 Thank you for coming. Thank you everyone for coming. You know, I invited folks together today with the intent of sharing specific challenges that we face in Winooski, probably not specifically in Winooski. Kind of focused on the intersection of workforce development, housing, transportation to lift up where specific federal actions could be helpful. So this is just like an information sharing session, not an endorsement or anything like that by attendees or their organizations. So we're just here to talk about, you know, what are the problems we are, the biggest challenges we're facing in Winooski and how we might be able to move those forward. Yeah, and I'll just say a few words. I'm amazed at Winooski. I really am, because I went out when you were beginning construction on that, I don't know, do you call it new or renovation or a new boat slash, it's both, you know? But I also remember back years ago when I walked around, I think, with Hugh Dieg and I was just astonished at the number of languages that were spoken at the Winooski schools and this is like the melting pot of Vermont and it's just such a community in transition where the challenges that you face are in many ways unique to an intense here in Winooski, much more so than many other. It's not unique because these are challenges all around the state, but it's very intense here and I just have to still memory Christine of going out to the school and asking teachers how in the world do you teach somebody who shows up young child and speaks no English at all in a language that not many of us speak and somehow you've found a way to do it and you've had to contend with all these challenges in this community that's really changing and it's escalating real estate values, it's amidst worker shortage, it's with the pressures of COVID. So I just have always been really an admirer of how somehow some way you all have managed to keep taking a step forward and maintain community support and that's really hard. I remember going out to the school too at the beginning of COVID where you were having such an elaborate effort involving the staff and separating students enough so they had enough distance and I just know that takes a toll when it goes on for a couple of years. So just as a person who's been stopping by and not had to do the hard work day in and day out, I just want to salute you and I look forward to hearing how things are going. Thank you. And you've contended with being in the legislature too. I have, yeah, thanks, Taylor, I appreciate it. Yeah, these problems require local, state and federal. Yeah, corporation. Dee, can you get us started and talk about some of your primary concerns around the housing? Sure, thanks for coming, really appreciate it. Yeah, that's good to be here. And I have to say, having worked in Wyniewski in services, it's the honor of my life to be able to serve the community I grew up in. So, as much as... Now that's the right attitude for us. Yeah, and I bet to all of us, we would say the same thing. It's an honor to serve the folks we get to work with. I'm now the executive director of the Housing Authority and so I had my first glance, my first glimpse into the regulatory environment at the federal level and how it's not keeping up with the real challenges that are on the ground, right? And just financially, we got 3.5% rent increases and an 8.5% inflation environment. So, you know, and we moved to the RAD program, which is out of public housing and into a private model, thinking that that was gonna help, but when you're not keeping up, you know, but we're figuring it out because we're Wyniewski and we're small enough to talk to each other and figure it out. So, I would say that, you know, our big challenge is losing affordable families housing because that touches everything, right? Because your folks who we need to do a lot of our frontline work, your housekeepers, your wait staff, whatever, are not people that are gonna wanna $1,800 a month, one bedroom apartment that we're building. We need three plus bedroom homes to house folks. So, you know, any support, but the money comes in, seems to be developing these one bedroom homes. And, you know, that's kind of not, I'd like to, you know, figure it out. You need it for family. If we're gonna have all those frontline staff and we're gonna continue to welcome folks in the refugee resettlement program, we need that inventory. It's, we can't do it with just one bedroom. It's not that the one bedrooms are bad, they're important, but they can't be the only thing. And because everything else is getting unaffordable because of just real estate values, making sure we're paying attention to the affordable piece of that and the subsidized piece of that. The other thing I'm just gonna throw out just as a challenge is the fact that the only tool I have for folks in mental health crisis substance abuse is eviction. The only tool I have, and when you do that, people lose their voucher and then they're just out of luck for sometimes the rest of their lives. And I would like to look at the federal government for you folks to really think about letting that voucher follow people into transitional housing, maybe follow into single room occupancy supportive housing somehow, maybe go to assisted living, but let that voucher follow the person so it'll help fund the programs, it'll reduce the cost of those programs we wanna run and keep people out of that eviction merry-go-round that ends up with people getting housed with a promise of support, having a mental health breakdown, refusing to get any support, causing a health or safety issue in an apartment building, getting evicted, getting into the hotel, getting back into the cycle, and it's just a horrible