 Welcome everybody. It is Tuesday, September 1st and this is the afternoon meeting for the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee at the Vermont State House. We have with us today several witnesses who are going to do follow-up testimony on S237, which is a bill that we've been working on concerning housing, trying to fix some zoning issues so that we can create more affordable housing. We took testimony last week. We'll continue to take testimony this week and today we have three witnesses with us. We have Jennifer Holler from VHCB, Laura Collins from Vermont Housing Financial Agency, and Sue Filion from Brattleboro and the shield giver title. Later we're going to start today with Jen Holler. Now, Jen, as you know we've received, and this is for all our witnesses, as you know we've received this bill from the Senate. It was originally part of a larger bill that it was proposing to make many more changes to Act 250 and so that had been separated in the Senate and we ended up with this portion of it in our committee and to be honest we weren't expecting it. So there is information that we're still learning. We're hearing, we heard some concerns about elements of the bill last week from the Vermont Leagues of Cities and Towns and from a town planner up in St. Albans. We'll hear more. We've received a lot of information and so if people are interested in sharing their thoughts, again we have a shortage of time to hear all the witnesses who want to be heard but if there are people who do want to be heard that many people have shared their written thoughts and if people have written thoughts that they can't want to share with us and any of the testimony that anybody here today has prepared electronically if you want that shared on our website we're collecting written testimony and while we do have a limitation on time given the month that we're working in which is now down to 24 days including today we will we're learning about this bill every day and we're learning about the concerns and so today's testimony is just more for us to hear the point of view from other facets of the stakeholders who have participated in this conversation over the last year or so so with that I'd just like to go ahead and start the day with Jen Holler. Jen the microphone is yours. Okay well speaking of that can you hear me all right I've been having a little bit of my trouble you're good okay you're okay yeah okay so I know your time is short and I am not an expert on a lot of the provisions in the bill so what I hope to do is just to speak very generally to how it came together and why VHCB thinks it's important and hoping you are finding a way you do find a way to help it move forward so thank you for the time today you know as 237 was really intended by your senate counterparts as a comprehensive approach and you might recall that it came out of a summer they after the summer they spent traveling around the state at a series of regional meetings hearing from all kinds of folks and the bill is really meant to pull together a series of different tools actually all the tools that are available to state government to address barriers to housing development so as you guys know well there's really just four things the state can do to affect the kind of change that it wants to see it can tax it can spend it can regulate and it can educate and the original version of S-237 included all of those things an expansion of downtown tax credits funding for housing programs and services regulatory changes to Act 250 and zoning requirements as well as a number of different studies that are meant to inform and educate some of those pieces have fallen away as the bill went along its path some just in recognition of the the current budget situation and some of the Act 250 pieces were pulled out and combined with the rest of the Act 250 legislation that's moving separately through the senate now but there are a lot of really meaningful and important sections that remain and we support the bill as it's currently as it's currently drafted so I should I should recognize and I really want to emphasize this that I know that sections to be the the pieces sort of known as the inclusive housing provisions have been or quite controversial I know that people are divided on that even within the municipal sector I mean even within the planning community and you know even the various regional planning commissions all can have a slightly different take and I think it's because it can really impact different communities very very differently I know that you've gotten proposals from the Vermont Planning Association and then also from you know the Illinois County Regional Planning Commission and those may very well be good and important improvements to the bill so I guess I would just urge you to to look through those and find ways to improve and strengthen section to be rather than doing away with it all together there's one other section of the bill that I wanted to call out specifically because I don't know if others will speak to it and we think it's important and that has to do with the direction to the Department of Environmental Conservation to work with their Revolving Loan Fund program as it pertains to some loans that are held by the Pride Park Mobile Park in Brattleboro and you'll hear from Sue Lillian a little bit later but we BHCB and others for many years have been trying to support what Troy Park Mobile Home Park have been hoping to do you may recall and I believe you had some witnesses in earlier in the year it's a resident owned cooperative it was impacted severely by tropical stormy rain they have a number of homes that are still in danger and in the floodway and they have been undergoing a master planning process to identify ways in which they can move those homes over time address some infrastructure issues and take a comprehensive approach to some work that needs to happen there it's not a simple situation and it's not it's not going to be inexpensive to address it part of their financial package or some loans through the DEC's Revolving Loan Fund programs that I think it would really help the park if they were able to renegotiate those or even have some pieces forgiven so the Senate decided to include some language asking the DEC to work with Pride Park in that direction and we hope that that we feel like that's a that would be an important conversation to have and support that section of the bill and hope that can remain as well so when I testified oh let's see actually just also wanted to mention that I think when the legislature provided funding to BHCB with the housing revenue bond to do housing all around the state we really thought about ways in addition to the funding that we could try to support other policy approaches to providing for more housing you know efforts that would last and to be even more expansive than the actual housing units that were created by that resource so one of the things we did was to help the