the amount of debt on the state's books which now is approaching about 200 million dollars as I recall as to say how is that being dealt with what does that leveraging mean in terms of repayment and is repayment in fact current I have that conversation with you and I jumped into that right now I think we appreciate the opportunity to talk about that so just going back and it's related to that question because I remember when we did the bond there is always some tension about much debt affordability the state could take on and that this was somehow separate from the state's debt load so I can forget the terminology but so just to go back to some of that what you did in establishing the bond was it is not a general obligation to state of Vermont it was issued that was issued by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency you created what was called a lock box structure in which we're contributing a million and a half dollars and then you did a surcharge on the transfer tax and another million dollars is going into that lock box as the first receipts from the property transfer tax which raises over 40 million dollars a year so the first two and a half million goes into the lock box so it did not become a general obligation of the state of Vermont I think Senator Brock is actually referring to our own financial statements which is a different a slightly different question that we do want to address from the senator okay so because we do take both bond proceeds and make loans generally deferred loans to the deals that were involved in so to the extent we can do sustainability bonds we have to worry less about the debt ceiling of general obligation bonds are totally separate as long as you find a way to service the debt if you can identify the revenue and essentially lock it in which is what you did and identify it but let's say something goes wrong do we have the good faith and credit of the state behind VHFA somehow I don't think you pledge and we'll have to check with VHFA sometimes you pledge what's called the moral obligation of the state but I don't think you did in this case and what would have to go wrong in order for the bond holders because you created this lock box and you have a funding source that's generating 40 million dollars you'd have to there'd have to be such a depression that what was set aside that real estate activity decreased by over 90 percent before that eventuality of not having that first $1.5 million so the investors considered it to be a very safe investment from their perspective so just to get back to what we've done with the bonds one of the picture here on this first page is in Manchester, Vermont this is a development that we're in 12-count the mini-immunions were built with our support and the development had to stop so we're funding an additional 8 units now to get it to the full permitted build out and that will produce homeownership there and how many will it be total? 20 and that will be good for all the folks who are already living in that development as well I know you have a wide range of housing opportunities through BACB whether it's homeownership are there any additional variations or restrictions with these funds as opposed to what you could do with your general fund or your private transfer tax appropriations each year as to how you I mean you make decisions of a board you say this project looks good do we need more of this we want less of that when you come to this part of money is there anything different? yes and that gets to the next slide so what you did was to ask us to target a quarter of the homes to people below 50% of median and what was different here is you asked us to target a quarter of the homes to people between 80 and once right and we've had that authority in past years and particularly your colleagues in the appropriations committee have said please focus on the most vulnerable and please leverage as much federal money as you possibly can and the federal programs basically cut off either at 60% of median or 80% of median so what the bond has enabled us to do is to develop more units that are for that group that are between above 60% of median and up to 120 which we have generally served to a much lesser degree and that's been the biggest single change and obviously the bond is restricted to our housing activities not any of our conservation work but you mentioned homeownership I just clear that there's more than just homeownership there are rental properties homeownership rental properties and we are also the governor has asked us to serve the most vulnerable and we'll get to a slide, a couple slides on that for people who are really among the most vulnerable or purpose built what we call purpose built housing with a strong social service and as the slide says and I said a moment ago the private sector builders that our partners are working with have also advised they're going to build on these sites in almost 300 units over the next few years so in terms of success and remembering that we were talking about construction program and it was just authorized 18 months ago we funded 21 projects about 550 homes across 9 counties first 86 families have moved into 3 developments around the state there are 240 homes under construction as we speak there's about another 200 set to get going next spring summer and fall as well we also saw it on the front of the report that Josh talked about is that the unit was one of the first projects to be completed with housing revenue bond funds it's also got funding through the agency the community development block grant program we contribute and coordinate with the agency on that report each year so Gus and Jen could you give us a notion of again what the universe of need is here I mean as you identify it now what roughly is the need that we are not meeting at the moment um well I mean this is great this is great and we're thrilled but what's about this thousands of new units we're going to get we're going to before we get done we'll give you a bunch of numbers but it is in the thousands yeah in a way it's huge sort of but I'm and that's why this next slide about this public-private partnership with Cambrian Rise this is so important this is an architect's rendering of what it looks like on the build out and going back to our dual goal project we worked with City of Burlington and provided a grant to them and the community did a lot of fundraising so 12 acres along the lake is becoming a public park that joins the Old North End will have access to as will people from the Old North End to the lake does this connect to Rock Point? no Rock Point is further down and we have done some conservation with the National Diocese at Rock Point as well but again it goes to that dual mission this is going to be a mixed income neighborhood Brenda Torpe is here she may talk a little bit more about this we will first development that we're involved in here the 76 unit multi-family housing that will open this summer when construction is completed we just agreed to fund another 70 unit building and there's also a large condominium building that will fund 21 units of the condominiums in as affordable home ownership the rest will be market-grade housing and the total build out is about 700 units so it will add greatly to the housing supply and the shortage that the county is experiencing the next project is in South Burlington this building opened in November 39 units of elderly private developers have a building of their own under construction and again the Champlain Housing Trust has a 60 unit building that is under construction now and will be completed next summer what's interesting about this development is it's part of the city's district and the development of the city center so adjacent to this property the community is building a new building for their library and their town offices there's a school right around the corner and again the build out in the whole neighborhood by the developers will end up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 