 I'm not going to go through that beautiful introduction of Michael Monty again, but I will say that he has been dealing with a emergency crisis around homeless folks this morning. And I'm thankful that he managed to find the time to join us. So, Michael, take it away. Senator and I appreciate the introduction and I do feel that I can bring a range of different sort of perspectives to the development of housing and Vermont. I want to express my deep appreciation for the continued critical support for affordable housing that you all have provided individually as a committee and as from the state of Vermont we are sometimes the envy of others around the country, you have done a great job. Last night, the state supported COVID isolation quarantine facility, although we run in a formal motel which we purchased with funds from you was full for the first time. During this meeting I've been negotiating additional capacity motel to manage sort of the rise in COVID daily and at the community level. We witness enormous needs and enormous responses from our staff but also from the community as a whole. We have a policy at this fairly heady level, and at this very high level know that what that what you do matters in our communities in the neighborhood so I just want to express my appreciation and let you know that this work continues at this level but it continues really at the level of the street and on the sidewalks and neighborhoods and communities. I like to touch on several points. We believe that you heard Eric Farrell that the private sector has a role in addressing affordable housing we work regularly with largest developers contractors and industry professions and advancing the construction of housing of all incomes. We initiated I think all the senators from Chittenden County signed on to the building homes together campaign in Chittenden County, hundreds of privates and public officials have signed on to this campaign. Our goal is to construct 5000 new homes and apartments in the next five years of which 25% 1200 plus will be affordable. I know that we have lined up the opportunity to do so. We are poised to be able to build 900 new homes over the next few years, 200 of those will be home ownership. We do this in anticipation of additional resources, both at the state and the federal level. The state support for our work has been enormous and we urge continued support to be for bhcb for the programs of bhfa has is operating for folks bcp level as well. And some of the new initiatives and ideas that are out there we'd like to continue to have those conversations we believe that there's opportunities to do more. With the state developers ourselves we fully understand the economic challenges facing builders trying to bring house to mark the fact that developments costs exceed appraise values, prevents monopsly priced homes from being built, and forces builders to construct higher end housing, further stratifying the market, allocating funding for the difference between the appraisal and the sale price and the development cost makes good policy sense. And Eric was talking about 18% that's not unusual. Right now in this crisis that would be a great response from the state to support that work to get the pricing the cost of development down to a place where it meets the appraisal price, just that alone, would it be an enormous level of support. We urge you to consider supporting that program. We have supported on a national level have done so for several years the neighborhood homes investment act NHIA, which is in the build back better act, which we know is not yet been passed but nevertheless point of the program is important. It would provide about a third of the development costs of a modestly priced home. Similar to what a 4% tax credit does now for low income housing of multifamily rental properties. And in doing so really bring the price down fairly dramatically so that moderately in moderate income individuals can afford home. We are mirroring that program right now when you ski, you have 20 condominiums being constructed. Right now we're going to marketing in the next few days, a few days. We've been doing a lot of pre development but 20 condominiums, mostly three bedrooms, most with two baths for large families, mostly trying to market to the Windows key population. The program the new market tax credit program will provide us with a third of the cost of the development that housing, and with support from be a survey and BCB to state tax credits and through the BCB program. We're going to be able to price three bedroom, two baths homes for 1300 square feet from $150,000 to $165,000, which is an enormous value. When you really look at that you're actually able to provide home ownership to people at lower than the market rents currently in Chittenden County. But we must stress the importance overall of permanent affordability as a policy in all health and in our programs but including a home ownership. I think the committee has gotten a piece how does the shared equity home ownership program delivered I hopefully you get a chance to look at that we spent some time thinking through the various issues that people have talked about when they talk about shared equity and how it works. We have been really a leader in the shared equity program now for for a few decades. The real innovation of the program is that in exchange for the public support, our buyers agree