department of housing and community development with their what was started as a bottle bylaw project to give municipalities tools and examples samples in ways to update their zoning so that it might allow for more housing if that's what they wanted to do and that became the zoning for great neighborhoods and I think we've had some testimony on that before but this is the product of that work and I think it's being pretty well received and seen by municipalities as a helpful tool so I wanted to congratulate the department on their work there and also say that that is out there and I think municipalities are taking that to heart and using it using it to think about what's the the biggest as as you may have heard the biggest little change they can make in order to move move their communities in the direction they want to go so I also you might recall when I testified last week that at the at the very end I showed a photo of a a family moving into a habitat free community home in Rutland the BHV had had supported and that family was relocating from Syria and I made the point then that providing making more housing available and increasing affordability is one of the very best ways in which we can make our communities more inclusive and welcoming to people of all you know from all over the world of all races of all origins and all orientations I've seen how that's played out in my own community over the last 20 or 30 years where I've seen new Americans from from Europe from Central America and from Africa find their first American homes and the rental properties that down street housing and community development owns and operates and some of those families are still still in those homes and others have moved on either to buy a shared equity home or to enter into the more traditional housing housing market and this is another reference point we know that the Champlain housing trust of all of their residents 25 percent of them are people of color so I think at this time sort of renewed and overdue focus on some of the of our governmental and societal systems and the way in in which they impact opportunities for people or or they may limit opportunities for people I think it's important for us to look at housing policy and zoning through that lens and to be willing to take a hard look at complicated issues and to be willing to make some some hard decisions around that if that's if that's what it takes to update them in the ways that in the ways that that are going to be helpful to us and to the people that we want to welcome to our communities but I think I will just leave it there and take any questions and hand you off to some experts. Okay thank you I have a question but I'll go to Representative Zott first. Yeah thanks for sharing your thoughts I um I guess I'm a little confused like when I think about I mean it's not easy for me to follow how this bill actually meets all the very laudable goals that you cited for affordable housing like I get how if the VHCB got its full share of its statutorily mandated funding how that would increase affordable housing in the state I get if the state of Vermont said we're gonna allocate money for wastewater for small towns so that which is one of the biggest obstacles for development is the access to waste or adequate wastewater I get that but when I see state mandated lot sizes and when I've heard testimony about density versus lot size I don't see how state mandated lot sizes for instance gets us towards more affordable housing or should I I should say how it is the best or most appropriate vehicle to get us there when we have other options that we could be pursuing but we're we're going down this road for some reason maybe you could help me figure that one out well so sure so that's um that um is a really important question and uh I think that it's one I'm unfortunately not going to be able to answer with any certainty so whether or not thinking about density or provisions around that or minimum lot sizes are the best way to go I'm afraid that that I am uh just um don't have the background or VHCV doesn't have the purview to speak to that what we can say I guess the perspective I would offer is that we know that um around the state in areas that it can be difficult to find places where the land is affordable and where um people have access to services and transportation water and sewer and maybe and it probably makes sense to allow as much reasonably um housing in those areas as possible and so is there a way in which there are some unintended consequences of zoning that's in place right now that could uh with a change allow for allow for more housing in certain areas and that would um I guess I can share that in my own community and this is probably this is um that I have seen in my own community I saw that there was an attempt and actually the folks worked to update our zoning years and years and years of work but there were places in which the planning commission um recommended and uh ultimately the city council considered zoning changes that would have allowed development that basically matches the traditional development pattern in neighborhoods in some places and then in other places where there are very large lot sizes that would have allowed um you know one to four units on those plots and um some of those folks in those areas really didn't want their neighborhoods to change and they were concerned that because zoning would technically allow X number of units that all of a sudden those number of units were going to pop up in their community and um ultimately um the will wasn't there to override those um those community concerns and I think that in some instances if there's a change at the state level and my understanding is that municipalities can opt out of this if if they if they feel like they're constrained in any number in any number of ways if there's a reference point at the state level that can make it an easier conversation at the local level when there when there are some concerns now what's really difficult about this is it's very different for different kinds of communities and I can appreciate that that's a that's a challenging piece to this and so again I really want to emphasize that I can't I don't I think the idea of some zoning um 2b is good generally but I think that you've gotten some good improvements um offered um by a number of other witnesses and entities and I and I hope that you'll consider those and do you live in Montpelier is that your yeah I do I assume you saw the testimony from uh Mike Miller submitted today no I heard I heard Karen Horne testimony last week but I haven't seen Mike's now Mike I think gives a somewhat different summation of the planning and development landscape in Montpelier and had a much less enthusiastic or neutral response to this this bill and I guess again like I by total I'm sort of of maybe beating a dead horse here but I really as you just sort of ended uh you you talked about how there's different solutions