homes including the ones who we support and I think what we're seeing as private developers you don't have to ask them but my working with non-profit partners they have a project and I think the fact helps them financially absorb their upfront infrastructure costs and their upfront length it gets the development done right away and it makes it easier for them to continue to build with your private partnerships these are non-profits and for private private what the non-profits do is they form on these rental deals they form a limited partnership there are limited partners who are investors who are mostly investing in the low income housing tax credit the private developers are in the case of South Burlington building the housing and selling it to the non-profit at the end of construction and they have additional land that they are planning and building on in that neighborhood as part of the master development they have with the city of South Burlington we think of them as turnkey projects with the developers the private construction company builds in hands of keys over the extra that they have would not necessarily go to non-profits but would be just market rate housing for a poor measure of cattle does it do that so that's for market rate I can see that that might work but for something that's going to be low income there will be some market rate units again in these developments that's one of the requirements of the bond so rather than doing projects that are 90 or 100% just at the 60% of median the bond is letting us stretch so generally a chunk of each development is going to be at a higher income level at a higher rent level this next development is in Hartford it is under construction it should be completed by the fall it's right near lots of jobs and services and there's a phase two potential on the site I spoke to you a few minutes ago about the desire for transformation so this is the Wilson lot in Springfield the commercial space has been vacant I think except for once or twice pretty consistently for more than a decade the upstairs needs an awful lot of work again this will be mixed income housing there will be four units and a program setup for at risk homeless youth in the building it's right in the center town and it's one of those kinds of investments that we look at as something that can be transformational for the downtown it will be like Matt Dunn or this Springfield Regional Development around the brick at this really helping correct this is the park street school yes so we visited with the governor this location across from the co-op and just down the street from the parking garage and downtown Brattleboro for groundbreaking in October and we should have those 23 apartments in the downtown I would guess next fall that is also under construction who is that short person who is that short person next to us oh it's me this one has been the next one has not been has not been popular in this building this is over on Taylor Street here in Montpelier because it's costing some of the parking spaces Montpelier going back to the early 1990s got some funding for transit center and D.W. was going to build housing above and they just decided they could not make the numbers work so housing from down street housing took on the upper stories here and again 30 mixed income units some very affordable and some closer to market will be for that 80 to 120 will be built here under construction see it going up every day so is this the one that's right behind the capital plaza so I thought that was their new Fairmont hotel not yet that hasn't begun yet so that is under construction yet is that what's going to be on top of the new parking garage believe it or not it's planned to be between the back of the capital plaza hotel and the transit center so if you are looking at the plaza behind it will be a new Hampton Inn beyond that the transit center and the parking garage will be off to the left and behind the church right the parking which but there's a big slow up on that which is right the parking is it too many okay so that that's an active question that I have like how do these intersect with active 50 and the reports that's come up are there other problems these projects moving forward for recommendations? generally they're moving forward well and there are two instances including the Taylor Street the Taylor Street project in Canberra lies that we also showed you that benefited from a provision that's currently active 50 that gives a quicker approval process for what are known as priority housing projects so projects that include some number of affordable units and that are within a designated area so the permitting time frame and the costs were significantly lower for Taylor Street here in Montpelier and the Cambrian Rise Project so that's been a very meaningful incentive within currently active 50 so as you think about any changes to that that's something to keep in mind but so far things otherwise are moving forward I'm not sure if you know many that have big permitting issues right now they might know, they're always little ones but nothing that's scaring us so going on to transformation and downtown revitalization the next slide is the Putnam Block in Bennington this is primarily not an affordable housing deal this is a and I toured the upper stories here which last about a year ago which had been vacant since the 1970s right and the plan for the community is they've gotten Bennington College, Southern Vermont College and their medical center all to agree the least space in the redevelopment area there's going to be some student housing that Bennington College I think for master students is going to develop as well and then some small apartments that we've agreed for that we need a 120 range to subsidize they're using something called New Markets Tax Credits to make this happen this project got into difficulty in the midst of tax reform and they're out of state new markets investors backed out of the deal and we sat with Housing Vermont which runs the Vermont program and asked them what it would take to get them to increase their investment and we increased our own to bank it for 30 units of affordable housing down the road which gives it much more of a low-mod benefit which is a requirement of New Markets credit and Housing Vermont then doubled their investment in this building and this property so we expect it to get under construction this summer but it'll be it's a big deal for Bennington it's huge the city of St. Albans has been also very creative and aggressive about their downtown and they've done a terrific job we just agreed last week to fund a 30 unit development which is going to be across from City Hall we're going to get a second application to join that site that we'll consider later and they've gotten Community College to also developers building a building in Community College and their medical center will take up several floors in so it's part of the continuing effort of the city to reinvent itself and to make it's downtown vital it's a great site next to a park is this part of the TIF? part of the TIF district as well just to remind ourselves of all our work so to focus for a moment on the most vulnerable and the housing revenue bond Senator Ballant was part of the group that was at this site in Brattleboro which was the old lamp-lighter hotel it was run down it was on the tax rolls for $5,000 it has been redeveloped it's now on the tax roll as micro apartments half of them are absolutely dedicated to the homeless and half of the people who moved in moved in from a tent they were living in and it's now on the tax rolls for a little over $600,000 there is a service partnership that includes the local homeless service provider the mental health agency and the housing and I think they did it really well and there are we think of the homeless in various ways but two kids moved in with their parents if I could just say in the the green courtyard between this big climbing tree that's there so the kids out of the site have this