to preserve affordability forever by sharing a portion of the homes appreciation at I think if it's paying forward, paying it forward, they give it as preserving the public's investment. Imagine if all the tax credit projects that we build over the last 30 years suddenly came up and we're no longer affordable after 10 or 15 years, it would be an enormous devastation to the rental market that we have By preserving home ownership in this way the way we do it, we provide affordability stability legacy, and in fact build well for individuals with this program right now we have 636 homes, having made affordable now. We have supported over 1200 new homeowners. Here's some of the highlights I want to do this as quickly as I can, knowing how much time I have. We just got a little bit more time because Nancy Owens had to leave so take your time. Well, I hope maybe she could send me her testimony and I could do it for help her out with Hopefully she said it to us. Okay, I hope so too. So let me say shared equity home and it helps renters become homeowners and delivers more economic security security we with CHT providing the down payment and lowering the monthly housing costs. Many, many more renters were able to purchase a home. As a matter of fact, owning a CHT home is less expensive than renting the same home at the current market rent in Chittenden County. The average monthly housing cost of a two bedroom share every home over the past two years was less than $1,200. The fair market rent for two bedroom home is over $1,600. And their housing costs are more stable with fixed mortgage payments and the ability to pay down mortgages and build equity and wealth. I think homeowners can become homeowners and accumulate wealth with little upfront investment from 2016 to 2020 about 150 shared equity homeowners sold their home and went on to become homeowners in a private market with an average proceeds sales of almost $40,000. So they're able to take that and then go ahead and and get into the private market. It offers mobility. The program acts as a type of stepping stone to traditional homeownership, 70% of our shared equity owners buying on the open market when they sell. Others sometimes fail, go back to renters, others are doing other things, but for the most part, many are becoming regular homeowners in private market because they can afford it. It creates a legacy for their children, creates a legacy for their family. When you become a shared equity homeowner, we don't check your income every year. If you make more money, God bless you, go on and save that money on the lower cost that we have and buy a home. That's what's really happening when we people do become homeowners to be able to sort of increase their pay increase their income and be able to sort of buy something else within the market. So family members can stay. We have have members who are homeowners who have been homeowners forever, literally decades. Our average sell happens within seven years, typically in a home ownership market at six years. So people stay a little longer, but for the most part they are typical homeowners. And locking the affordability. And it's really the most efficient use of public resources. It has the initial investment to build a permanent stock of affordable homes that can serve multiple generations of buyers. Let me just say this we sold 44 homes in the past year, of which 35 homes were homes that didn't need any additional public investment there are resales. We're only built 10 more. Once if we're able to build 20 or 30 or 50 more homes a year, the stock of permanently affordable homes will be there year after year. And that would be a great resource for a moderate income people I think I showed you the slide of the type of homeowner we have their working home they're working people. Very few folks are becoming homeowners now who are not working are able to show at least some level of capacity to be able to own a home. A study of safety program demonstrated it helps over five times more households by house than traditional homeowners or programs with the money simply given to the homeowner. It demonstrated that 357 households attain home ownership requiring just $2.2 million worth of investment as opposed to the $10.6 million which would be necessary. This is fairly complex numbers and that pretty straightforward I can provide you with the study to show how that initial public investment stays and provides benefits for years to come. And that's all I'm going to say about shared equities more I can say to certainly more details in terms of program. I'll be glad to do that and I'll stop on that I did provide you with that report I do want to say a couple of other things very quickly. We are working with the working bridges program here in Northwest Vermont United Way that they provide support to human resources departments in the areas largest employers. We're looking towards working on a solution to an employer based housing, which we believe will work. We've had some initial discussions with them we have some initial discussion with some employers about their needs and how we construct for something, and we've been actively trying to build something that will work for them. So I think we can go into the details about thinking about that. But in closing I just want to say once again appreciate your support to address the housing needs of the models. CSE is a multifaceted