 Welcome back everybody, it is Friday afternoon and on Friday the 8th and we are here today to take on more testimony about the outcomes of the work that we did last year on mitigating homelessness in the face of COVID. And with us today are Ghaseelik and Jen Holler from Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, Richard Williams, the executive director for the Vermont State Housing Authority and more commons from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. And for folks who are just joining us and for the new folks on the committee, this team of people put together an engineer to the programs that we're going to hear about today, which was both finding, well there's three pieces, finding new units and creating new units for people who have been experiencing homelessness so that we can create homes that are safe for people when they need to be safe at home. The State Housing Authority managed program that paid rental arrearages, some up to 18 months is what I heard earlier this year in order to keep people in their homes and the Housing Finance Agency spent money or was allocated money to help with Vermonters who were having trouble with their mortgages. So we are going to hear from them and see how we did, how closely did we get to pinpointing the number of the funds that we gave them and what can we do better moving forward. We have a slug of money coming at us that's far greater than the amount of money than we were given this past year and so that'll be for a future date of how we work with that money. But I just wanted to, that's the T up and I'll start with Gus and then go to Richard and then Maura if that's okay. If you do have time constraints, if anybody has a time constraint, any of the witnesses please let me know and I'll switch it around but if we can work with that to start off with that would be great and so I'll just pass the microphone over to you Gus. Well thank you very much Mr. Chairman for the record. I'm Gus Selig, I'm the director for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. With me is our policy director, Jen Holler. I'm having a little computer difficulty in screen sharing today so she'll drive the presentation we're going to give you. I want to start just by thanking the committee for the great work you did last year in response to the pandemic and for the trust you put in all of us to expend funds that the feds had given us as wisely as we possibly could. I do because there's four members of the committee that are new want to give you a little bit of context about the board and its role but I'm going to start just by briefly saying of the $34.5 million you provided to us in three different buckets all but $1.35 million has been committed and spent on projects that will produce that will make 12 shelters with a little over 250 beds safer and produce about 247 new units of housing some new shelters which will show you in a few minutes and lots of new apartments all around the state. This was an incredible effort usually housing projects are in process for several years and so to have to try to pull this together over a six, seven month period took remarkable cooperation and coordination. I do want to note though you're not going to get into it today that maybe the most important thing that you did more important than our programs was to make sure more people did not become homeless and so I really want to tip my hat to Richard Williams and his staff for the incredible job they did in administering that program and I want to say I think the most important thing you can do in the short term is to make sure that people who are struggling to pay their rent have the ability through the new money to pay and not take months and months to get that out the door. So we'll begin to screen share here and again we're the Housing and Conservation Board this first photo that you're looking at is of the Committee on Temporary Shelter which we helped along with Mora Collins and her agency Bill that on North Avenue just a few years ago it includes the day station and other properties. A bit about our mission we were created back in the mid-80s when real estate was booming tremendously it is again now we're funded primarily by the property transfer tax we've been part of the capital budget for years but our goals as outlined in the statute that your predecessors gave us goes to both housing and conservation and does it because it's of critical importance to economic vitality and quality of life in the state and when you think about housing I guess the first thing I want to say and I had this conversation with somebody at the UVM Medical Center housing is healthcare and I think the pandemic made that made us all understand that in a way we hadn't before in terms of the board's mission what you're looking at is the architect an architect's rendering of what the build out is going to be like at the old Burlington College site which will be close to 700 homes we've already helped to build and open about 140 of them in two different buildings with a quarter of them for folks who'd been experiencing homelessness. This development going to our dual mission also included the city taking on what is a new 12-acre park right on the waterfront and there is public access through this property for all the residents of the north old north end down to the water so that's how our dual goals sometimes get realized why don't we go to the next slide Jen this is what we've done over 33 years I'm not going to dwell on it today but as the general committee we're happy to talk to you about any number of other issues that we work on that may be of benefit to your constituents one way or another I do want to note that among the affordable homes both rental and home ownership that we've worked on over the years a little over 10 of them are what we call supportive housing developments and that's anything from assisted living to elders to there's a development in Burlington for people who struggle with chronic and persistent mental mental illness there's another one like that in Randolph we've worked with pretty much every shelter in the state over the years to provide them with capital either to purchase a property or to fix it up the photos you're looking at on the left we work on the whole range of housing is a single family home in Milton in the middle is a new town forest in Newberry and on the right is a building in Waterbury it's actually an architectural gem it was the old Waterbury Seminary up in the center and I'm told by the former owner Eric Chittenden of Chittenden Cider that the community had voted three times over 20 years to tear the building down and it's now among the best housing in the community just absolutely gorgeous let's go to the next slide our mission is permanent affordability and to provide housing that will continue to be affordable not just for one generation but on an ongoing basis and the view of that from a policy perspective is that's the most cost effective investment that you can make and you avoid displacement when you invest in permanent affordability on the left is a new building just opened in downtown St. Albans on a site that was really blighted really terrible building that I toured about a year and a half ago there's a second building going up this one is being developed has been developed by the Champlain Housing Trust the other building is a private developer this one will have 30 apartment has 30 apartments in it again with a quarter of them available to folks who had have experienced homelessness you're also looking at a building in downtown Hardwick that we worked on after a terrible fire in the early 1990s and let's keep moving through the presentation so our role as a and we are a quasi public entity the legislature actually appoints through the speaker and the committee on committees four members of our 11 member board is to create and preserve affordable housing for lower income Vermonters the statute says that's anybody below median our focus has primarily been on very low income and extremely low income Vermonters when we were invented the state spent not a nickel in its budget on affordable housing and we became the vehicle for the state to invest in housing we provide both grants and loans and in the context of today's discussion that includes buildings for people who have experienced homelessness it's been you specifically asked us to help the emergency shelters and to create some transitional housing the other thing we do is to support a network of nonprofits that cover every corner of the state and I need to tell you that that's a rarity in rural states usually in rural communities only the bigger towns get help and have nonprofits that can help them deliver federal housing resources and state resources to their communities and and but but we work all over the state we also do policy work and Jen's going to talk about the next slide and the roadmap to end homelessness so Jen so Gus mentioned that we do a good bit of policy work I seem to be having trouble advancing the slide here let me try a different method it was working a minute ago there we go so a number of years ago the legislature funded a study and other organizations contributed resources as well and vhcb vh the vermont housing and finance agency the state housing authority all of those of us testifying today along with the agency of human services and that you heard from this morning um took a look at what it would take to end homelessness in vermont what and uh essentially um contracted with a um a national firm that looked at what we were doing here in vermont and then what needed to be done to really reach that goal um you can see the five main recommendations here and um the chairman asked about uh the pluses and minuses of what has happened one of the one of the pluses in a way of the crf funding and and and covid is that it helped us accelerate this work it just allowed us to to direct some resources to it um a lot of this uh work that had been done early on through um coordinated entry you heard about that this morning establishing that as a local level um and simply building a consistent database across the state had been done so in many ways we were poised to be able to do this work and uh but it really took some additional resources um and there's um in vermont we've got good systems good collaboration and it's really a um a lack of resources that is uh that gets us in the way of us really achieving the goal of ending um functional homelessness and a big part of the way we um do that and the way we were able to use the crf funding is through the um the non-profit network that got referenced just a minute ago here's the map that shows all of those organizations across the state and their service territories when you look to your part of the state you may um see the organization that may sound familiar to you um but these are bhcb's primary partners and through them we grant the state funds and federal funds and most recently the crf funding um to do housing development in large and small communities in all corners of the state this group went to extraordinary efforts in order to gear up and be ready to um use the crf funding when it began to become clear that the legislature was uh going to allocate some through bhcb they um scoured their communities for opportunities to find housing that could be created in a very short time frame um and since then they have been working um at an incredible pace to acquire those properties to rehab them um and to coordinate with their service partners at the local level to set up services for the housing um and to um get folks primarily those who are temporarily placed in motels into those units um so without this sort of delivery system it really wouldn't have been possible for vermont to use the crf funds to create permanent housing in the way in the way that we were all able to do and i'll turn it back to gus okay um so getting to the issue back to the issue of homelessness and i before i get into that in depth i just also want to call out um there are eight local housing authorities across the state along with richards organization that works statewide and their work and the work of our nonprofit partners is becoming more and more integrated as time goes on through programs like sash but also in terms of the effort to get work on the coordinated entry system and get people housed or rehoused as rapidly as possible and in some cases as you'll see in a minute in ruttland they've actually played quite a leadership role in making housing work um in 2016 governor shumlin issued an executive order he asked that all owners of publicly funded housing make 15 of their apartments available to folks who'd experienced homelessness um at that time i think as we measured it about 12 of those uh units those apartments were