connection to the natural world they did such a great job it's beautiful and if I could just add in terms of going back to that theme of coordination among the state housing agencies the Vermont State Housing Authority a project-based vouchers available for this which helps get the rent between what's affordable to actually making an afford to someone who's low income to something that's affordable to someone who has no income and is coming out of a tent and so that was a really key piece the car is owned by the Clara Martin Center which is the designated mental health agency for Orange County and they've purchased it for a decade and it'll provide four homes for people with chronic and persistent mental illness so that's before you move on can you talk to us a little bit more about the type of business I think this is something this particular kind of deal is something that I think a lot of counties are looking at can you just tell us a little bit more about I'm not going to remember all the details but do you remember the details on it but one of the things that the partner mental health has is a housing contingency fund and they pledged some of that funding to support the rents for the people who are going to live in this building so that was a piece of funding for it do you remember the details or do we need that? Well I think that we can certainly provide more details on this but the point that you're getting at is in order to be able to serve these really vulnerable folks of persistent mental illness or other major needs when they have supports you've really got to have the three legs of the stool to hear about all the time so we need to provide the capital for the apartments with the renovations but they need service supports and in some places we've been able to piece that together but in other places the services just aren't there yet so we could do more of this but the services aren't there to back it up so it's a long building Oh so this isn't the one where a family was actually sort of running it because there's another place in Randall where a single family had been very committed No that's a different project Yes We need to move along a little bit Okay I'm going to rush through the rest of this and get to a couple things We are doing home ownership We are working with the seven habitat chapters across Vermont I will not spend any time on the economic impacts of housing development except to say they're substantial and were we about to be in a recession and someday we will your economist will tell you that building housing is a great economic stimulus and I think it is now I don't understand this home ownership for workers or the citizens So this is just a profile of we've done a little over 1,100 homes around the state as permanently affordable home ownership using a shared appreciation model and this just tells you what the various occupations are of all these home owners just to give you that sense We haven't collected that data historically about our rental housing We will for the housing revenue gone People sometimes think that housing doesn't serve the workforce that we're involved in and it clearly absolutely does and I think in our rental housing you'll see that the exception of the elderly and disabled people are the people who you might see the cumberland farms they may be at the coffee place here in Montpelier they may be at the supermarket they may be paying the nails they're all working In the largest number are teachers Poor teacher's aids or people who work at your library So we're on track to meet the goal we're going to see the goal of 550 I think we may get above the 650 units we're big on downtown revitalization we are big on where our housing markets are very tight adding to the supply we're increasing the numbers of people getting into this housing we're doing more next income and then to get to the question that Senator Clarkson was asking about and we'll get to this in just a moment incomes from wages and benefits are not growing at the pace of housing costs there's much more need than we have we'll finish the bond in this calendar year and then our funding without more assistance we'll be down because we'll be servicing the debt on the bond we don't get to the most vulnerable lowest income folks and we need services we are doing an awful lot what's the primary source of rental assistance and what not primary sources sitting over there is the Williams state housing authority there are nine local housing authorities the state has two different programs one of the department of health mental health and one that I think probably within Kent Shats that also provides a small amount of assistance the other sources is the USDA will develop a program I'm not going to spend any time because I want to get to the big question on the charts you have on improving health and reducing costs other than to say that the medical center has been tracking this with CHT on several projects in terms of what you see is when people initially get housed their health care costs go up and as they get stabilized and then they go down and then if you're trying to figure out is this a good investment for the state the next slide is about our support for people leaving corrections we've spent about a million dollars on about just about a hundred beds in transitional facilities and corrections these are their numbers not ours says that's saving the correction system 3.7 million dollars each year where is that where is the savings I see 3.7 that's the savings I thought you just said it was 7.7 3.7 there's a big pipeline of projects to be done and I will not stop there and then the more to be done the Vermont Futures Project at the Chamber of Commerce has set a growth target of 5,000 new and improved housing units annually we worked with the agency of human services on something called the road map to end homelessness that called 369 units of permanent supportive housing you saw 22 of those in Brattleboro we have a ways to go there and they call for 1,251 new homes people at the very lowest income our point in time survey last year said we had 1,291 from honors on a single night and the last major housing study that was done by Josh's department indicated that there was a statewide gap of about 6,000 homes that needed to be filled over a five year period so we clearly need to do more and then the very last thing I will leave you with is just where property transfer tax is at which was established as a barometer a football funding source for the board when it was increased back in the late 80s and where we are with what our actual funding is so the blue line is what the transfer tax is producing it's projected to go up by about 3 million dollars this year the orange line is what our statutory share would be and it would be about 21 and a half million the budget proposed for us is actually down a million a little over a million dollars this year and that is a combination of both the capital budget and transfer tax allocations so the actual transfer tax we are projected to receive this year is at around the 10 million dollar level and when we add in the bonds we are still down a total from what we should be getting under the law by about 6 million dollars just about 6 million dollars so if that is where we step in fully funding you so I am happy to answer questions but I know you probably want to get to other places I just want you to shiver down the thought I had in the last biennium which made the bonding so attractive to me and I realize that what was suggested last year puts pressure on your ongoing budget and funding because part of the funding of the interest of the bond came out of your budget in that direction interesting principle interesting principle but if your ongoing budget is designed to do in part many of the things that are in here on an ongoing basis and I'm not suggesting we do any more of that or say anything about repaying that but just the theory and we have such a pressing need now doesn't it make sense to take money that