program we do multifamily rental. We do work in the homeless arena, we also do home ownership and I wanted to focus on the home ownership for you today. But thank you for the time. I just want to say briefly. I'm a big fan of shared equity housing. I still have in my garage someplace and I'll get it to you Michael, the original BCLT lease that I developed with Roger Cohen. That in part started a lot of this stuff. Thank you very much, but I, but I want to know what's stopping you from doing more. Well, again, it's resources. It's, it's nothing fan fancier than, than how we think about this if, if we had the, for instance, the NIH AI program and really focusing on the shared equity program. That provides about a third of the construction costs right of the development of a, again, a moderately priced home nothing fancy, moderately priced home. And doing that, we really are really one leg above if VACB has a program for home ownership of a very able to access that and also able to access state tax credits. And then the homeowners are coming in with a third of the cost of that development with the mortgage with their mortgages basically, we're able to put together something and that's what we did in Winooski. Basically, Winooski really mirrors that NHIA type program. But again, it's a, it's a decent amount of resource. If we had that low income housing tax credit program has been around for decades. It has produced, produced thousands of units of four or 5,000 units in the state of Vermont rate. We had something similar to that decades ago. We would have home ownership like create opportunities like crazy. It would just be, it would be, it would be that it would be relatively that easy. And, and I say that it's that easy knowing that it's hard to do these things. But that's the, that's the missing piece. We simply don't have that sort of public subsidy at that third of that third of the pricing of the homes. We, it is not, you can't use new market tax credit for housing. We're able to do it because we have established a business to build affordable home ownership. And that's how we're doing it. So it is not a new, not a very easy thing to do to use new markets, you can't just do it everywhere. And the NIHAA buildings attempting to do that is really creating that opportunity to provide that resource for the tax credit to make it work. Is there any, I know in the early years, there was concern that there may be resentment, or this is not the American way to, to give out this substitute to take it back at the resale of the home. There's a demand of putting guidelines and guardrails and strings on whatever we give money to folks, whether it's business or individuals to have good policy built in and attached to that loan or grant. Do you find in any of your share equity thing that people in any way wake up 15 years later and say what, you know, I, you know, this is not appropriate. Is there any benefit of all this appreciation. It happens it's very rare. It's, it's, I don't think it's, it's, nevertheless, not, not unusual for anybody to wake up 15 years later and say what what did I do around any kind of economic thing they might have been involved in. I don't, I don't think so. I can tell you that in the conversations we have with homeowners, they're almost almost always grateful. We, we, you know, we, we simply, we don't simply say here you go sign this paper and walk away and grab this grab the stuff. We sit there we provide counseling, we provide support, you provide education. We sit down with documents, you know this, they signed they signed they signed not only all the legal documents, but we asked them to sign a document that says, you know what you just did when you signed this you made sure that we're going to give you a big chunk of money. And in exchange when you go and sell you got to keep a chunk of the appreciation and the mortgage payments and the improvements you made to your house, but we're going to take that to 75% of it, and we're going to pay it forward to the next family who needs that home. You take that appreciation go buy a home. Take care of what you need to take care with the do whatever you want to do with that money retire into a subpoena retirement home or something like that but but that's what that's what we do we do it up front. People are for the most part grateful. And the other part of what we have is that all of those homeowners have asked to call this continue support, we have as a program and this is true of all the homeownership centers around Vermont. Once you become a, once you become a once you become a client once you become, you know, some customer you're always a customer. You can give us a call you can I think you came into one of our programs once and so call us if you need help but I'm just saying that's that's the status of anybody who's come to the program. So we will backstop home homeowners homeowners don't lose their homes. They don't go away with no with broken credit. They're in a crash. We didn't have any of that because we were working through people and working through their, their stuff and give me making sure that that we can give them the support they needed. That's simply part of the program that we have. And so that backstopping is really important. We very silver and Senator it's a good question do we get people regretting it. And I think as we talk to people we show in fact that people build do build