were so occupied but the very there was a variation in how much depending on the sponsor so everybody made a concerted effort we're now statewide above 16 percent and some folks are as high as 40 percent uh in fiscal year 20 um about a third of all turnovers went to families who are experiencing homelessness the photo you're looking at here is a is what we call permanent supportive housing um it was the old lamp lighter motel on route five in braddle borough that's been converted into uh permanent supportive housing for i believe 19 households uh and they did just an incredible job this is a collaboration between the mental health agency the local homeless service provider and the wind and winds are housing trust let's move on to the next slide unless chip wants to ask a question does chip want to ask a question go for it um sure um gus um were families with children given priorities and and and uh being housed in some of these units i mean that was this uh that was the intent i guess yes is the short answer and um one of the new facilities um is for group called steps which will get to in a moment which is the domestic violence organization up in uh chitinning county um and um as we looked at where were the as a hs told us where are the priority parts of the state to work in uh we very much looked at those parts of the state that had the largest numbers of families that with children who were homeless as first priority of where to go um so uh for instance we brought 15 units online in bennington at a development um where they had a large number of families with children in the motels so that we've worked on that around the state i know at the end of um last year we had about 300 families with children uh homeless um have they all been accommodated at this point do you know um what i would say to you and jen has the numbers uh is is one uh some number have a lot of these units have just come online in the last 30 days more coming online this coming month but the nature of the economic crisis that's gone on with this pandemic means that even as we get some people housed we're finding that more people have fallen out of their housing and so we are nowhere close to having solved this problem yet and and what we hear from and i think you i didn't listen to this morning's testimony um but i know that um oeo has issued rental assistance to a number of families who are in motels and they simply cannot find housing which begs the question the question the part of this that we work on is the supply issue uh richard is the king of rental assistance um but we work on the supply end of it and we need we need more housing so these are three examples of projects that what the on the top left is a building in st johnsbury that was brought back online in the middle is the bay view in chitening county which is which was a motel and is now 68 apartments more than half have already been occupied and the bottom left photograph is a development that a group called ever north you you probably know them as housing vermont uh bought just about a month ago and there are four or five apartments there that are designated for people who are coming in from the coordinated entry system and gus before we before we um go on uh just quickly chip um if you i know you have to step away this morning but the information that of where the kids were at the very least and um but not so much about where they're going because of the because of the issue with the um availability of units uh that gus was just talking about and gus if um this being the beginning of the session um i told my committee earlier today that we we'd be running across acronyms that we may not know about and you use the acronym sash could you just quickly explain that for us yes and please when any new members or even people who've been around a while better my age and can't keep all the acronyms straight interrupt me um uh sash's support and services at home it is a program about 15 years ago we and our partners at vhfa got a large grant from the macArthur foundation and we used a small amount of it to work with cathedral square which created a program that is very much based around housing and in housing to provide supports for people they focused on the elderly um that brings together all the various service providers who work in a kind of team approach to support people's health and wellness and it's it's had two national evaluations it's worthy of a hearing all on its own i think it goes to the point mr chairman and perhaps this is what you wanted it the point you wanted to make of housing as health care but it has been demonstrated to have long-term savings to medicare which is the funding source for it reducing falls reducing the need for people to be hospitalized um and generally be healthier uh lots of good stories that um the people who are actually operating the program can tell you but but um but the one i will tell you about the sash program is when secretary racine was running the agency of human services we took a monitor of supportive housing projects and we had a discussion of sash when it was then in his its infancy and he had people from the from the agency on aging and home health and others around the table and they were discussing some cases with him that they had resolved and um and one of them was a medical management case and the secretary said well wouldn't you just do that in your day job and it really took the folks from the different agencies talking together about a case to realize that the problem was a medical management of medication issue that was causing somebody to seem like they had they were probably they were they were just losing it um having trouble with memory and so on and once that got straightened out their lives were just back to normal and fine so it's a program that's had great results and one that the new members of the committee should learn more about uh in terms of the results of your investment um um as I said 247 new units have been or have were made available um through our investment of just under just over 32 million dollars 220 or two or completed 153 have been occupied with 185 people in those units and then 12 shelters all over the state um some that were not on the OEO system like there's a veterans facility in the Bradford area um came to us looking to make improvements to their uh to comply with CDC guidance um so it's had a tremendous impact um and I'll take you through a few of them some of you may know that the board actually turned down a proposal from the city of Burlington to use shipping containers as housing um and our board simply felt that was not an adequate proposal it was on a site that the mayor would have had to use emergency powers for zoning and they would have had to get moved and that was a good decision because what happened is uh we turned that down in August in October we approved a purchase in Champlain Inn which is both housing more people has another building nearby on the site that can be used for services and the property began to be occupied um in early December I think a lot of these folks were living in campers uh that the state had made available on the Burlington waterfront um so and uh so we're very happy about it um before the hearing began um Representative Triano and I were talking about uh the changes at a mobile home park that were made some years ago in Hardwick and uh with what we call zero energy modular housing and we are using that model again uh what you're looking at here are is a home that's being delivered to a mobile home park in Bristol in walking distance of the community um that's that is now about to be occupied the John Graham shelter is getting three of these homes uh there will be five more delivered including two to the park in Hardwick and several in Bradford uh over the next two months uh this is one that had a supply chain interruption and that's why they're not all in yet uh the manufacturer simply was not able in their usual timeframe to be able to source things like windows um or the heating systems um uh that make these facilities work um so well but they are zero energy units that are coming in let's move on to the next slide um this is the conversion of a John Deere dealership in on Woodstock Avenue in Rutland nine units sponsored by the um Rutland Housing Authority in partnership with the Medical Center this was the most substantial rehab we undertook uh there's a firm out of Brandon called Naveler and Breen that we've worked with in the past and they did in six months what would usually be about a 10 month 11 month build um they worked Saturdays they worked 10 hour days and they got the job done and we're really grateful for their their good work um and the partnership of the Medical Center and I should say for uh Representative Howard uh Graham will be broken on the school um the uh on Lincoln Ave I believe it is um in the next month or so and that will mean at the end of the year we'll have 19 more uh units of permanent supportive housing in the community let's keep moving Mr. Chair Mr. Chairman yes I would just may I just say I am so pleased and so thankful um they have done an amazing job on Woodstock Avenue and uh the school uh which was the old um um Catholic Great School is just going to be fantastic the location is great and I am so grateful thank you so much well thanks as always goes back to your constituents who actually do the work we get your their tax dollars back to them um so there's always a lot of discussion or has been in recent years about tiny homes down street housing Washington County mental health have a partnership with Norwich University which designed these tiny homes um the first one was delivered just about a year ago because of the pandemic Norwich students could not finish the second tiny home so we use CRF funding to get it finished and it's now been delivered um and represent of all oops thank you Gus uh our former mayor once promised us uh quite a few of these things so you do you know if there's anything else in the pipeline um I don't know um these are not as inexpensive as we hope they'd be uh even with the student labor um they're nearly as expensive as the zero energy modular homes that I just I showed you a a few minutes ago that are coming out of Maine and and are less than half the size so uh this is going to be a tough thing to make money at um if we want them to be energy efficient for our climate which is what these these homes are but it's it's been a great experiment and I know that um both down street and Washington County mental health are very happy that they're uh that they've been able to be completed and and this unit was these units were actually on donated land from the former mayor of Barrie he purchased uh he purchased the house and property that was not in good condition that was fairly bladed and and they were able to rezone and get this built like this so um he's been very he's been very on top of um the needs in his community the area is quite blighted and so it anything that like this is very welcome yep let's move on this is a facility uh from a group in Brattleboro called Ground Works um that will be both um that will provide shelter uh and they are adding bed partitions touchless faucets ventilation system um that will uh this is one of the projects that um is benefiting from the fact that the feds extended the deadline um otherwise would not have been able to be completed let's keep moving along um again this is the John Graham shelter in in virgins um and again the new flooring that are new countertops that are easier to clean touchless faucets dishwashers new bathrooms acrylic dividers and and ventilation system and I really should call out um the Veron Energy Investment Corporation and Efficiency Vermont which became the consultants to help people um figure out how to what kind of ventilation systems they needed and how to get them installed and they did really good work and while I'm um saying good things about others I just want to note that uh the folks at the environmental board adopted emergency regulations and that Woodstock Avenue project you saw a moment ago would not have been possible if they didn't um do everything in their power to keep it on schedule and and they did a great job of that by using their emergency rules to help speed along the permitting process and ultimately no neighbors uh opposed it um which also made a big difference let's keep moving along um one of the things that came to us at the very end of our awarding of funds was that uh the need for an isolation facility a quarantine facility for people who were ill uh we had converted one on the Shelburne Road for that purpose that was about twice as big as the Ho Hum in South Burlington and so this facility was purchased Champlain Housing Trust is operating it um it is mostly full right