would otherwise be spent in the out years for developing housing for interesting principle on a bond that's housing right now that's a good question and I wish you luck in answering that was the theory on the bond in part right you know I think to jump start all this housing and I think we've achieved that goal we jump started an awful lot of activity all over the state and I would say to you as we look at our pipeline it's wedded people's appetites to dream bigger and think bigger what we find is developers generally size their request to what they think is available and possible and when you change the atmosphere about what's possible people respond to that and that's why you know before this bond most of the a large project for us was going to be 30 units lots of them were 15 to 20 and now you're seeing 60 and 70 unit buildings getting built and you're seeing other activity happening at the local level whether it's St. Albans or Bennington or Montpelier or Brattleboro people trying to figure out how do we really not just build housing because that's a people that do it in a way that makes our community more vital more active and more sustainable so the need is clearly there the bond has been a success assuming the money was there for more infrastructure or the experience with the bond show you that if we could find more resources we can expand a program similar to the bond or is there not enough builders or development resources I think the answer is yes we could do more if we have more resources so if you think of the $37 million and we're putting that out we're now in the third year and the infrastructure that you reference has been to absorb and meet that and get the housing delivered at that level in a relatively short period it just seems to me everybody and his brother and sister are saying that housing is a problem from the homeless to the business community it's a solution to a lot of things I mean, again I appreciate the $1 million but if there's a way of doing more and we can think of it I'd like to jump in maybe we could invite the treasurer to get her creative juices working on this I assume you're with me Beth, I assume you've engaged Beth in thinking about the future how we might create and solve this problem we've talked to the treasurer the treasurer's chief concern is the bond rating of the state of Vermont which is part of why we created this structure that did not make it a general obligation I would note that two different governors in Massachusetts Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker each have bonded for over a billion dollars as part of the state's bonding for housing we're not in Massachusetts but we can certainly do a Vermont appropriate scale thank you Brenda so we've got about 25 minutes out looking for more of the same work on a local level to the county but a little bit about what you're doing and how you fit into this bond and where you see the future and whether you've experienced problems with the bond or housing thank you thank you for your time today and the opportunity to comment we'll give you a local perspective and not repeat detail on the projects you've already heard about so I thought I'd start with just a brief thumbnail about us and then this current activity do you know all of us you know, share all of us so I'm just going to put you on the web so thank you Brenda as we say literature or whatever is the Chinatowni Maha of housing so long as we're in that whatever that means thank you it means you're blanking the big cheese well in fact it's good to know that Shemplain Housing Trust actually serves the three Northwest counties of Rwanshinton, Franklin and Grand Isle and I want to speak about the current needs a little bit and who we serve today we have about 3,000 affordable homes and all serving people from homelessness all the way to home ownership 2,300 of these are conventional rentals primarily serving the workforce and some though are special needs homes with services attached as you've heard discussed 615 of our homes are in our shared equity home ownership portfolio and I would say that every one of our homes maybe there's a fraction I can remember are affordable due to investments by the EHCP and today in addition to just describing this quickly I want to bring a perspective to the discussion at the state house of the role the Vermont's playing as a model to the rest of the country as you know this housing crisis is not just Vermont's it's an affordability crisis around the country and I think it'd be very interesting to know people in this building should know that everybody's trying to catch up with Vermont so a few other facts about us we have 38 commercial and non-profit spaces we provide financial counseling broadly in our community last year about 1200 families use this most rents are by a home to us or they're in our homes and need financial support to sustain something we do but others take our classes so they can go on and buy in the market sometimes rent the shared equity portfolio we have has served 1145 families the majority of our sellers go on with the equity they've built in our homes to buy in the market bringing up the home in our family that needs affordability it's a great percentage of it last time we studied it was almost two thirds but it's been a little while so I just say now the majority I don't want to overstate that but what period of time have we had this program 34 years first years it was very slow to get homes online but of course that speeds up and again we're kept by resources 84 85 as I think I've told you before I wrote the first weeks I can't finally find that there you go yeah that's right yeah for months a small home so we operate also a loan and we have programmed through VCDP and this is very important in the rural regions especially to keep people warm and safe and healthy in homes when major systems fail just a light look at the last five years we serve 98 families and in those homes 23 where most people are disabled who need an accessibility 31 where households people over the age of 62 so it's a critical life safety we really appreciate working with the VCDP team on that we also help people statewide to secure energy efficient rural homes through the tax credit program that was initiated after Irene and in all we served 152 households with that one and the average income of those buyers is 39,500 very important rural home program we again are kept they go the minute we open the program and we're sold out quickly 16% of all of our rentals down and just ask a question so your mobile home project is something that we all benefit from not just your three northern counties yes so that's statewide I just want to make sure everybody understands that the mobile home project is the one project of yours that is really statewide yes and thank you I skipped over that but the other homeownership centers do the customer and just refer them to us for the lending part so it's something that's delivered to the centers statewide and people have that local connection but we do the lending because selling the credit is a thing should we do it it's a thing how it's a good thing it just helps everybody we did after our game because we weren't so effective by the storm in other regions where we said 16% of all of our rentals are serving people who were homeless at Montana and last year 88 of our 313 vacancies in our homes were rented up to people who were making that first step so as part of this which is a core strategic plan goal of ours we also deliver an array of services and programs to help people stay housed from budget to financial counseling loans, rent forbearance to deep social work and case management in partnership with other agencies now we just celebrated our annual meeting last week with about 250 members and guests so I'll give you some highlights of what we're reporting from the year and I did bring some annual reports for those of you who like paper or taller paper I know but thank you we have 136 apartments under construction as