wealth. Thank you that's great to know. Can you talk a little bit about the opportunity to convert commercial space to residential space in this environment right now. Do you want to Senator Clarkson want to speak about shared equity quickly. Sorry. I'm just I'm sorry. Did you want to. Sorry, you're right. I just wanted to ask you a question Michael. I'm sorry, shared equity. Either way, it's I'm you touched on something that we're exploring in, in, in different ways, which is partnering with businesses and nonprofits who desperately need housing for their workforce hospitals. I mean, in our area, I'm out of Scott knee with the former Windsor prison is a great example that would be a, I think a terrific redevelopment of that site. So I'm just curious you touched on this just lightly, but are you working actively with any input big employers or group of employers that would be interested in being partners investing in housing. Because I think that's an additional piece that we are going to be need to engage. I think we are. I mean, I would say that we are through working bridges. That program represents a dozen or so employers. We have met with the HR people we've met with handful of the owners. We've had discussions with other owners who have said, we're prepared to provide you with some some amount of money. In exchange, you could provide housing on a lower cost now. It gets more detailed than that because we want to be careful about the employee being part of the employer system at the no longer part of the employer system so we have some stuff to work through. But we think there's some ways of doing that that in fact get to at least on a not a long term basis but on a short term basis really supporting the employees as they need. Get house we have employers. We have employers in Chittenden County right now who have employees who are sleeping in cars. Right. The state has those. We need to do better than that right so we think there's some ways of us to do that on a more not on a sort of permanent basis but a short term basis to get people out of their cars into something that's affordable while they go ahead and they're able to find themselves in permanent affordable rental housing or home ownership. It'll require I think support from you all for some amount of equity but we think we can do that with investments from employers. I'm being optimistic because that's what developers do. Eric Brown knows that we're pretty optimistic about the opportunities you see in front of us but we've had good conversations about that. And Senator Sorak and around your conversation about vacant spaces I think some are good some don't work we've done doing that right now we're converting three dorms over in St. Mike's you've you've been done. We've had support for tax credits and from BCB on that in particular that's a great opportunity that's 64 units that we're going to start construction hopefully soon. You know we have bought now our eighth motel hotel. It's the last month and so we're working on sort of the conversion of the spaces that are either left behind or on those in particular. Some some spaces are better than others you know there's in the memorial auditorium middle of downtown Burlington. I don't know how it could be good for housing and just be really a struggle to do it, you know, but if there is something, but I do see the opportunity shopping centers are a little trickier you'd have to sort of figure out a way to get to it's really about code and windows and sort of that kind of those issues principally size of the building has to be correct or right to make it work. Well those are the kinds of things that if we can provide through or something to make the conversion. Make sense. I don't know I mean I'm just reaching out for some creative thinking. And we know that remote work is going to be more prevalent in the future, regardless of what the trajectory of code is. And if that's the case, some office space. I mean we're not New York, we don't have big office buildings or we do have some buildings that have office space that I think is going to be less in demand. You know, converting motels or dorms and things like that. I mean I just think of like the Capitol Plaza in Montpelier, you know you have commercial space right next to a hotel room on some floors. What we can do to start seeing more of that different kinds of thinking and different kind of use and encourage that because I think obviously, well not obviously but in some instances renovation, as opposed to new construction. Yeah, can be a way to get more housing that's why I'm such a big fan of ADUs. You know we saw on our tour we went to Rutland, and we saw all these big houses that was when people used to live in large family that could be converted into rental units but it seems like, just as our population ages and people leave the workforce. People are staying in their homes. If you can make it real easy for them to put an accessory dwelling unit they say why don't I get some more income, and it's going to be cheaper to develop a unit there than to build new construction. One of the federal sources right now can actually support the construction of ADUs. I'm not exactly sure that I think it's the rental assistance program can do more with ADUs and we haven't really looked at that or tapped that out quite yet to sort of see how that would really work. Our efforts have been focused on hotels