cycle. And you know, I think we can do better just even just by letting those vouchers move with the person. Yeah, that makes sense because a lot of those folks end up at homeless, right? They almost always do. They almost always, if they can't make it, end up in a hotel or homeless. Related to that, I have heard from the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance that because of the federal definition of homelessness, they can't deploy resources to people that are facing homeless until they have a 14 day eviction or a 30 day notice to terminate. And so the help is coming too late to address if there is a mental health issue or addiction issue and then degrading conditions. So they've raised that up as that definition is too narrow. Like, could that be expanded to kind of help do more proactive homeless prevention? So how would we change that definition in order to accommodate that? So what I've heard from the organization is that the, so that window is too narrow. You're probably not getting the notice though with more than 30 days. I think that's a really good question to- But we can just follow up. Can I help a little bit with that? Because that's where we are, right? We can't get emergency support to a person until we're ready to evict them because that's the trigger that suddenly brings out the troops to rescue the situation. But by then, the person's lost credibility, their neighbors are now afraid of them, you know, there's the whole set. So if preventing homelessness means that we have, I think we have to identify early in the process, wait, give us a tool other than eviction way earlier in the process. And even if it's like I said, the voucher could follow a person into another house situation rather than having to make somebody homeless or threatened to make somebody homeless. So, because we work with these folks all the time and they're great, but you have to have a crisis in order to trigger everything that needs to happen. And that's not good for anybody. It's not good for the person. It's not good for the, you know, for the neighbors. And the whole eviction is just, that's like a mission of failure. We're failing folks left and right because that's the only tool we have. And it does. I mean, it brings folks along, these folks are great, but why do we have to get there? Right. We need like an at-risk definition. We, yeah, yeah. I was thinking of like a probationary period that would allow for the funding to come in to have the supports, but not be able to place eviction where you've already reached crisis level where there is no supports that can maintain that person in the housing if I'm hearing you correctly. No, that's true. I mean, sometimes you're sitting here going, you know, I, you know, going the only thing we can do is send an eviction notice because that's the only way we're gonna get help into the situation. It almost, a lot of times I feel like we see situations where we create, we wait for a crisis to create solutions or like our solutions are crisis oriented. Or we become so used to a crisis that it becomes normal. And then, so we function because that crisis is now our, it's interesting listening to this because that is a real challenge. And once they're out, I mean, first of all, all that suffering that occurs on that floor, not just with the family or the person that's in crisis, but the neighbors who are freaked out and understandably so, right? Because they're scared and you don't know what's gonna happen. So it just, it really kind of erodes that sense of community or any chance of getting it. Then folks then end up out on the street and I mean, how do you unwind that? Well, I would just add the impact on learning. So when you've got a family that gets evicted, it's through McKinney-Vento Act, which is great. It allows for some choices for family to continue and to provide that stability in education. However, there's not enough funding for that, which then it falls on the local school district to make up that gap in helping with transportation, temporary housing, food, whatever is needed to continue that. But the research will show when you have inconsistent education and we have a pre-K-12 continuum, which is unique where students and families can live in our community for that whole entire time and be in the same system and have a coherent experience. So when they get pulled out of it, it can have devastating effects on a student's learning. So how does it work in school if there's somebody who's getting evicted and they've got a child who's in here? It's de-excitement, sometimes they go to a hotel and they can continue. And we try to find other resources to help. Sometimes they'll move in with relatives or friends in other communities, in which case they want to continue to attend our school district. And so through McKinney-Vento, we'll help with transportation and pay for that. And sometimes the only, that's a huge burden for you, isn't it? We just think about how hard it is for parents to get their kid to school if they live a little bit on the outskirts. Right now they're in another community. You've got to arrange a pickup and a drop-off. Yeah, it's kind of a cascading, effective, basic needs that start to happen. When an eviction happens, it's food, it's clothing, it's transportation, it's access to afterschool and pre-care, all those types of supports that we have in place across our city. Amazing. You're the boss here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm here representing the downtown organization. So we work with our business community, which is primarily in Winooski Small Businesses. And I'll say that we've been really, really impressed with the small businesses doing their piece. They're