now which is not a good thing hopefully the the need for it will go away and it will eventually be converted to housing but that also allowed them to will to return Harbor Place to being used as transitional housing for homeless folks which has a greater capacity and greater need here's another um shelter that's gotten assistance in Rutland um helping victims of domestic violence and again the same sorts of things that we were allowed to do with CRF funding of uh touchless fixtures bathroom renovations um some additional uh outside space to allow for more social distancing in the facility uh and just want to note this is a pre-COVID picture not a COVID COVID times picture of people being close together without masks um let's move along this is the facility for victims of domestic violence that was purchased in Chittenden County by the Champlain Housing Trust uh steps is the operator of the facility and I think the plan is that after about five years they'll actually take ownership of the facility and again is sheltering adults and kids um this is a really interesting property in West in the village of West Brattleboro it's just a little bit of one street up from route nine owned by a woman her nineties it as you can see from the dining room it's had some really grand days it's a little bit tired but a lot of rehabilitation's taken place and it's going to provide 27 apartments in this building there's also it comes with a total of 17 acres so we think ultimately this will be a great area to help the West Brattleboro Village develop and expand on some of the other acreage so a few years ago and I would encourage the committee again and perhaps with some of your colleagues to hear from Dr. Megan Sandell from the Children's Health Watch in Boston coined the phrase that housing is a vaccine it prevents all kinds of illness if uh if we had more time today I would talk more extensively about this but if you think about what it would be to be a diabetic and not have a place to refrigerate your medicine if you understand how disruptive it is for kids uh in their social emotional development when they have no place to that is secure to live and what it does to family dynamics when when a family loses their housing you understand as we all now understand as a result of this pandemic that people just can't live safely without housing and without a reasonable amount of quality housing meaning space our shelter capacity is smaller now than before the pandemic even as we have added a couple shelters so I think as I as I finish up this report on what we did with CRF funding I just want to again emphasize we have a supply problem in Vermont and we need more units we need to bring units back online that's been part of our historic work and last thing I just want to say is a way of um this is a conversation I had with your outgoing chair uh from Danville representative toll there at the beginning of December when the feds had not extended the deadline we told the state that we would not be able to use 1.35 million dollars um we would certainly like to put those dollars back to work and we will would like to work with this committee um whether through our regular funding or through any new assistance the feds offer us and right now there is no capital on the table uh in the current relief bill that just passed but hopefully there'll be a further relief bill we we will look forward to working with you to continue to renovate housing and to expand the supply and to convert facilities that can be converted to housing so I'm going to stop there Mr. Chairman I know you have other witnesses I'm happy to answer questions you have one from representative Trinnell it's just briefly gusty do you have any reports on the rural edge project in downtown St. Johnsburg uh there was one picture of uh oh you mean the what the big project downtown yeah the new avenue hotel um it's under construction it's due to be finished I think next fall and that will provide 40 apartments and again a quarter of those apartments will be reserved for people who've experienced homelessness yeah and I just want to conclude by saying um you guys took the ball I'm ran with it um just a fantastic job and viewing all this is just heartwarming well again we've been very fortunate to have your support and the committee's support and your influence on the appropriators is really appreciated I think as you look at our work beyond uh the re beyond the CRF funding we in and going back to the housing revenue bond but historically we've been able to have big impacts in pretty much every downtown around the state we're just about to open a building in downtown Springfield um that was a wreck and it's right in the center town and it will provide as you're going to see in downtown St. Johnsbury some good commercial space along with 20 apartments four of which are and have already been occupied for homeless youth so lots of good things happening I think for a representative wrong we've just opened some housing um in virgins again it's mixed income but with some housing reserved for people who've experienced homelessness you know I know several people who've moved into that they're very grateful that the opportunity for reasonably priced housing in the area so no that was that was a great project representative Hango yeah I just want to build on what representative triano just said when when we first heard that we were going to be doing this these projects with 200 plus new units I thought to myself how is that ever going to happen by the end of 2020 and I just my hat is off to you for getting this done and I'm just amazed at the numbers that you have posted there for us so congratulations and thank you for all your hard work well thank you and there we know and you asked lots of good tough questions and I really appreciate it because it helps us do our job better when we have to think hard about it we know St. Albans is one of those areas that needs more help we did give the shelter some help but they had another building that they wanted to buy and then and you may know this story they did the environmental review and some questions were raised that made the board feel like there's no way we can do this by December 30th I was just on the phone with a couple people the other day that now that we have another year would like to take another shot at that so again if there are more resources there are several parts of the state where we didn't have nearly as big an impact as we would have liked to there were hard negotiations in the Hartford area and here in central Vermont where I live and ultimately you know we do work between willing buyers and willing sellers and in those cases the sellers were just not ready to sell properties that could have been converted so there are more opportunities out there if we can get the federal partnership that I know we all need to make those things happen and we look forward to working with you on it but thank you for your words and I really appreciate that you're going to circle back around with the shelter in St. Alvin's that's great thank you welcome representative Blumlee hi um that was a great presentation uh and I I just have a kind of a maybe a process for Tom I mean question for Tom but so you talk about this 1.3 million remaining right and so what what who decides where that goes how is it this committee that you know um looks at that I'll stop there no um once the once VHCB offered back the 1.35 that was kind of vacuumed up into the larger funds people were the administration was constantly reclaiming funds we'll hear this from Richard and we'll hear this from Mora as well where money was taken back in because because of the deadline because it had to be expended by the end of the year there was a real um people had to make decisions on whether or not we would be able to expend the money VHCB looked at this print you know looked at this 1.35 and said we're not going to get this done and so it re I guess it reverted back to the administration um and they would they made a request they they they aggregate the money that they were able to sweep back in and then they would make requests of the Joint Fiscal Committee who met frequently during November or December to try to um reallocate that money so when I reached out to um the committee or to Adam Greshan who was the finance director for the administration you know he was by the time by the time the extension happened at the end of December he was like the money's kind of gone or that those particular funds were just put into another disbursement so um so that's basically been the process I mean obviously if we knew back in June July September October November that that the program could have been extended like we were hoping um that money wouldn't have been returned at that time so now we're going to start learning next week about the money that Gus is talking about the federal funding that was allocated towards at least towards rental arrears we heard about it this morning a little bit um but we need to find out number one what we can use the money for what the treasury rules are going to be how do we get the programs that we just that just expired going again um so that is so we're going to be doing a lot of learning about what we can do with the money that's forthcoming but the money that is gone is um at least to my knowledge is gone Mr Chairman my understanding is that it still needs to be allocated or reallocated by the with an agreement between the general assembly and the and the administration so I don't will jump on it yeah then we'll jump on it you know but I I don't think that that debate is over I think that you and your colleagues will hear about other valuable programs uh where the administration may want to reallocate it but I don't think that it is all gone yet at least that's my understanding but that would be good yeah that would be something that we'll we'll focus on um yeah does that is that clear enough representable I mean as clear as I can be representative Parsons yeah thank you for all that information I just wanted to get my cap to you to the part that you your your group played in the uh another aspect the Tucker Mountain Forest which is quite literally my backyard and concerning being able to conserve that land for the people in this area was fantastic um one question I had the efficiency modulars yeah what is the price of one of those um I believe all in with a solar package um and um you have to have a pad and everything and and and the foundation the frost wall foundation or whatever it is that's required you're probably up around 170 180 thousand dollars the unit itself is much less expensive than that but when you add in all the others now from my perspective there's actually also a Vermont there's a main company we're doing business with right now we actually started this effort with a Vermont company uh they were booked out through spring so we couldn't order from them these homes are much more comparable to actually a stick built single family thousand square foot home than a mobile home uh you can buy a new mobile home but it won't be nearly as energy efficient in the and get it installed in the probably 80 90 thousand dollar range with all all this yeah all right and Gus one one last question for me um you said that 185 folks are now housed in in the housing that that was purchased and and renovated one of the things part of the conversation last year was was my experience when I was on the board at Down Street when we opened up the new building in Barry was that there were four or five units specifically for P for families or for individuals who were experiencing homelessness and they required 20 applications in order to fill those those small numbers because of the the way that the finances weren't working out for the other some of the other folks um do you are you aware of any of the similar difficulties with the with housing the number of folks that we've housed already or um or is that a question for for the locals um I'm I'm gonna try to answer it but I'm gonna also let other people who are with you today add to or subtract from or tell me I'm wrong um we are more and more making use and Jen presented in her slides on the coordinated entry system um there are sometimes people who go through that system and then go to Richard Williams shop to get a voucher that for some reason they're not eligible but it seems like in most of the state it's been working better than the experience that you just relate of it takes five applications to get one person qualified um I don't think we'd be at 185 if it was a five to one ratio today um the continuums of care are locally driven entities some of them are better staffed and more professional and some of them are a little bit more funky and grassroots but from my perspective one of the