we speak and certainly we've heard of those 60 in South Burlington 76 in Cambrian and this spring we'll start building 30 permanently affordable condos at Cambrian Rise this being the first phase of 96 required by the city's inclusion of the zoning program so that matched up with the funding it's very important last year we also purchased with help from VHCB and social capital lenders a rental complex of 105 apartments they were unsubsidized but affordable to people at 80% median below we call this naturally occurring affordable housing housing is just state affordable in the market and we did it to prevent their sale and conversion to higher market rents this would have been displaced many working families right from the heart of South Burlington where we're trying to build more affordable housing we are building more affordable housing as we have recently seen in Essex and elsewhere in Chittenden County and Gus mentioned this as an initial impetus of housing to creating the conservation board but it's also happening in Chittenden County in our market it's so hot that people sell their rental developments and lose their rents so we're trying to play in that space and keep those affordable it serves a broad part of the workforce coming up in development you heard about Maiden Lane in St. Albans we're also working on a home ownership project at Winooski where the initial phases of figuring out that scale on Winooski and we're also working with another apartment owner for another 88 rentals that are naturally occurring affordable and hope to be able to put together some financing to keep those affordable and we are exploring a largely construction opportunity in Hinesburg that will be mix of home ownership rental and then we have to fund the next day it can be a rise so we have a lot of upcoming home ownership all your home ownership are perpetual affordable but other rental units are not necessarily all permanently affordable we do as our mission they may be for people above 80% we call that unrestricted but we will keep them at 80% as close to as possible because of our mission does the goal of keeping rental units permanently affordable does that compromise the affordability now is there some sort of hidden cost in terms of what you have to charge I guess for my mind I'm thinking the hidden cost may be if you make all your units perpetually affordable there's probably less units you can develop because there's more subsidy put into the ones that you are putting on the market but we need the capital to make them affordable there's no question but it is the biggest bang for your buck you will never create as much affordability by pouring market money into the market because that's a leaky bucket you pour the money into the market then the homes will become less affordable as soon as they possibly can and so even though it costs more up front but we're using private investment 50% of the new production now we're using new kinds of social impact investing to create affordability for equity because at whatever level even if you go 80-100% if you keep it there and don't gentrify it you're providing a lasting benefit to your community it's infrastructure for the whole community I'm a strong believer in this and I've seen it work but I think it's it's an infrastructure that is worth investing that's true of all the community housing developers throughout Vermont it's part of is it a condition of money that's long given out by DHCB that is permanent DHCB statues for permanent affordability, the state complements all public funds that's permanently affordable that has served us really really well over time so I wanted just a couple of other things that we are on the boards for development one is a transitional housing project with steps which is folks who serve people escaping domestic violence and also recovery housing and these would both be in existing buildings at the fort that we are looking at developing we're also developing a community center in Burlington and we've almost raised all the funds for that it's a historic building in old school we're serving 4,000 people a year already with parks, programs recreation and so on but importantly and I wanted to talk about this there's 800 people a year who are refugees and new Americans being served in the building with every service you can think of from job training to language training citizenship assistance but also integrating with the rest of the community with senior programs, youth programs and so on it's tremendous in Burlington to Old North Bend down the street so we also continue to lead the Chittany County Homeless Alliance and have secured a three-year grant from Key Bank Foundation to expand those housing retention services I talked about these have been recognized nationally and we're actually being training folks in other states in these housing retention services so in that work we still see how much the real solution to homelessness is affordable housing and we're trying to tackle here and we've been so supportive we appreciate we know that we need to do more and you asked this question earlier we have the capacity to produce more our only constraint is the affordable capital we have the opportunities coming to us we have sites coming to us and we have to size it to the capital available each month we talk about need we get 70 full applications for our rental housing but we only have 10 to 15 vacancies everybody else goes on a waiting list they have to wait a long time because there's so few vacancies our building homes campaign with Housing Vermont which is from Chittany County calls for 3,500 new homes in Chittany over five years with 700 of those being permanently affordable this is a very broad coalition of support we had in our council for this and the number was identified by regional planning so we are on track in Chittany for production overall but we are falling short of the affordable goal the reasons I said we have only 191 homes in the works for the first two years and we should be at 28 so that's the gap we're chasing that's a 3,500 is overall not affordable I'm sorry what's the goal to do more affordable housing in how many years it was 700 homes over five years so that was a boost over what had been done so it was a 35 of what had been done so the only reason we rat not 191 actually is because of the bond thank you which is a tremendous a boost to production and we need more we need more affordable capital for the homes for the housing wage gap that we see people facing in our region so I I want to speak now to my concern that BHCB is not funded at the statutory level because when you see the value of the production you get in the lasting results why wouldn't we you know that you talk about everybody talking about housing but one thing that's really stayed with me is that VPR poll in the fall it said that the stress and anxiety and families is housing affordability and you know if you can't if you're worried about that that's a lot of strain on your family otherwise and no wonder the housing gap is very very high in our region even for semi-skilled and starting professional jobs as you saw in the home ownership jobs a lot of those jobs and health care and teachers and stuff are also in our rentals people working 40 hours a week should not be insecure about keeping the rent broken and the big insecurity comes from if you're paying 60% of your income 50% of the housing there's very little left and we saw this nationally right they talked about this during that shutdown and people couldn't save couldn't save for these bumps that everybody faces so that was closer to disaster this is there is a national affordability crisis it's not just the Vermont story but in Vermont the high cost market has all of New England does for construction we've come together to address a crisis in a way that is now sought out all over the country permanent affordability is the most effective you ask this question way to deliver affordable housing and it's the only durable way it's the only way