raising their wages, they're pivoting dramatically. It seems like every single day pivoting dramatically, it seems like every six months to make sure that the safety of their employees and their customers is there and is viable. They're looking at serving their customers in the way that their customers need to be served. But all of these other pieces are what they need. So when we're looking at transportation or safety, that's for their workers. So there's people that are having a job or they've had a job in Winooski for a long time, but because of transportation issues or because they were priced out of Jitman County, they're not having to travel longer to get here. And then once they get here, if there's safety concerns because of whatever is that's going on, then they're less inclined to wanna stay here and work here. And so the businesses are doing their part, they're really, really trying, but it needs all the other puzzle pieces. So when you say there's a work or shortage, there definitely is, but it's all dependent on childcare. On housing, on safety, on transportation, on all of these things. It's also looking at lower barriers to entry for these help programs that are happening. There's so much help pouring in from all these different directions, it seems like. And one of my roles has been kind of like taking in the fire hose and figuring out how do I tell these two businesses what programs are available. And maybe it's from a private entity that's giving out a grant or maybe it's a federal program or maybe it's a state program or a regional program. And what we're finding over and over and over again is that eligibility isn't there, that the barriers to entry for these programs were even if it's $5,000, pages and pages of application and they're like, I'm a sole proprietor or I have five staff members. I'm a single mom or I'm new American so there's translation issues and they can do all the things to get that support but by the time they've gotten it all, I mean it's already over. It's like they've moved on as it's not worth this money even though it is worth that money, they just can't do it. So lowering the barriers on a lot of these programming would also be incredibly helpful for our small business community. And the small businesses that we see in Manuski in particular, we are a dense urban area. We are different than other communities but we have those small mom and pop businesses that every Vermont downtown has. So we do still have that same spirit of Vermont. We just happen to have a lot of BIPOC and women owned new American businesses. So those businesses need to be supported even more because there's so many barriers anyway. And so we're really trying hard. We're all working, we're working with a lot of different puzzle pieces, a lot of different partner organizations and we're seeing that even when we're sweating to get this money, they're just unable to get it. So when we're looking to the future at continuing to say these buzzwords of recovery and helping small businesses and sole proprietor and women owned by BIPOC owned, the reality is that when you say those words, what it means is they have no capacity, zero capacity, emotional, physical, like any labor. And all they're trying to do is serve their community. So I do feel like all those pieces are coming in but they're just not clicking into place in a way that's actually supporting the most vulnerable community. So again, we're super proud of how Manuski has pivoted. We've been incredibly resilient but I'm worried. We're still worried about kind of looking to the future and seeing everyone's still kind of hanging on, waiting for that turn, waiting for that shift in the river and everything to pick up again. It almost sounds like it would be better to have those programs funneled through a regional or your organization where you're able to deal with the paperwork part of it. Right, and there is a program like that with the charity, like the Navigator program and they have some hubs and some different things but there's challenges there too because a lot of those organizations don't have capacity to execute these programs. So if my organization was handed a program, we would have to hire new staff. So it's like, it's all of these things, like my goodness, if you would like to hand us a pot of money, we'll take it. But we would have to do a lot of infrastructure building in order to actually get the money out in an equitable way and that's the other part about this is that for our community in particular, equity and inclusion is incredibly important. It's not just a buzzword, it's a real thing and you see it every single day. So again, lowering any barriers that we can, even though we wanna make sure that people are eligible, I get it. You wanna make sure that people are using the money for the right reasons, I get it. But ultimately, none of these businesses are trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. They're just trying to keep their doors open. They're trying to pay their employees and they're trying to serve their community and a lot of our businesses are serving their minority businesses, serving a vulnerable population. So it's not only are the businesses supporting themselves and their employees, they're supporting all the kids that walk by their store and walk to school and then they hop in and get halal food for their families on the way home. So that's kind of what we're looking at. It's all connected. It's a web. I don't even know it's web. It's a tangled rope, it's not as organized as a web. But that's where I feel really strongly that every single piece of housing, of infrastructure, of everything, of the school that happens, childcare, all of that will support