things that happens in a crisis and I spent years on the volunteer fire department is everybody figures out we have a crisis and we got to work together as fast as we can and I know in Richard's shop they've been doing just tremendous work turning applications around and moving approvals as almost as quickly as anybody possibly could so so I don't think it's as difficult as what you described but I'm sure that there are parts of the state where it's funkier than others okay thank you and thank you um Gus and Jen for that we will be having I mean when we get done with all three if there's more questions we will come back to you unless you need to go and then we will certainly have you back for a larger scale conversation about the work of BHCB and what its priorities are for for the coming year beyond the COVID response okay thank you so much mr. chairman thank you um Richard Williams welcome chairman uh the gentleman that I am uh I would like to offer uh more to go before me because I don't know what's going on because I can't see my video and uh so I don't think you can see me we can actually yeah well that's good because uh I still offer that to more because I don't know myself not that I want to see myself uh you know the challenging times on on zoom um yeah so maybe that's better if you can't see me but uh so but I still offer more more to go before myself all right more and suggest uh Richard that you uh leave the meeting and come back in that sometimes corrects those sorts of problems that's what I was going to do Ron I thank you that you know my IT guy always says well if it doesn't work shut it off and turn it back on again so that's what I'm going to do so thank you sorry for the inconvenience it's okay thank you for uh thank you for preceding your time makes it feel like the senate the other night um representative mora collins um welcome and I see that you do have your your uh well it's chat I'm not sure what his role is here so yes um thank you Richard always a gentleman um which we call him a gentleman and Gus referred to him as a king of rental assistance so all those things thank you committee my name is mora collins I am the executive director of the Vermont housing finance agency um it sounds a lot like the Vermont housing and conservation board but we are very different and we're not trying to confuse you with all these Vermont housing acronyms but um we may so uh we will help you um see the differences I did want to introduce my co-worker Chad Simmons Chad uh is on day five of working with us um he is our housing policy and engagement specialist and will if we were in the building uh he would be with me and I would be individually introducing him to you all um as he's going to be in our work session um and so I may follow up with you individually over email just to um make some connections there um so uh VHFA the housing uh finance agency um we are a similar to VHCB in the sense that we are a statewide quasi-governmental housing funder of affordable housing I'll point out some of the ways we stand out and give you a little bit of overview of VHFA similar to Gus what Gus did for his organization and then I'm going to talk about the mortgage assistance program that this committee supported through the CRF funding um VHFA is unique because we have a large mortgage uh program that serves between depending on the year between about 10 or 15 percent of the state's mortgages or actually VHFA mortgages um it's a small modest market share because we only lend to lower income borrowers mostly who are first-time home buyers so our our market is really small and narrow our average borrower earns just around 60 thousand dollars and they usually get a mortgage for about well the home that they buy is usually about a hundred and sixty five thousand dollars so these are um modest for years we've been talking about um the need for affordable home ownership and the need to move into affordable homes um and to own those homes so that uh young folks have a place to land and and stay in Vermont as well as um households who may be downsizing and the like and the reason why the need for affordable home ownership is so critical is that as rents continue to rise year after year it becomes harder and harder for folks to save up for a down payment that they may need to buy their home and this is especially true for households led by a person of color in Vermont we can see this play out because while the state and the white home ownership rate in Vermont is 72 percent so most Vermonters are homeowners it's only 42 percent of households led by a person of color will own their home so nationally we see the same numbers and we know that these statistics of the black and and person of color household home ownership rates are far below whites and what we see is that the home ownership rates for people of color are actually below the levels where they were in the late 60s when the Fair Housing Act was passed and that was when uh the nation decided that it would finally stop overtly lending based on race so we know that home ownership is the best way to close the asset gap between white households and people of color which makes focusing and having conversations around home ownership especially in a rural state like Vermont with such a high home ownership rate overall so critical. Additionally VHFA works and supports rental housing through issuing bonds that's why we're separate from the state we issue bonds usually on a tax exempt basis where investors don't have to pay taxes on the interest that they earn and VHFA holds those on our balance sheet which is separate from the states so we use that investor money that we've raised by selling those bonds to pay for the mortgages I was just speaking of and also to make much larger mortgages uh to the developers of affordable rental housing most of which are the non-profit partners that you heard Gus speaking about and that's why I appreciated that Gus said in so many I knew Gus is just incredibly eloquent and always has the best presentations of you know the pictures of the projects and I knew he would be telling stories of those housing developments and I really appreciated how he called out that often VHFA was a partner on those because often we either had a loan on those projects which we can offer those interest rates below the market rate which helps keep the rents low because if you're paying less on your mortgage then you need less to as for rent and the loans that we make can either be short-term construction loans that just last the 12 or 18 months it takes to build a building or it can be 30 year permanent loans that help like I said keep the rents low by keeping the ongoing cost of that building as affordable as possible. Additionally we administer a tax credit program there are federal tax credits how federal tax credits work is way beyond the scope I don't think Richard would have ceded that much time to me it's way beyond what we could cover today it's probably way beyond what any of you are interested in but the important thing to know is that federal the federal tax credit program what I want to say about it is that it is the largest source of affordable rental housing capital dollars that the that the federal government puts to support housing so Vermont being as innovative as we are in 2000 saw the tremendous success of the tax credit federal tax credit program that was created in the late 80s and it decided to copy it and create a state tax credit program that we administer um and that state tax credit program originally funded creation of rent housing um and then years later it was expanded to pay for the creation of affordable home ownership homes because there's not a lot of programs that support the creation of starter homes and and lower priced homes after tropical storm Irene the program was expanded again and now there's a statewide effort to purchase old energy inefficient mobile homes and replace them with highly efficient maybe zero energy modular maybe just energy star rated highly efficient mobile homes so we're taking homes that really are a drag on those homeowners and giving them a more affordable option and finally about five years ago the legislature expanded the state tax credit program to create a down payment assistance program that vhfa administers and that gives us the ability to provide a zero percent interest loans to first-time home buyers who get a vhfa mortgage and it helps them with that down payment assistance as i said which is the primary barrier folks have to moving into home ownership um so it was with that background and knowledge that this committee knowing um that vhfa worked a lot with participating lenders in the state um who offer vhfa loan programs um and worked primarily with lower income borrowers that you all chose us to be the administrator of a mortgage assistance program which i always refer to as math um and there was five million dollars of crf coronavirus relief fund money that went to support um more mortgaged homeowners who may be at risk of foreclosure because of covid economic impacts and i too would also just really like to thank you for the endorsement and support of choosing vhfa to play this role this is exactly in the sweet spot of our mission this is why we are here this is why vermont has a housing finance agency to step in during times like this when you need a equitable statewide program to be run and to ensure that it's going to reach the demographics that i know the legislative intent um aimed to to hit i sent ron a pdf that's up on your website um that i i didn't do the pretty slideshow that um my peers did but um you can see there some information about what happened with our program again we were awarded five million dollars similar to what you've heard you'll hear from each of us today it was in um early november we started to see that uh with the timing constraints of having to expend all the money by december 20th because actually the state gave us if you remember you all gave us a 10 days less to make sure that if we had to shuffle money between the 20th and 30th we could so by early november sharing the state's goal of not wanting any dollars to be returned to the feds unused and knowing that there was tremendous need all over the state we returned about 300 000 dollars to the state and so in the end we spent 4.7 million on this program we were able to help 645 households um the median income of those households was just over three thousand dollars a month so that means that their annual income was about 36 000 so we put an income limit on this program and were able to serve very low income households um i'm very proud of the regional dispersion of um the this assistance uh at the bottom of page one you'll see a link to our website and that um was a page that we created uh in mid july when the program was first launched and we would update it every week that we had applications for this program and so every week you all the media the state could look and see who is applying for this money and and what the needs were and what the demographics of those being served were and um so we had a we have a chart there where you could see each county of the state and how many mortgaged homeowners live in each county and compare it to how many applications we were getting from each county so we could early on see where we were over or under serving homeowners across the state what we saw early on um was actually that ruttland county through no reason that i can understand or get to the bottom of but we slightly underserved ruttland county representative howard it's important for you to know i know and so seeing this back in august we immediately adjusted our marketing budget and um did some direct targeted um outreach to ruttland county and tried to really work to get that number up which we were able to do um i don't i don't want to overstate this underserving it it was actually quite modest but um we were pleased that we were able to track this kind of information every week and adjust the program accordingly one of the surprises of running this program um was the the length of time that that people were in mortgage arrears how long they had not been paying their mortgage it was a requirement obviously um that uh people proved that they had a covid related need for this assistance but over half of the households we served um had well let me see it was about 66 percent of the households we served owed more than six months of back mortgage payments and so i remember testifying to you all last fall and summer and every other time because your session never ended it felt like um that i kept calling this a mortgage assistance program and i really was nervous about calling it a foreclosure prevention program because i didn't know who was going to apply and i didn't know if we would be