because there's a bathroom in every room and there's usually, you know, there's a door in every room and there's heating and electrical in every room and it's really much more straightforward and the configuration allows for life safety issues to be installed or used very fairly straightforwardly and some of them are built really to a standard that is very high and the opportunity conversion is there so how cost of development is really a third less than a new construction. Well, and I'm not really necessary talking about CHT and I'm thinking of a plan for average of the monitors to do it themselves. And I was very excited a couple years ago. We had some guy camera was named from Montpelier who was an expert at ADUs and he was providing on whether it's free technical assistance. But if someone could say, to me, for instance, I'm living here with two people in a 2400 square house, and they can make it easy for me both technically and permit wise and say to turn, you know, one quarter of my house into a separate unit. I think a lot of people might consider that. I think it's, I think it's a good idea. All right, so thank you so much, Michael. I hope you'll be available to us as a resource. Always go forward. Our last. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Michael Redmond. Is Michael with us. I'm looking various. Hi Michael, I recognize the face. Yeah, great. Thanks, I need to I'll need to leave in about five minutes, because I have to host a webinar zoom session myself. And this is, you know, a little bit outside our area as a service provider but we, I think to emphasize the strong partnerships that work for us that start, you know, thanking you and your colleagues and the legislature for its work to make for month unsurpassed in focus on these efforts. The agencies VHCB VHSA VHSA commerce and community development. I mean, again, high quality focused work really smart. Our work in partnership also with our local housing developer twin pines housing is one that I think works extremely well and I know there are other similar and organization on the state which partner of service providers that focus on homelessness, and with those are housing development. And so we can comment on some of the things that we've seen that have worked in that arena perhaps they touch on your concerns today but certainly they are on the support side of that work. Things that we've had success with and motel conversions that have been mentioned. We're hopeful to continue that type of work down in the upper valley region, manufactured homes, really underutilized resource. We've partnered with a whistle stop site in Bradford with down street housing with permanent project based vouchers and about three of our families to move from status of emergency shelter into now their their own rental units with with the haven providing services that was mentioned earlier by someone provided testimony that sometimes that isn't in place. The partnership that we have with twin pines is that we stay we have multiple mo use with them, where we can provide services. It is sometimes a challenge on the funding side so we would encourage the extended use of voucher support that also provides service support. The state state plan now is under is up for renewal with the feds and there are increased opportunities for supportive housing in that, and we would encourage you and joining your colleagues as is that is that comes before the appropriate to focus on that family supportive housing expansion has been tremendous we should continue that as well as to focus on individual housing, supportive housing, so that that is a eligible activity under the Medicaid state plan. The location is really important we've heard that a focus on on downtown areas and we agree with that access to services and transportation. Do the rural nature of our state, the degree that we have opportunities that for housing that focus on those areas where particularly for people who have been chronically homeless to continue that support and services that are going to help them become productive members of the community. I've heard mentioned use yourself senator on ad use and infill. And also answering a question that Senator Clarkson mentioned of how many units are there well, you know the regional planning associations are great resources for that kind of focus and setting those numbers in here in the upper valley, which includes both the and the Vermont side four to 5000 units of housing of all forms are needed with larger numbers at the lower levels, their pro their report keys to the valley is we have found has been extremely helpful. And I think for working with the town's municipalities that maybe want to be helpful but maybe don't know how of focusing on the rules and regulations that they might have in place that are hindering the development of housing, and the rehabilitation that the state has taken on in some areas where there is bringing it up to code. So echoing also comments earlier that more a made of a focusing on the rental housing and safety legislation that will be coming back into the consideration by the state in this year. Risk pools, we've had a mixed success experience with that but I think it's still worthy the challenge now is that landlords have their pick and choice of who they want to have an in housing and so the, the, the, the, even when we've offered risk they said well I could rather, I can do