our business community, which this is not really a main thing, so I apologize for bringing it up. But thinking about the school, a huge problem that Vermont has in the workforce is kids leaving when they graduate. And in Manuski, we do have a lot of jobs. We actually do have a lot of programming that's available for high school kids to kind of come in and go into a kitchen or go into a manufacturing facility. And we're not able to convince them to stay here, part in part because of housing and part because of the culture of like everyone leaves. And so if we do have all those pieces in place, then we can also look to the next generation to kind of keep them here. Because if we want to keep that diversity and that strength of our communities, when kids turn 18 and leave the state, that's not helping anyone. So again, kind of looking at that piece, we as an organization really look at that because we look at them as incredibly bright, shining stars of the community that are, we want them to stay and we're like, but, and full disclosure, I did that. So I understand the draw of leaving, but there's so many ways that these different pieces can come together to also kind of help capture a major issue that I feel like is difficult to talk about, but it's definitely facing Manuski hard. Thanks, Meredith. If I might add to that, just from like a perspective, we're on a couple of houses at the table, my day job, we see, you know, what Meredith is talking about in terms of, like in government contracting, the barriers to entry for small businesses are very high. Everything that comes along with that in terms of reporting after the fact or just really extensive RFPs is to some extent designed for large entities that have a person on staff that handles that kind of thing. They've got the infrastructure. They've got the infrastructure. So it becomes incredibly difficult and even with some of this federal funding going around, you know, that might be sent to local nonprofits or then subcontracted out to maybe non-non-profits, but the Treasury guidance follows the dollars all the way down the line and that gets tough and it's not to say that those things aren't necessary. They've got to be right-sized, you know. You know, an example I give is after the financial collapse in 08, we needed significant regulations for the money center banks. Well, a lot of those money center bank regulations were on, you know, the local bank, they followed them down and made no sense in the threat of financial catastrophe because the local bank made a bad loan, it was non-existent, different, obviously, for the Wall Street money center operations. And we've rightly applied skepticism, you know. It's just an issue of, at a certain level, like you're pointing out, that it isn't as warranted or that it adds just so much that it's a barrier that people are overcoming. And so it's something that I think we've been talking a lot about is just this right-sizing for right-place regulations. You know, that makes total sense to me, it really has. Well, and in a similar vein, we have organizations like USCRI or AALV providing support to a lot of our residents and the liaisons of the school district, and not specifically like looking for business help, some can be because there's a lot of small business owners here, but going to these organizations, looking for help trying to navigate these systems and access these programs, and then those organizations are under resource to provide that assistance. Right. And I think there's an issue that I have heard with, this is true of support organizations and our public transportation is like, there's no real base funding, and so they're operating on, you know, like for refugee resettlement, they're being paid for resettled refugee, and so when refugee resettlement was kind of halted on the previous administration, their funding was gutted, and they still haven't fully rebuilt their staff since then. Oh, that's terrible. So they've got all the expenses associated with the infrastructure? Yeah, and so it's been really hard to recover from that, yeah. That's interesting. And I think of this issue with transportation, like I hear from residents, I can't rely on it, this frequency of services, and it's not enough or there's not a broad enough network, but there's not enough passengers to make enough revenue to get there. Like there needs to be this sort of bridge to like get the service level that would drive them the usage. I think we're in a difficult situation where everybody wants expanded service. You know, they want expanded dependability, they want, you know, strong compensation for everyone involved in the service to be free, as well as for repeatedly, and thankfully the legislature did provide funding that we could accept the service free. However, you know, there's workforce challenges that are not unique to the transit sector, but are very apparent, especially because that's a slightly aging workforce. We see a lot of our drivers are retiring or folks in the meeting are retiring. That's happened in schools too, isn't it? But then a big problem with getting drivers through the school bus. So I imagine that would be similar, yeah. In terms of federal, you know, legislation, one thing we've seen kind of repeatedly is just CDLs are very difficult for folks to talk about high, kind of going back to what I was saying, a high activation energy. We've really professionalized CDL driving to a point where it's very difficult. And when you ski, and there's been a number of new Americans who would love to be CDL drivers, it's very difficult to learn how to get your CDL when English is your second or third or fourth language. And there aren't many resources nearby that can