using this program to give folks one or two months of assistance or if this would really be um preventing a foreclosure and since our state has a foreclosure moratorium currently and a lot of federally backed mortgages all are under a foreclosure moratorium i wanted to be um clear that technically you can't even start a foreclosure right now so can we call it a foreclosure prevention program if it's impossible to begin foreclosure proceedings that didn't feel um fully transparent but now that i see who we've assisted i feel far more confident in saying this was a foreclosure prevention program because if you have a forbearance first off only um 65 percent of the people we assisted have a forbearance agreement and a forbearance agreement if you haven't ever entered into one of these yourself um is an agreement where your mortgage lender says it's okay you can skip a couple payments um and we will uh figure out how you're going to pay us back for that later but we understand that there is an economic hardship causing you to not be able to pay us for a little while um the federally backed mortgages thankfully have for the most part dealt with this in a very ethical humane respectful way which is if a mortgage holder has a forbearance and they skip six months of mortgage payments the lender will tack that on to the end of their loan and just extend the term without changing the monthly payment when that forbearance agreement expires so if my mortgages do in 2046 now maybe it's going to be due in 2047 i'll figure that out in 2046 you know um it's not going to impact me today or risk my home uh what we worry about is for people for lenders where they aren't under the same kind of um federal rules and instead when the forbearance period is over the lender will sometimes often pre-covid days would modify that loan and make a payment plan so that those missed mortgage payments get paid back sooner meaning if i've been paying six hundred dollars a month for my mortgage now for the next couple years i may have to pay seven hundred and fifty dollars or more and that may push someone so that their housing is unaffordable and now they're at risk of not keeping up with those mortgage payments and going into foreclosure into the future even if they weren't at risk of foreclosure in this moment but we know that two-thirds of the people we've helped that we we paid for they owed between six or over a year worth of past mortgage payments so there are many examples of borrowers who were in the foreclosure process and then we have been able to with this assistance cure those back payments that were owed and get them current so that they will be able to emerge from this crisis in a better more sustainable position and so when the foreclosure moratorium lifts which i have no advanced knowledge of when that's going to happen because that's up to the governor but when that happens um we those households those 645 households will be in a much more stable secure position as a result of the program that you all created um so there were um those of you who are used to having me testify um will know that um not only do i love data not only do i always ground everything in numbers because i get nervous about hearing anecdotes and acting as a result of them but i like to ground myself in numbers and um similarly i feel like it's only fair for anyone administering public funds to hold themselves accountable and reflect on their experiences of administering a program even if it's just a six month program like this was and so um there were several lessons learned um that vhfa uh has reflected on we were very proud of the fact that we translated our application guides um into nine different languages um i want to be the first one to admit that vhfa has not done what it needs to programmatically with vhfa's programs um around language translation and that's an active task that we are looking at this year to turn more of our regular mortgage lending program guides um into uh various languages not having a lot of experience having done this we invested to translate um our information into nine different languages and in the end those guides were downloaded over 100 times by unique users and so that tells me that that investment is worth it that we that's one of the reasons we are probably able to serve a more diverse um uh lower income and um higher larger family size population and um so that was one thing we also worked in partnership with the state's home ownership centers um most of which are administered through the nonprofits that uh Gus pointed out on that map there are home ownership centers around the state that serve every corner of the state and partnering with those organizations helped us make sure that we were reaching folks who um had been through their pre-purchase education programs in the past and also gave us a local contact so if someone needed help filling out an application needed a paper form needed computer access to apply anything like that there was an organization that we um were financially supporting in order to make sure that those needs were met we did the same thing with uh Vermont legal aid with AL yeah ALV the association of africans living in Vermont as well as uh Vermont center for independent living who works with people with disabilities there are in in wrap up i'll say there were a few policy lessons that we learned um that i wanted to share with you all and the first i think i've i hope i've um delivered which is that this committee supporting the creation of this program and and um creating it the way you did really was able to stabilize hundreds of Vermont homeowners and prevent homelessness and foreclosure for so many Vermonters across the state this served a low income population and as i said it was a more racially diverse um larger household size and uh more likely to be disabled than the general population so we really served um a part of the our community that has been hard hit by uh covid and i hope you all are proud of that looking toward the future i know the if it's not the first question that's asked it'll be someone's question today which will be do we need to continue this kind of program into the future and i will say yes i do believe that there will be ongoing needs i think that the economic fallout of um the coronavirus i can't see the end in sight i'm i'm told there's a vaccine you know that will get to us all but the economic impacts are very different than um things like vaccines and treatments and all that um i cannot stand in front of you though and estimate what the level of that need would be so i'm not here with a specific ask in fact if you remember i want to call myself out on the fact that i was wrong in my estimates of how much assistance i thought would be delivered um there were our 45 000 low income Vermonters who have mortgages and i was thinking well if only 10 of them applied for this program that'd be 4500 applicants i mean i did not think that the five million that was being allocated was going to be enough and it ended up it was enough so what happened i think it's those forbearance agreements and it's the national um freddy and fanny backed mortgages as well as um some other government backed mortgages have blanket said okay for our loans which is um the majority of loans nationally and in vermont folks don't have to make mortgage payments for six months and if six months isn't enough they can ask for longer up to 12 months of skipped mortgage payments and so if that's the case that is really working and that's working well what i what i don't know and i wish i had data on is how many of those forbearance agreements are going to lead to modified loan terms where the payment goes up for those homeowners and they then are in a worse situation for affording their home and how many are just going to extend the loan term and maybe that will be enough and be okay that's why i i'm not here to say i need x number of millions of dollars to continue this program i will say that there are um conversations next week when we talk about um the rental assistance that the stimulus program has provided for the state i have to say um if yes more of her opinion i really wish some of that was for mortgage assistance so that we could stand up a program modeled after what we've done and just have some money available um for households because every time we set some kind of deadline on the program that we administered over the last six months we saw that the demand went way up right as we hit the deadline we had lots of phone calls for the two weeks after the program closed saying i didn't know about it you know can i still apply can i still get in and the the time pressure of wrapping everything up by december 20th meant that we had to close the doors but that does not mean that we closed the doors because the need was met um so i guess that wraps up the high points i wanted to cover and i'm happy to answer any questions and i just want to before we go to represent of kalaki mora i just want to point out that or reiterate that this program was open to all uh mortgage mortgage orders that this wasn't simply people who had taken a mortgage through vhfa is that that's what we set out to do correct that yes thank you for clarifying that um the uh yes this was to all um mortgage doors the statute did say that we had to set an income limit and so we did set an income limit as a way of protecting the resources and serving those who were most in need um but we actually adjusted that income limit as the program went on but you're exactly right representative and that is um that was one of the internal growing pains that vhfa had was we were now working with a much larger universe of loan servicers across the country than we traditionally had uh worked with with vhfa's programs and um it sometimes took a long time to make initial contact with servicers in lots of different places of the world uh and to get a contact there because the mortgage assistance program uh did not send money directly to the homeowner but instead sent money um directly to the mortgage servicer the other point if i may before we go to a question i'm realizing um i didn't clarify was that this program because your mortgage payment often includes escrowed property taxes we were able to help people um with their property taxes because it was a part of that mortgage payment uh soon after launching the program we learned that we were unintentionally leaving out um mortgage homeowners who did not who chose not to escrow their taxes if they were falling behind on their taxes because it wasn't a part of that mortgage payment we didn't have a way of helping them so we quickly um fixed that internal problem and um we're able to provide property tax relief to homeowners who had mortgages by paying and we were able to stop several tax sales as a result of that which could have led to the homeowner losing their home and that was something that came as you said came up after we left and after we were finished and um you reached out to uh senators or i can deny anyway and then the administration and we were able to adjust it so that the rules allowed that um the flexibility in the rulemaking was enough to to allow that to happen which is a great plug for a precursor to the conversations we'll be having um about the future rental assistance that will be available in vermont that to the extent that the statute can be clear about the goals you would like us to achieve with affordable housing when you're working with long-standing partners like vhfa vhcb dhcd and the state housing authority you can trust us that we will adjust and modify programs to meet the needs of um the residents that we see and sometimes it is easier to be a little lighter on those details so that we can learn from experience and adjust accordingly and then again come back to you with the data to explain to you exactly why we made the choices we did and and to hold this accountable through that way i'm not trying to say write us blank checks i'm just trying to put in a plug that there were so many lessons learned that none of us could have anticipated by rolling out what's the total housing assistance like eighty five million dollars within six months i mean i'm sorry but the flexibility was critical and i know that it was appreciated by all of us representative kalaki thank you for your patience sure and hello morah thank you for coming and welcome to chat um yeah you know your success is breathtaking uh because as we checked in along the way you were you were like saying i don't know if we're going to make this and then when you when you kept shifting at your responsiveness and the results are amazing but to me it it it really shows a problem that was pre-covid as well that if if these mortgages were in six months before and now this money is used up