you can plan to have affordable housing into the future in your desirable locations your downtowns and so on now other states and city governments that are dealing with homelessness and stress on their workforce are figuring this out in the last five years there's been a huge rise in communities creating inclusionary zoning as an example of permanent affordability there's now 880 plus jurisdictions doing this and many just getting started and most will use a community land trust for stewardship as we do in Vermont I'm a board member past president of the national network that serves community land trust nationally and local governments implementing these kinds of permanent affordability initiatives it's called Grounded Solutions Network and our growing staff at Grounded Solutions can't keep up what's it called? Grounded Solutions Grounded because it is grounded in land I think there hasn't been before we'll hear so Grounded Solutions has long been funded by the Ford Foundation but more recently now it's major bank foundations getting into the action City Bank is supporting efforts in DC and other metro areas implementing new CLTs at scale J.P. Morgan Chase is supporting the new Houston CLT which will do a thousand homes in its first phase Denver and Atlanta are implementing large citywide CLTs as part of their mass transit initiatives because they realize that if housing is built near transit stops and not preserved as affordable these locations will become the most costly locations defeating the purpose of workforce housing planning so just some running examples to show you the interest in Vermont specifically shared equity home ownership of community land trust were incorporated into the latest financial services before duty to serve provisions and we were one of the sites for Freddie Mac to plan its new product NeighborWorks America has just designated new funding for shared equity home ownership and we were tapped to give the advice to their leadership on how to do it two weeks ago the Wall Street Journal featured CHT and our model in MarketWatch we haven't seen that and the NPR Climate Solutions recently featured CHT and the new urban CLTs that are addressing mass transit so despite having this national resource we are still tapped very much to respond and I wanted to let you know that that's not about us that is because Vermont is a generation ahead of the rest of the country in this use of permanent affordability people are trying to catch up we are the proof of concept so why in the world would we go backwards if we had been funding at the statutory level every year we'd be 60 million more ahead and I believe we'd be have much less of a housing crisis here had we done that and I would really encourage you all to ask us what you should do there is no better solution than that I think I think it's been addressed so I'll just say briefly the property transfer tax revenue when it's growing is a sign of our robust real estate but the increased value also prices some people out so using a small portion of that you know to address all everybody's housing needs was and is a brilliant and elegant way to mitigate the downsides of gentrification and development so it's an investment I think you've seen in our people today but we commit to you for the future I think every dollar invested in conservation and affordable housing by the HCB they're just as rural economic and community development that is what our real estate needs is what's being done here and diverting this money elsewhere I know it always goes to important things but I doubt that you get the last big benefit and the high return on investment that you get from all the BHCB from the projects around the state I'll just leave it at that so maybe this question better directed to Gus but the last year the BHCB appropriation or transfer tax allocation was reduced to pay the interest out of bond was the 50-50 split between housing and conservation maintained the last several years it's been 60-40 probably historically over 30 years it's about 55-45 so 60-40 has been a result of a normal stand that's been a basically the statute doesn't say the statute just says spend the money in a balanced way the only guidance is if we ever hit 70% for either purpose in our annual report we have to specifically tell you why so there is some discretion for the board and we basically make that decision really as a matter of our interaction with the legislature and with the administration and with advocates and we're looking at the pipeline so brother just one last question your opinion as well the bond has been very successful and there are many like flags out there that we should be concerned about how it's working no I think we're running out of it fast but I would say if we do the bond and we don't do it as an add to what we've been doing you're not going to get the boost the production that you want if it just replaces other money because we did the bond then you're just evening it out and I think the purpose of the bond is we understood it was because we were falling so far behind and we needed to catch up on production so wherever you put it no I think the bond has worked very very well with our other affordable housing and engaged more it seems larger developments in a public private partnership something we've been doing for a long time but it's terrific to make it a replacement where you're not going to get the results thank you very much so I'll leave these passes around did you send an electronic plate to Kayla? of course I finished it so late yesterday I didn't send them you will I will where is that guy where is that guy I know him he's like ok thanks bud we need another copy for Kayla cause we need one on cloud with all things we need so much an extra brand new an extra copy of your testimony for Kayla send it to electronic we need an electronic plate oh I see you got a lot of priorities you always have complex problems multifaceted why are we surprised why are we not surprised so for the record A Hartman could testify on behalf of the Vermont Public Housing Coalition I really think that a lot of what's going to say has been said already I'm looking at the time we forgot we have dick I would start today so let me just quickly say for folks who may not be familiar with the coalition we're approximately 80 members strong mostly organizations and folks sitting behind me organizations are part of that coalition and so what you see on the yellow sheet is a comprehensive set of priorities that really addresses the whole multifaceted issue of affordable housing from rental housing to home ownership to supported services for people with the greatest needs to rental assistance to help fill the gap for our lowest income for modest just quickly when Josh was here earlier and talked about the housing budget just a quick kind of side footnote on that that is state funding or funding that passes through a state or quasi state entity it does not include the money that passes through our local housing authorities it also doesn't include the money that passes through the city it's an entitlement community so it's not we were hoping that it would be the complete picture it doesn't include those it's not an absolute complete picture of all the money that comes into the state for affordable housing for federal resources as well as local resources and also I just mentioned I've been involved in housing and community development for over 30 years and one of the things that I've been proud of is a long time member of the board of the Northgate Housing complex in Burlington Northgate residents ownership corporation which Brenda was absolutely pivotal in preserving and it is one of the preservation projects that was pivotal in the late 80s that we learned from and that helped inform the policy that's been enshrined in state policy since that time that when we put public dollars whether they're federal or state housing that housing remain permanently affordable and it was from some of the really unfortunate lessons that