allow the person to get their CDL. Even if they might have wherever they've strong activation requirements are excessive. Yeah. It can be a safe driver. Just for, nevermind language, I've managed transportation and parking at UVM before I came to the city. I couldn't pass the CDL. It was just way more than I could do within my spare time. It was just... It's very important. What part of it could you pass? What is there? We finally found what de-camp pass. It's unbelievable. No, actually I get confronted with that almost every day, but... No, but seriously, what was it that, what elements of, is it the written test or what? I couldn't get there because I couldn't get through the manual and all of the, you know, you have to know all sorts of mechanical pieces of it unless you have somebody showing you what they are and naming them, and that wasn't my background. Now, if that was the only thing I was doing and I was hired as a driver, could I have passed the test probably? Right, but we shouldn't have, we couldn't do it working full time. It's like you're telling me there are mechanical skills that are being tested when all you need to do is drive safely. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how to fix my car. Right. I've been driving for a long time, and so you can say all you want about land, and I can't imagine the language on top of that, but I, just for perspective, I gave up. It was like something I badly wanted to do just because I'm Esprit de Corre and... Right. It was like, I never... Sean, do you want to weigh in on the experience you had? Sure, yeah, and I think about this as an example of how for years, leaders in Winooski have done things way outside of our expected scope and missions in our particular organizations to serve our residents. To do what needed to be done. Because, number one, either there was massive barriers at the state and federal level, or there just was no ability to be able to do it, our understanding of how to do it to meet the needs of our particular community. So this is just the example of transportation, but I think everybody could speak to other examples. So, we've been working on student transportation for years and kind of ramping it on. It's a huge issue for our families in terms of safety, particularly in the winter. When sidewalks don't get plowed on time, and it's not anybody's fault, it might be the way the snow fell that day. It could be resources as well. And we have kids walking in the streets because they're plowed, which is really, really dangerous. And many of our students live down in this part of the city, which is one of the furthest points to the school. So they're walking up, you know, through the entire city and it's unsafe. Wow. The other part is getting kids to school on time. So they can maximize their learning and instruction for teachers and the continuity and those routines that are really important for learning. So we've been working on that. We started to implement that and then COVID came and it basically all shut down. And then, with the staffing shortages that have been referenced, we found ourselves in a position of like, we're not gonna get back to transportation. You know, the private providers, our neighboring school districts who have worked with us before that run their own transportation, they all looked at us and said, sorry, we've got nothing for you. So this is the example of going outside of our scope. We took money from Fund Balance and we granted a local community organizing group of parents and youth. And they have been supporting local residents in working towards their school bus driver licenses, which somebody could tell, Nicole Mace knows more about this, our finance operations. Who are they supporting to get the licenses? Who will get it? Well, we had, we were working with local Winooski folks who wanted to do it and basically they wanted to do it to serve their community. Some of them who are through the process, they're giving up higher paying, more benefit jobs to do this just to serve their community, because they realize the safety and the learning implications of not doing it. So Nicole Mace, our finance and operations director, has done a fabulous job and she pulled DMV into it, who was very responsive, but it's an example of like, we have to go out and grab all these people, bring them to the table, make them responsible for contributing to the process. And if there was regional or state level, more universal systems to do this, then we could actually do our core functions in our core job. So right now, I mean, we're in a position where we've worked so hard on this and we've spent countless hours and dollars outside of kind of our core mission to provide this and we're getting close, but we're still not there and it's been an incredibly heavy lift. I brought together several cabinet members a year and a half ago from transportation and labor and education and they were helpful. And I think this is where I would ask for your help too, is there's barriers at the state level, but there's also barriers at the federal level that trickle down, that say like, you can't give a test in another language than English. You can't have any... So that's a federal barrier? Yes. You can't have any support like through interpretation or transcription of a test. And there's what? Five to seven different tests that are required state and federally in order to get a license to drive a bus. Now, safety is obviously enormous, but the red tape is just unbelievable. What really would be helpful would be to just get a case study of that. What you told me just makes my head explode, all right? But to move on it, I would need like an example from A to Z or A to M, whatever it was. Because