and post-covid's not going to begin till at least summer and so the next six months the economy is going to still be stalled at best that we're going to go back to the whole problem that you've just you know did a remarkable job but it's almost like you stop the leak here but then you know it's like how are we going to do this and so as you look ahead um this must be a very daunting issue of both in rental raregers that we're not talking about today but in foreclosures like this money is now ended COVID is not ended poverty is not ended and jobs aren't coming back and so this precipice that you you showed us here which is amazing 648 homeowners uh you helped with you know just $4.7 million but the precipice is enormous now from six months from now well thank you and I absolutely agree with you I had the honor of serving on the governor's economic mitigation task force whatever that was called and it we did surveys of thousands of Vermonters and and wrote some reports and recommendations to the governor as a result of that because the the part of the task force I was focused on was um local solutions and community action or community response something like that um and that is exactly what we found across this um what's been happening over the past year which is that there there are new challenges but it's really just shining a light on the the chronic challenges that we have long known exist in our state and um are only getting more difficult you know the the problems that there are with not having affordable housing and the capital the stock of housing that Gus was talking about the lack of broadband is now a much bigger highlighted issue uh limited child care um limited opportunities um for parents to have flexibility with their time and all um you you're exactly right um and so it it is difficult situation to be in to feel good about what we have been able to accomplish but to know that um we were only to help able to help people through their December mortgage payment so come January 1st I do believe it's very possible there were 600 households who then were faced with the same scenario of what do they do now um I don't know if you all saw the second update that we gave to the state I well to those of you who were on the committee I remember um sharing this in September testimony with you but to the new members of the committee I shared probably a dozen single sentences that um we pulled out a just a handful of the applications for this assistance um talking about why they needed it and and when you hear these reasons why they need the assistance I can't imagine these reasons have gone away in the last um couple months meaning like before the pandemic I was a hairstylist at a nursing home but now I'm prohibited from entering the building and was unable to pay my bills with unemployment another one we're cruise planners all the bookings have been canceled their postponed there's no way for predicting when travel will pick up again we hope soon but we're actively um you know we're still planning uh when client confidence is improved um there's another one due to COVID-19 my children are home 24 7 increasing my home expenses for power heat and food um and it continues on um I'm not able to work through my sole proprietorship I've been told to stay at home due to recovering from cancer and have high blood pressure borderline diabetic I'm over 70 years old and have lung disease I mean these problems have not gone away because our program has ended these these homeowners are still diabetic and 70 years old and facing these challenges and so is the foreclosure moratoriums ongoing still both federally in state so there's is there a deadline that's been extended no matter where are we with this yep the um the national um eviction moratorium goes through the end of this month so far our state moratorium continues to um keep reaching out farther than the national ones do so I pay more attention to the state one um and so um it and it will be spreading mac mortgages and stuff well so the yeah the so the for the moratorium mean you can't begin eviction proceedings um it is you know 30 days after the state of emergency expires which as you know keeps getting extended by the governor the um those forbearance allowances of fanny and freddy um they are still in effect and I need to double check how much longer what the what the farthest out date is I have to tell you it gets really complicated really quickly because we don't know whose mortgages are backed by who freddy or fanny and if there's other government backings like um the VA and the rest and so um it you have to kind of pull all these things together into one place and I get a little um light on the details and I have to ask others for help with that okay well thanks I first thank you for everything your staff has done it really is extraordinary deeply appreciate it they are an amazing team and now we have Chad to join it he's part of that amazing team all right we have a question from representative franow and I just want to finish up so we can get to Richard um so that he can fill us in on the rental or rearage program which was um um which was an over 20 million dollar program as well so yeah representative franow go ahead I just wanted to say um the property tax thing was a great catch more um you know when we were um giving when we were uh uh uh allocating this money to uh mortgage um protection I kept saying um you know if you can't pay your mortgage you can't pay your property taxes and you can still lose your property so that was a great catch and um and I will say again to you it's a great job we very much appreciate the work that you do and and we're glad you're here thank you thank you yes thank you mora and um welcome Chad I'm sure we'll connect with you soon enough um but mora thank you again for all that you've done to try to um help us set up the program help us understand the federal programming that's that that was happening and really um the having the outside parameters that you know the was integral and even yes we thought five million wasn't going to be enough um back in back in May and June but it turned out to be okay and I think part of our job next week starting next week will be um seen seen as you asked if we can make that money work for mortgages as well as for other um rental stuff so we'll we'll we don't want to ignore mortgages um it's the same attitude that we'll have towards the rental or rearch program that Richard is going to tell us about so thank you so much for coming in and we'll see you soon thank you um Richard can you see us yes chairman I apologize for that uh if everything else fails reboot your system and it seems to work so uh my apologies for that but uh I knew mora was all tiered up and ready to go and uh so I knew she could cover for me but that's kind of a scary thing if you can't be if you don't think that you're being seen and you're actually are so um gotta gotta work on that little problem I guess so anyway uh I want to welcome the new members to the committee and welcome back uh previous members of this committee uh I know it was I think in September I met with some of you folks it seems like only yesterday um the way our world has been working since uh since June and the Zoom meetings that we're all been patiently uh participating in uh here we go again so uh thank you uh just want a little background for the new members uh the rot lot legislature it was actually bill h966 uh which related to the COVID-19 funding uh provided assistance for broadband connectivity housing economic relief and that was actually signed into law on by Governor Scott on July 2nd uh 11 days after July 2nd on on the 13th from our state housing authority launched its program on behalf of tenants in need of rental re-reach assistance due to the COVID-19 pandemic uh I'm going to use RHSP because it stands for Rental Housing Stabilization Program just easier to say for me uh provided rental re-reach to landlords for the actual amount owed by the tenant or we had set some some limits uh Vermont State Housing Authority payment standards is a terminology used in a HUD federal program HUD Housing Urban Development the Section 8 housing choice voucher program uh we adopted those payment standards for this program we used whichever was less um what the tenant owed or uh the uh or the actual payment standard the primary goal of this program was to keep Vermonters housed during his public health emergency uh and I know you've heard Chairman Stevens uh talk about you know housing and health care uh they go hand in hand uh the primary goal was to keep folks housed by allowing them to keep their rented homes by granting back rent funds and avoiding terminations of Tennessee court evictions and homelessness the second goal was to compensate landlords for some of their losses due to the CARES Act judicial emergencies and stable eviction proceedings applications were processed on a first come first serve basis there were no uh threshold to apply was low this was to allow anybody that was experiencing a rental assistance problem to participate I know there was originally some concerns that you know high income individuals might be applying for the program that's not what we saw uh and someone who's high income households lost their jobs in the last six or seven months and needed some help so yes some money may have gone to some higher income households but you know it was needed uh to stabilize their housing so the the program's been active for a little over six months and uh we have we will spend our allocation we received 25 million dollars for this program in the end of October uh because we were required to analyze if we thought we were going to have any monies of the left that wasn't going to be spent because the administration needed time to have these monies returned and reallocated based on the applications that we were seeing at the end of October it appeared like there was going to be an excess amount of appropriation left over so the agency of commerce and community development through the department of housing and community development we returned three million dollars to the state of Vermont what happened after that was the applications increased substantially um we're now in a situation of not having enough funds to fund our program we believe we're going to be at least two and a half million dollars short and that will leave 1500 applications on the table that won't be funded some folks have suggested that we try to put this money into the new program we can talk about that but I can tell you the eligibility uh will be much different for the monies that Vermont will receive in fiscal year um or in calendar year 2021 so as Gus had mentioned I believe there is some money that has needs to still be negotiated I think would join uh fiscal uh and uh we would certainly hope to try to get that money back because I think folks right now with these applications need the assistance uh in not sure when the new money would be available uh but I'm thinking that's potentially late spring and not late spring but late winter early spring uh I think Vermont will have the money but the time we need to stand up a new program and uh may slow down the applications what what our numbers do prove is that many tenants have not been able to pay their rent during this current public housing health crisis and the landlords that are on the edge of losing their investments and their livelihood I just want to also this program underlined the continued need for affordable housing for all Vermonters and that's the importance of working with landlords large and small for for-profit and non-profit to stabilize the diverse housing stock needed for healthy healthy community one thing we learned and I've been here 47 years I've saw more people living in different types of rental situations that I didn't even know existed in the state of Vermont how many people are actually renting motel rooms uh or you know around the state of Vermont and that's their that's their source of housing it it's uh people renting rooms out to folks in there either in their own homes or in their own apartments uh it's it was just a eye-opener to see how creative people were but at also living in situations that I don't think that we would really like to see them living in in the second half of our program we really stepped up the outreach and that may be another reason why the applications increased but uh you know we used we used digital ads basically you know the the radio stations you know in the local newspapers and working through community and employer-based newsletters and also the library of spots really to get the word out and working with our you know community partners I believe that's um what may have uh increased the applications but what also happened is when we