we learned during the 80s when we did lose hundreds of units of USDA funded housing and one of the things I'll add in terms of the affordability I can't give you the exact rental numbers but we have a complicated tiered multi-tiered rent structure at Northgate and since Northgate in essence in the public mission driven domain has been run in essence as a mission driven non-profit by its residents since 1990 we have market rate units our market rate rents are significantly below the market rate rents in the Greater Chilling County significantly below I can provide those for you but that's one of the consequences of being able to operate public resources like VHCB and Northgate and the history of Northgate and the creation of VHCB all kind of are part and parcel of our state housing history because one of the reasons we need to create VHCB back in the 80s was to help preserve developments like Northgate and others Brattleboro has Westgate Applegate and Bennington Highgate and Barry and other United USDA funded projects really I would say for me it sounds a little slugginess but I would say the easiest or the best the least expensive housing to create is the formal housing that you preserve it needs to be preserved over time if we were to try and redevelop Northgate at this point in Chilling County and the New North End in Browington I can't even estimate how many times more than the public dollars that we put into it 20 years almost 30 years ago and there's since been some additional infusions but that's natural in the cycle of real estate development you do need to put additional capital resources into projects but at least we don't have to rebuy the project all over again from the private sector owner that initially developed it with a great sweetheart-hud deal and operating subsidies that came in every month so that being said we do have a long list on pages 2, 3 and 4 of the yellow sheet the first page really captures a number of the needs statistics that you've heard from other witnesses before the VPR poll that was done this last fall road map to end homelessness and the quantification of we have a number of how many units it would take to end homelessness in Vermont in five years we're one of the small state we're maybe a little under-resourced because of that but because of our size we can also quantify these things and we had this consultant come in with support from the General Assembly a couple of years ago and they told us exactly what it would take to end homelessness in Vermont and we know that number it's on page 1 but all the bullets it seems impenetrable road map to end homelessness is probably about where is it oh here it is it's about halfway down the page it's 368 new units of permanent supportive housing and 1,251 new homes made affordable rental homes made affordable it's a very low income for moderates through a combination of sources I know you've heard the three-legged stool a number of times I'll just re-emphasize all three legs are absolutely essential to solving not just the homeless crisis but the issue of housing for the workforce and housing just for low-wage service sector workers that cannot afford market grants really anywhere in the state of Vermont if they're working at or near our minimum wage I'll provide more testimony on that Thursday when you hear more testimony on the minimum wage so last year or the year before you gave us a county roughly a cost of housing and rental units per county that was really useful because every time I was going to provide that to you on Thursday it's the state's housing wage and then the housing wage broken down by county based on what it costs to afford a typical modest two-bedroom apartment based on the Section 8 fair market rents and not paying more than 30% that was a very useful tool every time I talk about whether you're talking about and the wage whether you're talking about challenges in one's own backyard so I will provide that on Thursday I'd like to get Richard on the audience if you don't mind that you both can probably come back to us I'm here just one quick question and State House Senors is 8 o'clock Senator Brock has a question for you I just wonder if you would be able to give us a copy of your audited financial statement as well as the national letter so we're a very small organization our annual budget is only about $80,000 we don't get audited but we can certainly I've asked you the wrong thing that's the shen play chat the coal machine I'm also speaking for I'd like to copy the audited financial statement as well as the national letter just for the record we do file a 990 and it's available I can provide it it's not mine, I'll tell you a lot I don't mind, that's not a problem thank you good morning might have been more depressing if we hadn't gotten really shut down well, you know we're only funded for 3 weeks still an issue so for the record my name is Richard Williams I'm the executive director I'm working on my 45th year working for Vermont State Housing Authority and I'd be glad to give you our financial audit if you'd like because we do so just to give you an idea you threw a curve ball at me Mr. Chairman when I came in because I was prepared to kind of talk about the federal shutdown and what the impact it was so I am just going to throw a couple numbers at you so that you realize first of all we're a quasi-state public agency we do not receive any direct funding from the under this great building but we do subcontract our department of mental health we run their mental health voucher program we do subcontract with agency human services as far as inspecting their Vermont sub-state program units we also work there's a bridge to HAPA which is housing opportunities for people with AIDS there's a small program that State of Vermont has that we contract and run that we also contract with Vermont Housing Conservation Board housing opportunity people with AIDS so there's two big projects programs that are fund rental assistance here we're actually assisting 7,233 households in Vermont that's through two main programs one is called the project-based section 8 program the there's 114 projects those projects were done by private developers around the state of Vermont the annual federal contribution on that is $27 million a year that is 3,076 units in 114 projects and the annual funding on that is $27 million $22,000 which is a mixture of housing to put in the investment resource that he presented at this point too sorry I thought you said you assisted 7,200 households not first we do so so I'm going to get from section 8 program too so right now we're just talking about project-based these are the old traditional contract administration section 8 infrastructure and sub-rehab some of it's in the in the room here old enough to know remember those programs that used to be funded by directly from the federal department of health care and development the other program we have is the is the section 8 housing choice policy program that used to be known as different things section 8 certificate program that program started in 1974 that program is this is the second one I just brought my stats here there's 3,894 housing choice voucher units in the state that is 3,776 households and that's an annual appropriation that we've received from department of health care and development which is $32 million $261,000 so you're getting about $60 million as a pastor is that number not up or down in the last decade? it's gone up it hasn't gone up in the early years when funding was better out of Washington we would get we could anticipate we would get annual allocations of vouchers or whatever also many of the I don't know if you want to call them HUDBOTEAP programs back in the 80s some were very similar to what the deputy commissioner of housing was talking about this one and I know that airheart is as old as I am so he recognizes and remembers some of these old programs but HUDBOTEAPs have what they call as section 8 rental rehab program back in the early 80s that combined subsidies