most of my colleagues would not be before that and there's another agenda there. It's all in the immigration debate or Southern border stuff. I mean, just the stuff that gets injected into places that doesn't belong. I mean, we have an issue on the Southern border, but we're not gonna solve it by making it impossible for Winooski to hire a bus driver. Right. Okay. Well, I don't see that. But that case study where that's what allows me to get very concrete, because this regulation issue really is something that cuts across all kinds of sectors. And like the local bankers were having a similar problem with these JP Morgan style regulation requirements when it's a small community bank. And now these issues that don't have anything to do with the safety of operation that they have to do with other agendas. Generally, most people in public office don't want that stuff to be such an impediment, but being able to be concrete would really be helpful a case study if we can follow up on that. But that would really be helpful. You know, I'm kind of diverting a little bit back to you. So I just am amazed at how the last resort is like the school to just pick up the pieces. Or the housing authority when somebody, you can't do anything in time. You have to wait till there's an eviction and everything gets more aggravated. But it becomes your problem, even though it's not your job. And I don't know, Christine, is that really a big issue for the city? And it must be. I mean, 100%, like over complicated barriers and then underfunding at levels above us. Everything trickles down here where we're day to day seeing people. You know, there's struggles in housing because the program is underfunded. People are actually, okay, so like snap benefits only cover food. You've got folks in highly, like super low income households who can't afford hygiene products and those aren't covered. And so this contributes to like degrading quality issues in a household. The lack of funding or priority. So could federal funding towards housing somehow prioritize or incentivize three bedroom, real larger housing? You know, we don't have enough of that locally. And so we have large families living in unsafe conditions. And so you, these are two contributors to code violations or like quality issues that then we're spending tons of staff time and resources trying to resolve. You know, there's no, there is not consistently translation or interpretation available for federal programs and access. You know, we've got these underfunded organizations locally with USARA and ALV filling that gap, but then there's still a gap. You know, we need to work on that for our own services that we provide, but we're also helping people access these other services. But in the way that you said that the Winooski has everything kind of turned up, the volumes turned up, we do have the flip of the state, right? For we have 60% or more of our residents are renting and a lot of Vermont is homeowners. And then we also have a disproportionate number of people who are receiving benefits or not for disability. So, and then we also have a disproportionate, you know, group of people that English is their seventh language. So we're talking about all these different factors also stacking up, which is difficult for someone talking about Vermont because it's not something that necessarily the rest of Vermont is facing. But like you said, it is something that they are facing. We just have dialed it up to quite a degree. And I said maybe hopefully we might be on the leading edge, you know, I think not, I think that hopefully we are a safe and welcome more people in the coming years. And hopefully the lessons we learned here can be packaged up and transported out to the other corners of Vermont. So if we can have, you know, the assistance to conquer those challenges here, then we can do the nitty-gritty for everybody else. Five, 10 years had occurred, you know. Yeah. So what's the state doing in relationship to all this? I mean, obviously you're the center of the storm here in the direction of my feelings, so. I mean, in relation to all of this, I think what we've done is do federal funding and having to go down to the municipal level. But just to the piece on Manuski, this community is so resilient. It has come together, what you heard from each of these stories and what I hear constantly is we saw the problem, we brought everyone to the table who needed to be there and we came up with a solution. Should it be that way? Potentially yes. I think we should all have these community solutions in place, but Manuski shouldn't have to be resilient every single time. We should be funded to the level where we're addressing all of these barriers when it comes to rental protections, especially when it comes to new Americans who don't necessarily know their rights as tenants, had limited support during the pandemic because of that decreased funding for USCRI and having ALP not necessarily be able to step in and then facing a fiction and not knowing that process, but learning that they might not be able to bring their kids to the same school district that's been supporting them, also receiving the services that were giving them the information that was culturally relevant around COVID. All of these pieces are so challenging and I think there is a lot that we can do on the state level, especially when it comes to funding and making sure that our municipalities are like solid in their response so that everyone else can have the community that Manuski does. Although Manuski, you've got an administrative infrastructure that you've built up over time and a lot of our towns don't have, but it's a real validation for the, Bernie, Patrick and I all really want to