announced that we were closing our program on December 11th uh because all at this time we knew we had the processes money through by the end of December so that and then of course you know everything changed right after Christmas when the president finally decided to sign the budget which extended the program uh the program that we're currently in and ministering to December of 31st of 2021 had we only had this knowledge you know months earlier and knowing that we could spend more money we could probably have spent a lot more money than we have and uh so the last 10 days before we closed the program we received 3,500 submissions so again I think this demonstrates the need for this program for a continued program and uh we always tried to expedite the applications to get the assistance out as as quickly as possible we also um created a couple new programs in the last few months of this instead of actually there was a money to move program which paid uh we set up which paid the first months rent security deposit last months were necessary and uh we could provide rental payments through December to help families move into sustainable housing and and that was probably over a million dollars that we uh actually spent on that particular program we also came up with a program to help landlords a little bit with vacancy loss because they had units that were vacant they couldn't rent them they didn't have money enough to fix the repairs so we created a vacancy loss program for landlords who tenants moved out unexpectedly or were forced to absorb the costs that were on a unit due to the unforeseen vacancy and sometime tenant damage but what had happened a lot of times that we saw was the tenant might have moved out before the application was processed but the landlord had applied for the money so this this was a way to try to help the landlord out a little bit by paying for the vacancy loss we also worked very closely uh with uh Vermont legal aid uh Vermont landlords association and other attorneys in the state and we were able to set up a program to help settle back rent disputes out of court otherwise it would lead to eviction the uh uh so we entered into stipulation agreements with uh between the parties landlords and tenants and uh that was a successful program we also used a uh a statute 12 bsa 4773 which provides a renter a way to have a non-payment eviction case discontinued if the renter pays into court all rent due through the end of that current rental period including interest in the cost of the suit we made these payments to the trust counts at Vermont legal aid or legal services of Vermont and uh they get they were using those organizations that money uh made it into the courts and therefore stopping that particular eviction this can uh under the statute that allows uh uh out basically allows uh tenants to uh bring up their rearage at that time to stop the eviction so sometimes you know we see tenants you know the family members or their mothers or other family members or fathers you know will provide them some money to pay off the rent to to stop the eviction case and uh that was successful mediation services were developed in and ministered to the Vermont landlords association and what they did is they worked to settle disputes between the tenants and landlords without the involvement of the court system that uh they had access money to pay back rent it uh and uh allowed to maintain a stable Tennessee we had several several landlords and tenants take take a uh go through that process that service that was helpful and with this program we were there uh to settle it with the money so as we enter the end of this program uh my grant agreement actually ends on uh January 15th the department has has uh has applied uh will give us additional 90 days but all the money will be spent next friday we do ace a c a ch uh deposits uh we don't write checks all that money will be going out of here next friday which is about 1.9 million dollars into landlords uh direct accounts and then uh as i said we'll be out of money and there's still 1500 applications that we will be processing uh so we had several different uh we also i i guess i didn't touch on that you know the group one uh as we referred to him was where landlords were you know willing to accept uh the payment in exchange for not evicting a tenant uh for the same amount of period of time that they received for the period of time that they received money from the out of this program uh over 16 million dollars went into that uh in the group two was this is what i don't know sometimes i think it was referred to in testimony as recalcitrant tenants that landlords could not get the the tenant to participate this uh this uh allowed the the landlord to receive somewhere in the rearages uh but still retain the right uh to continue eviction when that moratorium is is eventually lifted i uh sent uh run some um some uh it basically the a report of this uh that you can take a look online i also included a rental housing stabilization landlord survey that we only put it up on i think wednesday and as of today we have 533 responses to that but but some of that information was uh was interesting to take a look at now this is based on responses that we're getting but uh what was surprising way was um what uh we'd asked to best describe uh what type of landlord they were and so we asked if you're a non-profit landlord or private or public housing authority but the majority of the people that responded was 93 percent over 93 percent were private landlords which amaze me and i agreed it's it's only 533 we sent out 1600 so you so we got about 25 response so that's not bad in about two and a half days so 93 percent were actually uh private landlords or property managers that responded to our survey about five point little over five percent were non-profits uh as i mentioned housing authorities were eligible to apply for in a rearage that was about one and a half percent the other surprising response was being is we asked um how many housing units do they did they own or manage and 49 percent of them responded that it was between one and four apartments or one and four units uh another 15 percent was between five to ten units so that's you know almost 65 percent of the folks you know were between one and ten units that they had now i i expected that we would see a greater response from the the larger number of units because as we knew there was large landlords were participating in the program there was non-profits with a lot of units were participating in the program so uh what that tells me is that at least so far with this response is that we reached the private landlord we reached a small private landlord and that's good for this type of program because you know honestly folks folks were really uh in need of this type of assistance it's a the another question we asked was how many of the rental unit households have used the rental housing stabilization program and the answer was about of these responses 53 percent have used this program in addition to an additional uh products on the 16 percent uh also uh answered this so a lot of these were just single units that applied for this so Richard um we have a question from representative Kolecki thank you Richard and the numbers are again astounding and the 20 almost 20 million dollars 9300 brawners did you find as more did about with how far back did the rental arrearages go and and what what did you i i know the average was like $2,000 per payment but what was your experience in this well the again the flexibility of this program uh did because this was a uh a health issue to prevent homelessness we were fortunate there was no time we didn't uh we were able to go back prior to march 1st and uh as as chairman Stephen says he had heard 18 months uh i saw something that actually went back before that so what that tells me is as as i think it came out in the testimony is that pre-covid people were struggling to pay the rent here in Vermont and landlords have uh surprisingly have not taken action against their tenants uh you know through an eviction process to uh and that that that was another amazing uh uh piece of information that we learned that how you know and again we were able to help some of those landlords clear the clear up those uh severe arrearages okay and so looking forward like what do you imagine the program should be regarding the uh the new 200 million dollars that the state of Vermont is going to receive is is that what we're talking about um well i i i think yes on the short term but i think also is more the more holistic thing like we we've now see there's a paradigm shift in all of this that the that was there before COVID and we it's just illuminated the problem and so not only how do we take the first step with the 200 million but longer term how does Vermont begin to rethink keeping people housed well this is just kind of at the top of the head and i think it's been presented in this committee before uh there has been studies by Vermont legal aid and um that study basically was demonstrated that that the amount of rearage um that was associated with eviction was just about the amount of money that we paid on the average for rental rearage so a lot of those evictions people are losing their housing for you know $2,000 uh so i think that suggests that there might be some type of program going forward to try to continue to stabilize you know families the need you shouldn't okay you shouldn't lose housing over $2,000 in my opinion i appreciate that thank you and appreciate your work and that's a report that we can post again um that was done by legal aid and the Vermont landlords association and and again the difference there was um you know if you could solve the problem for $2,000 rather than the $7,500 to $10,000 of legal fees that it costs without that um why wouldn't we um you know and we we fought hard for some funding in 2019 and we were on our road to fighting a you know a really uphill battle to try to get it funded uh in 2020 before COVID and so it's just something to it's something to um again once this is all done Richard um do i have three i have three questions lined up here um my question quickly will be can you is there any way to delineate with the 1,500 people who are left um and they're not left but the 1,500 people whose applications you can't fund right now because of the money that you gave back um about what you may know about what the changes and qualifications are going to be and those who may not be able to it can do you have those numbers yet or or we're still working on that but i i can tell you that uh the eligibility uh for the families would definitely be different we'll definitely have to serve households uh below 80 percent of income area medium excuse me uh and there will be a preference for serving individuals at 50 percent of area medium there also be um which we you know the department housing community development are prevering a lot of questions to be submitted to treasury and a lot of us had input into some of those questions because reading the act they use terminology that's not clear uh and of course right now the challenge for the state of remont is that you're working with a current administration that's going to you know be leaving uh office in 12 days and a new treasury coming on a treasury coming on on january 20th will there be some additional flexibility uh with a new administration yet to know but you still have the act and so you gotta you know whatever that the act is it creates the guardrails and uh entities will have to you know drive between those guardrails so yeah um so the there will be definitely other tests uh and uh it has to be experienced or at risk of experiencing homelessness uh you know so what yeah those definitions mean so we have a lot to work out uh mr chairman and a lot of questions my concern personally it's going to slow the application process down because if we have to do you know means testing and we weren't doing means testing as I said but our current program uh our uh internet um you know email that we have set up for this particular program and our call center we have is being flooded with inquiries already from tenants and landlords saying this is program going to be continued and how soon can you get the money to us the some of the challenges that we had with our current program is that landlords and tenants could reapply so what was happening towards the end is that we're getting applicant as soon as the first of the month passed we got an application for rental assistance so that that uh that added additional workload for the staff and stressed in order to to try to get those applications out there appears to be at least with the new with the calling a new emergency rental assistance uh there appears to be uh that