just as easy without with the tenant that doesn't present a history of problems. We continue to work on the GA emergency housing we are concerned now as we look into this you know that the state support for that has been tremendous but it's going to be ending. And how are we going to replace that. I think the focus on designing a really well structured well funded program of if the goal is to move that to community organization contracts to make sure that's done right and I think the haven is ready to step up and take that on if we can design that with our good partners that oh yo, if that comes about. Sorry for speaking so quickly but I need to run to go to host a zoom seminar where my my predecessor Sarah Kobelensky will be speaking and the 40th anniversary series of events that the haven is holding and this is our last one and I don't want to keep Sarah waiting because she always has something good to say. Absolutely Senator I will certainly send your your best wishes because I only bask in everything she's created here. Now you are a great steward her legacy to. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I'm interested in learning more about the Medicaid possibility. Yeah, absolutely. I'll be happy to come back at another time when we have more time to talk about that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Bye bye. Senator Ram. Did you have a question for that would just as Navarra. I didn't but I was I was looking for an opening earlier before we end. Just to say, you know, I think one of the programs it would be nice to hear from would be home share Vermont. I know that might sound like a tangent but when I visited especially places in southern Vermont where they're trying to help seniors and attract new Americans and house immigrants and refugees. When I was in Bennington County. Many, even of our colleagues in the house had never heard of home share Vermont, the penetration and son of Vermont is just really limited and I know they opened another office so I'm not blaming them. But I think there should be like a PSA or some way to get them resources I think it would be a win win for seniors and a lot of people looking for homes and the ability to really maintain some large historic houses that are otherwise kind of falling into disrepair. I couldn't agree more. It was basically a Chittenden County program for them they moved. I think they opened an office in central Vermont but you're right it's not really penetrated in other areas of the state and it's a great opportunity I don't know it's Kirby done still running the program and yeah she's great so it's a great program and we're only just beginning to roll it out here in Woodstock through the senior center and it's, I agree with Eucasia it's it, it again hits a lot of birds with one. It really meets lots of our needs, if we can make it work statewide, more effectively. Good morning. It's 1156. There's a couple of witnesses we didn't get to, and I'm sure we'll have others in terms of overview but the future hearings will start becoming more interactive with committee members. I just wanted to get a broader view of the landscape out there and what I've asked David to do as these ideas come in and I've gotten a few emails already. I give them to David and he's going to start putting together an omnibus bill with various sections, and it'll just be something we can work off of without, you know, prejudging any ideas too quickly. I think we have a host of people that now did we get to meet today if we hadn't met him before but hopefully they will continue to be available to us to come in and certainly listen into our hearings as we go forward. As I said before, I'd like to do this as a committee bill. Theoretically committee bills have to be introduced by January 31, but you can always bring it. I don't know what the rule is if you bring it back in to committee but we have a raft of other bills that'll be sitting in our committee that we could just strike all and put on this omnibus bill. But so far I've been encouraged by people responding to the idea of an omnibus bill and you know you can see all the various ways you can go service, home sharing AD use land use planning, more money for new ideas and continued ideas tweaking ideas. But I think the goal is clear more housing. And, you know, the number I remember from the Vermont futures project is 10,000. So I, that is the number and that's why I asked us if we had a sort of newer number on the workforce number because it's just so many units and while it's fabulous that we have built as much as we have in the last two and a half three years. The need is daunting, as we all know because we all know business is to, you know, we just, it's very clear. And I'm anxious to hear from all our witnesses and housing leaders. I wanted to hear the comment that we're the envy of the rest of the country. So maybe there aren't that many other creative ideas around the nation, but the people we had before us today would probably be the ones that would know about what's going on in other states and jurisdictions that we might be able to borrow from. So, looking forward to talking about that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you all for, thank you all for participating witnesses. Thank you. And members of the public. Thank you for viewing. Thank you, Michael, Steve on the floor. And we'll be taking this up again next week sometime.