have maximum flexibility for the state and the municipalities to be making the allocation decisions. And I think where we're seeing a growing concern and I think COVID really illuminated for a lot of folks are mental health challenges and the barriers that those present in being able to access the services or being able to talk openly about the services that are needed, especially around substance use disorder. I know we just did a tour of some of the businesses downtown and we were hearing about the safety issues, the safety being that there are folks who are using openly because they have nowhere else to go, but it's also the safest option, especially in a market that is so predominantly filled with fentanyl where folks who are using are then dying. Before we were talking about substance use as a disorder of long term, how do we get people into treatment? But now I think we've gotten to this crisis point that we've stayed there to the point that now we don't even get to talk about getting folks into treatment because we're so focused on trying to keep folks alive. And so by using openly, they know that they're gonna be in a place where if they were to overdose, they would be found by a community member. And the businesses here aren't upset about it. They're upset that there aren't additional services in place to support those folks or to have a place like this. That is so hard. I mean, I don't know those prevention sites. On that topic, I mean, what do we do? We've got an apartment right across the city hall park and there's people open the use in the city hall park now. I was walking through with my granddaughter and saw somebody literally shooting up and that's not sustainable at all. And I don't know what I mean. Well, if we gave them a safe place such as an overdose prevention site, where it's embedded within the community, where we have workers that are able to talk about treatment that are allowing folks to be able to test their supply so they know what they're using is really, because otherwise we're gonna continue to see this. If we know what's going to happen, why would we not create a safe infrastructure for people to use rather than continuing to stigmatize and expose our youth to exactly what is happening in our communities? And talking about the housing thing, that kind of buffer time, you're talking about someone that's using and then things in their life are going downhill, they get evicted, now they're in city hall park, they're now they're in a garage, you know, there. So talking about the all again, all the pieces are part of the puzzle. Well, and the one thing we haven't touched on is the flip side, we need these services to fill these gaps because of wage suppression. I have people reaching out to me like, my rents being increased, you know, whatever is behind that is debatable, but my salary hasn't gone up and is already too low. You know, we have, we've had economic growth for years and nobody is seeing that at home and that continued stress, like it feeds into the mental health and substance use disorder. It's, we're filling gaps, yeah. I think that's right, because I think, you know, when I think about substance abuse, it's really important and I've always supported counseling and mental health services, but I also think a lot of the challenges is rebuilding communities so that the community in just an organic way can be somewhat supportive, like at a school, you know, kids have challenges and it's not all resolved just by going to see the mental health counselor, it's like the teachers getting involved and giving them some such hope that they can be somebody. Yeah, for young people, it's about having teams of trusted, you know, expert adults, whether that's parents, teachers, coaches, neighbors, you know, kids have to feel cared about by the adults in their community and they tend to make a lot better decisions. And then the second piece is developmental assets. You have to have, you know, not just the school curriculum, but you have to have other opportunities for students to engage, you know, athletically, artistically, collaboratively in the community. Those are the things that stop. You know, they reduce the probability. You know what I mean? See, I think it's gotten hollowed out and then when, it means for weight suppression or inflation, it really is tough. I mean, if you're working hard and you can't make the bills at the end of the month, that's a pretty discouraging thing, especially if you've got dependents. And it goes full circle to what Meredith was saying before of, why do we see young people leaving Vermont because entry-level jobs are some of the lowest paying and how long do you have to stay in that position before you get an increase or before you're able to elevate in the workforce to a place where you're not having to rent anymore and build equity within a home. It's much longer when you stay here versus when you leave and then eventually come back as most people do. If I could add stat to that, our voucher acceptance risk. And once we gave a person a voucher, 90% of the time they found housing before COVID. We're flutsin' around 25%. So the one thing that may actually solve and stabilize housing, people cannot find the compliant housing we need. So they may be housed, but they may be six people living in a two bedroom house and we can't fund that because they can't stay where they are and take the voucher. Or they may be living with someone, but they may be living in substandard housing. There's all sorts of reasons, but to me, one of the scariest numbers I look at it every day is the percentage of people who are offered vouchers and can't use them. And when you're down around 25%, when you've always been at 90%, there's