we can do reoccurring payments uh and may be able to enter into longer term agreements 12 months up to or in additional three months if housing stability is necessary those one of those things that we need to understand what that means but if we can enter into our longer term agreement it'd be like providing rental assistance we can do that on a monthly basis once it's loaded in the vendors that's not a challenge but I think there will be additional requirements to to look at the situation to make sure that the the application there's been some some cause near household that requires them to apply for this this rental assistance where there wasn't under the old program so you know they're going to be more questions obviously asked of the applicants yeah right I have three questions and I just am conscious of the time it's 3 24 I want to make sure we finish up as soon as we can representative Howard then hang go then try and I'll thank you for your patience thank you and thank you Mr. Williams for your testimony um the rental payments were they sent directly to the tenant or to the landlord this particular program they it went to the land lord it did go directly to the landlord okay thank you because I've had questions about what if the tenant receives the funding and doesn't put it towards their rent you know then what recourse does the landlord have so thank you just to follow up that on the new money so it landlord can apply it has to see what currently what we did is we had two applications one the tenant one from the landlord and and basically we were asking the tenant information that they may not have wanted to share with their landlord we were asking what is the condition of your unit are there health and safety you know there was a long list of questions and sometimes you know honestly tenants didn't know what was a life safety issue or what violated Vermont rental housing code but they had checked it off but what that did allow us to do is to go and verify that working with our partners from out legal aid uh did a lot of that follow-up with the tenants to make sure uh and you know my own staff and whatever you know followed up and and just to drill down to see what a lot a lot sometimes it wasn't uh but sometimes there were code violations oh we were able to work to get those code violations fixed before we released any money so that actually you know the benefit side of that was you know housing got improved here yes so but the new program is going to allow the one application from the uh from the landlord and the tenant they both have to sign it but if the landlord doesn't want to participate the tenant can apply and unless Vermont unless the legislature you know adds on a condition and I don't know if we're again we don't know if that can be done or not then the the money would go directly to the tenant I see thank you very much you're welcome representative Hango my question is probably directed for you mr chair and maybe at a better time since we are running out of time but it excuse me it just has to do with the um shortfall and how to go about getting the money from the if there is any still left from the j joy excuse me yeah the legislative um committee on joint fiscal matters I think what I'll do this weekend is send an email out to the chair of appropriations um and to and to house leadership to at least advise them that that this is an issue and um and figure out how to reach out to the administration how what the best way to reach out to the administration is because again I I got a response to you know between Christmas and New Year's that oh that money's gone the BHCB money's gone sorry we're really good at spending it and you know it was done in good good spirits but it was um something that again Gus just reported that that may not be completely accurate that they may just it just may still be part of the the bigger pot so um we're going to track it down if we can because obviously with 1500 people not only different qualifications but just a different system um is going to delay that payment I mean I don't have any doubt that we could use the numbers to help but I'd like to see I think we'd all like to see that you know that money be spent in the way that um it was intended again this is a problem with not having the program extended four months ago thank you and uh Mr Chairman you know that is households so we know households are greater than one so this affects a lot of people um you know and I I I think one of the representatives mentioned you know priority for children and families a lot of a lot of a lot of families out there so yeah that 1500 represents a lot of a lot of runners thank you for that clarification I will use that that language when I contact um the folks above me represent of Toronto yes I'll try and be brief because I have to go as well but um I heard it may have been from Angela or Wendy um about some difficulties landlords were having getting um and I think you in part answered this Richard um getting them to um complete their own application um I had one landlord in my district who was not on speaking terms with this tenant um and was kind of uh unable to uh do this tool application process now maybe one application with both signatories on it will assist that but um I I do believe that it was a problem maybe larger than some of us I think it was Representative if I could just quickly respond and that's what the group to uh as we keep referring to is was to help those uh those landlords that could not get a tenant uh to apply uh but what it did is it didn't it didn't help you know it didn't cover it all but it gave them some some financial relief yeah thank you Richard and I and I think what came up as the as the fall and I do not want to underestimate we will hear from Legal Aid and from the Vermont Landlord Association as well because again uh one of the one of the proudest moments of of my time here was watching how well they sat across the table from each other last year and helped us shape this testimony I don't think I would have expected that from from advocates for the landlords and the advocates for the tenants to work together quite the way quite the way that they did to the point where they do have this mediation program set up that came online fairly late in the year but um once people started hearing about it people were people were subscribing to it and what a what a what a potential tool to use especially during the time of the rental moratoriums you know and for the amount of emails that I've received from other legislators who say well there are neighbors a landlord and they're having a problem with their tenants I mean the numbers are still small and that doesn't mean that the problems aren't real but that that um the number of people that this program helped again and again throughout the course of this year so far is just is just astounding to me and again grateful to have received the money from the federal government to fund such a program grateful to see that it works Richard so that we know moving forward that if we do ask ourselves to fund an arrearge program when this is all over and we're no longer receiving federal funding that we have the data to back up what was proposed in 2019 and that's that is something that um structurally I'm hoping that that's the difference that this pandemic makes um for us we did two quotes uh as from our survey as I said we sent out 650 uh to unique landlords and we received uh uh 410 comments from landlords that are willing to share their name on their comments but two of the comments was the first was the program was very helpful to good quality tenants who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 my margins as a landlord are small so every rent check matters since the state is not allowing evictions for non-payment or rent this helps to keep tenants current would rents seem critical the other comment was this program has been a lifesaver for my tenants and myself it has made it so that tenants are current would rent and has allowed us to stay current with our bills having the tenants current with the rent means that no matter what happens in the next few months I will be able to help them get or get through until they receive their taxes back and they will not have to worry about having a roof over their heads I think that says it all thank you for my allowing me to testify today and thank thank you Richard thank you Maura Jen uh and Gus and Chad for coming in today um we will be talking more about this pro these programs and uh what the future holds and understanding what um what's on tap with this 200 million dollars so committee just we will probably post next week's agenda as early as sunday perhaps not until monday ron and i are still working on the schedule for this week and then you know chip when when things start getting underway you know we'll be setting up the the agenda for the week as as we're rolling around again things are different than they would be if we were in the building so um but this will be a priority next week I believe we're scheduling in both senator lehi's office and the junk fiscal office to try to get an understanding of of what we've been talking about today again I will send an email out to leadership and if I hear back on anything about what the process would be for the for the both the 1.35 and the 3 million that uh we're talking about then I'll share that with the committee when when I hear back um more good for you to have a 36 000 dollar uh little bone uh plus side at the end of your program but we're we we this is this is part of our focus primary focus for the first month of the session I think is getting not just getting an idea of what's going on but how we can best get this 200 million dollars out into our um in our case to to people who need a place to live um and I'm sure that other committees will have the same pressures um the same ones that we saw throughout the fall so with that um Ron I'll stay on the line for a couple of minutes we can we can go off live when when we're done here everybody thank you for the first week everybody wow first week is done 17 to go uh more I think to chair more yeah yeah yeah I just would hate for people to think that VHF was not deploying that last 30 000 dollars it's not a lot of money but we got approval yesterday from the state that we can go back and pay a couple more mortgage payments with it so that money will be deployed in the next week or so so I just didn't want anyone to think that that um was extra in any way uh I'm yes thank you and and again like if we were to turn the clock back just a wee bit just so that we could have gotten that extension earlier then you know I think we all would have seen all of the programs that we're working that we worked on last year um kind of make it into the new year differently than than what happened so um onwards and upwards everybody make sure you get some rest if you haven't gotten the idea after three days of being online uh four days is even more exhausting sitting around um I as you could see I stood up after you know sitting all day long I just finally had to stand and um get some rest uh if you are so inclined to do more reading um you can certainly go back and maybe Ron can help you if you text him or email but if you go back to the previous biennium which you can easily do on from our from our web page and search any of these witnesses you will find the information that they were talking about about reports filed last year or um uh different pieces of information Ron can help you figure out where that might be uh and so just we will see you Tuesday morning um if you've looked if you've seen the schedule at all so Tuesday morning we meet on the floor at 10 a.m after that we meet in our respective party caucuses public caucuses that are held um before lunch and then we're back to our um our work we are going to meet with the education committee on Tuesday we're going to have a joint hearing with the education committee on um there was a piece of legislation at the end of last year that were regarded um the changes that were made to have a statewide teachers uh contract with respect to insurance health insurance and there was some legislation at the end of the year last year that we considered and passed on because of the timing that we will probably consider again soon there's a deadline of April 1st for some of this information because negotiations on the health insurance contract start again on starting on April 1st so we'll hear some background on that bill um not so much the bill itself but some background on on how we got to where we are with it um so that's Tuesday afternoon and uh again enjoy the weekend treat yourself sleep in late whatever it is you do to relax because um here we are in the middle of it again thanks everybody