and also additions loan money there's also a section 8 moderate rehab program you may remember while there's still one in St. John'sbury which has recently been purchased by a non-profit but deep hole apartments there's also the one in Windsor which used to be called I'm not sure what they call it now but I remember the old name there was 75 units down there is that the one along Union Street? yep Union Street it's gorgeous the variation of it it's terrific all the funding agencies that that participated that is but it's still section 8 right? it is it has project-based section 8 so when HUD stopped doing that low renovation money they don't no longer have a renovation program they jacked up the community development block grant program used to build through the community involved in planning division of HUD so a lot of these programs get repealed and you know as monies get tighter in Washington programs so is it a misstatement or a myth of some sort that federal support for low-income housing has dropped precipitously over the last few decades? well federal funding you we're not losing funding at my agency so it's just so that's losing because you're not keeping up well we haven't kept up with the CPI we're not keeping up with CPI so that means you're losing but you can imagine we didn't have a better one to assist one of the things that we get forgotten a lot about urban cuttings and presentations because project-based vouchers really do bring capital to the new construction low-income housing tax credits and VHCB or whatever that guarantees the operating that helps guarantee the operating subsidies for the project for example French blocks just opened up here in Montpere we put five project-based vouchers in that it's made a 20-year commitment that's 1,500,000 hours of federal rental assistance that's been committed to that project and where is that right here in downtown over the Abishans over Abishans just opened up and Jen Holler mentioned the project in Browborough which is you know, assisting homeless we might say the Great River Terrace or whatever it's called that's correct and that we made a commitment for the full project-based vouchers so he asked for a couple of ideas from there and I hadn't seen the governors we don't get I ask questions what's in the budget and we don't get told that because I understand we don't know until you folks know which was a coincidence when I was listening to State of the State we've been pitching this concept a little bit to the Deputy Commissioner of Housing it's called Accessory Dwelling Units it's based on a program or a project and I wish the Senator was here because it's based on a she's up at a press conference so she's representing us all so it's based on the concept of a very successful program in Browborough which has added many units to housing without a lot of restrictions or constraints what's that project called basically it's Browborough Accessory Dwelling Unit Program and I can give you some information on that but it's off the top of my head it's a small commitment of funds that has opened up units within larger homes or they've even seen a garage converted into a rental space for not a lot of money and I've always missed the rental assistance program here in the state because that really got into a lot of small mom and pop landlords and helped them out with some small amount of money to create a unit so we're not talking like to the extent of the great work that the Vermont Housing Conservation Board has done I mean we're not talking new brand new units or substantial rehabilitation units which that program funds a great job at it I'm just talking about someone that might be struggling to pay their property taxes or something and they could use an apartment like a one bed more efficiency apartment and they have this big one what is the government proposal well it's sort of kind of going down the same road so I thought that when I heard that we do have something in common so that's the one million dollars used for ADUs as well in the right scenario so we have some not much we have $150,000 that you senator may remember some of the old enable programs that was funded through and actually came through office on aging way back in the 80s and stuff and we did accessible units, we wrote grants and got grant money from the state like a revolving home type fund so it always comes back so we used that kind of money and so that's something that we would pledge towards this along with some like grant monies which we would have to access through the CDBG process which would have to come in through a city or a town for example would have to apply to the agency for funding and if it was competitive one of the things that Deputy Commissioner referred to I would like to encourage the Deputy Commissioner to consider setting aside monies or pilot programs to look at different initiatives that could create housing in Vermont so sometimes it doesn't take a lot but we have to if you get into certain types of housing then you hit all the codes and the sprinkler systems and all that stuff so we're not talking that we're just talking creating some good, affordable basic. Do you think that incentive of five to seven is enough? Well I think you'd have to combine it so you might have a $7,000 grant and then we were thinking about offering maybe a $7,000 loan but then if you go to a local community bank or you might be able to a homeowner might be able to leverage additional money because they've had money or in what we would do is we would do a deferred loan to zero interest if the property is sold or something you know the money would be paid back might be forgiven after five years or so but not a lot of rules and regulations because you're not giving them a lot of money so you don't want to There would be an encumbrance we would put some type of restriction on your deed or something so that was an idea and also the rental rehab program you know it's really jumped out as I remember it was actually Airheart maybe a brand one in the city of Manuski it was money available for urban areas consortia of towns and states Actually one of the laws that I was proud of in my former years working for seniors was getting through the apartment building which makes it somewhat easier because the big thing was zoning and you know multiple family units being disallowed in a lot of areas but when we did it we had a restriction that that would only be available for where the person moving in was 55 rubber has that been eliminated that anybody could move into an accessory that I don't think it's been that there were some attempts around the state to try this program and it's been kind of some start some stops for the record as part of comprehensive revisions chapter 117 over 10 years ago the accessory dwelling provisions of that law were liberalized because as the chair pointed out it used to be hard to get those approved locally they were mostly subject to conditional use approval by a local zoning board and so the state established minimum criteria for accessory dwelling units that allowed for them to be approved by rights under local zoning and they have a minimum average requirements that the ADU can't be right there's no age restriction there's no age restriction no age restriction just to add to that that's exactly the case the ADU can't be bigger than the house itself has to be 30% an accessory can be no more than 30% within the existing footprint of an existing building it's like a carriage house or barn or a garage to be converted it can't be more than 30% of the principal dwelling just as a way of history it was a battle royale just to get that law established as a conditional use because many communities want to disband we said that they had to look at that as a conditional use at least so I think it was the first of the signs so and later as of our program we're going to capitalize on that inexpensive plus it also for seniors it deals with caregiving correct with later family members thank you for the opportunity