something fundamental. But 90% is what? So what happens is you get to the top of the list and we offer you a voucher and then you go out and find where you wanna live and then agree with the landlord and then you get your house. So you move from getting your technical voucher to getting your housing. I see, yeah. And you get 90 days to do that, we extend it. And in the past, once you got to the top, you were the goal. I mean, you could find a place to live and you were there. Right now, we're offering vouchers left and right and trying to find people, we're giving priority to people in the area. So getting a voucher used to mean you got a home. Now getting a voucher doesn't mean that at all right now. You got a one in four shot at getting a home. You got a one in four shot of finding something that. I didn't know that. Yeah, and it's, I think you do. And that's the housing shortage. It's the housing shortage, but it's also the number of apartments that used to allow and accept the subsidy who have now priced themselves out. So landlords know that you can't not accept section eight. You can know that the highest we'll go is $1818. And so you raise your rent to 1850 so that. Right. Okay, so you haven't said you're not taking it. No, you're controlling it. And so, and we are losing, we are losing a lot of those properties where they're still renting, but they're just getting, they're able to get $2,000 on the market. We're able to legally pay 18. Right. And that includes utilities. So, we're just, that right there is killing us. Now, on the other side, and you know, we sit here and go, oh, we work together extremely well. You know, we all have each other's cell phones numbers. We all text each other. And that's really our strength and how we survive in this. I've got a really cool project with Shuns. They have a co-op program and the kids are learning all their English math science through helping us develop a playground at our property. And they're doing all of the work behind surveying people. That's so cool. And then we'll put them in touch with landscape architects so they'll learn, you know. I mean, we just get a chance to do this. What's that program? That's amazing. It's just something that Shuns folks came and said, do you guys have a project? And we were, I like, oh, we want to do this. And it was just like, happened in Scout Coffee Shop in about 20 minutes. It's a couple of teachers who are doing it. It's kind of a school within a school. It's not on your river program. And the idea, it's multi-disciplinary and proficiency-based and more experiential. And it's kind of in a pilot phase at this moment. But it's a great, great project. That really sounds cool, doesn't it? So there's a lot of really cool things we're able to do. But just as much as when you fund and authorize states to get a certain amount of money, and then there's this minimal amount that you get to small states. So that small states aren't, because if you, you're getting a certain amount per person and Vermont getting a certain amount per person doesn't allow you to do the same thing for the scale. Because of scale, right? I mean, at some point you can hire the person who can write the grant, who can get you more money. Well, we're that small town in the middle of Chittenden County where everything shows because we're all neighbors. So you don't get to ignore a problem because it's in another neighborhood that you never go to. We don't get to do that here. I actually live down here, which is my favorite place if I love living down. But we also just don't have the scale. So when we get funded like everyone else, we can. And a perfect example is Burlington Housing has all kinds of services around housing retention, and I can't afford to do that. Right. You know, I can maintain safe, affordable, decent housing and a few things. So maybe some help with that scale when it comes to, and that's a state issue as much as it's a federal issue, but paying attention to, we can't get the same level of funding and necessarily achieve the same level of outcome. Right. You want to wrap yourself up. I need to get going. Yeah, I know you've got another thing to do. You want to wrap us up? I really appreciate all of you taking the time to share. I have been taking notes. I'm going to try to clean this up so that you have something to reference moving forward and share with colleagues. Well, it's really wonderful. Thank you for taking all the time, but you know, resources, you always need that. Cutting or tape, you need that. And having models that fit the reality of the situation you're dealing with, you need that. Like it doesn't make sense to wait till the eviction and then you have to have these other services that go in place and it's much more difficult to have an outcome. So I get the message. But I want to end where we began. I love coming to Winooski. It's really amazing to see what you all are doing. And I got to come back to your school and see the finished piece. See the finished piece. It's pretty cool. I always enjoy seeing the students there and your teachers. It's really quite remarkable. So I just appreciate all that you guys are doing. And you have a lot to be proud of. And you have the hard work. I mean, our job at DC is to try to get the resources back here so you can do your work and the work that you're being asked to do every day. There's a word for it, impossible. But somehow you managed to do it. It's really quite extraordinary. This wonderful community has got tremendous leadership. I must love representing it. Oh, it is the easiest job, I have to say, because of the love that I have. I shouldn't say easiest. Easy to love this community, that's for sure. Will, thank you all very much.