for different parts of the state um but I don't know that different solutions for different parts of the state applies to say hey the legislature is going to allocate a fund for funding wastewater so that we can have more dense development in some of our rural communities like that's super clear that that is a way to achieve affordable housing and I just don't I just don't see how many portions of this bill do really anything to to allow for affordable housing other than in this kind of abstract aspirational way all right representative Hango thank you I just want to build a little bit on what Jen just mentioned again about how there's no real one solution for multiple communities across the state and we have gotten a number of new testimonies from various city planners and and town managers saying exactly that so one thing I did want to maybe um embellish on or correct is that yes um municipality can opt out however if they do opt out there's no guarantee that they would be able to take advantage of any of the monies that are being offered for communities in terms of development so that's a real concern especially for rural communities that don't have very much money to work with to begin with if they were wanting to do some type of development so I think that's very important for people to understand I think maybe some of the recommended some of the recommended changes in front of you um go to that very point and I think that the language in the bill also says I mean again this is all fine tooth that this is the stuff this these are the nuances that we're working through is that they would yes they would qualify for incentives if they were working to bring their bylaws into compliance um but if they were not working to bring their um um if they're not bringing their um bylaws into compliance and yes the carrots would be lost at that level um I think that's clear and if I can if I can just jump in to continue on that vein I don't know a municipality that that wants to lose that type of opportunity for funding but I also don't know a municipality who wants to um participate in that kind of cookie cutter approach so I really do urge um members to look at the suggestions that have made to clarify this and make it a better bill thank you yeah and I would and I would also caution us in terms of um until we actually continue to go through all this stuff to you know I don't think this is a cookie cutter bill I could say that I could just say right off the top that I mean and it may well be but I just want us to be careful about about drawing conclusions about what this bill is I mean there's a lot of laws that fit across the top just sit um and I think it's important for us to um keep as we move forward to um you know address what's actually in the bill um with everything that we're hearing from from the witnesses and so um without closing off I don't want to close I don't I don't want to I don't want to I'm not at a place where I'm going to call this a cookie cutter bill it may well be or this section may well be but um but that's what we're that's what we're working towards um is an understanding of what that means next up is um I think uh Jen you started to answer the question that I that I had so I'm not going to ask it I understand that it's difficult I mean VHCB is not a project manager they're not um they're not the folks that build these units and one of the things that came up last week was the question of um we spent a lot of time thinking about the character of an area as a as a phrase in the statute and I was wondering if if if that and I don't know that you can answer this but is that what prevented the units to be built in woodstock was that what people brought up against when they fought the woods there was a project in woodstock where there were some 28 units um single family homes I believe so not multi-unit but um single family units that were built but there was court cases there were act 250 um uh issues and it took 10 years to build it and if I'm not mistaken character of the area was one of the was one of the phrases that was used to try to um prevent this development from happening is that do you remember that at all I remember the project and that it was tied up in act 250 for 10 years but I don't recall and and uh and though I think there were some local zoning implications too but I I'm afraid I don't recall if character of any of it was was um one of the issues there it often is okay and and I don't know yeah go back to the committee no that that's fine it's I mean it's slightly different because it's those are single family units I just want to clarify about the cookie cutter comment that I made I just want to make clear that there are some communities that have districts that preclude this legislation so for instance um it's entirely possible and and I still have to have a better understanding of it myself but there is a there's a real possibility that for instance um water anybody who has a water district or a fire district as the as the provider of their public water which happens in smaller communities um I know that Waterbury Village was a race but now we have a utility district and that utility district owns the water lines all the way out to where the water comes from so it goes all the way through Waterbury Center and ends up at the still Waterbury Center line it's four or five miles of of um potentially developable land at a quarter acre um we may not be subject to this law because districts can be um there are certain fire districts or in our case utility districts that may be um that this may not apply to and so that's the kind that's what I want to make clear is that we're we're dealing with a whole bunch of different things that we're not used to hearing about and so um as we move forward I think we're going to hear more about where does this actually apply does it apply to everybody um or does it apply simply to the to specific areas and then identify where those districts are and then and then really take into account some of their concerns as we move forward um all right Jen thank you so much um you're please feel free to to hang out here uh and and listen in and um certainly if you have anything to add feel free to raise your hand later on or if we have a follow-up question we'll be sure to ask um I want to bring in um Mora Collins um and Sue I'm doing this simply because last time we had Mora here last week um we had to squeeze her in at the very end and I want to make sure that um she just she testifies today without the pressure of having to uh keep us from um keep us from our next place so um welcome Mora welcome back and um and let us know where you stand on on SC 37 well thankfully hi my name is Mora Collins I'm the director of Vermont Housing Finance Agency and um I hope Representative Stevens you'll let me know if my internet gets um problematic I have yelled upstairs to my children to get off the wi-fi but I don't know if that will be enough um that uh it'll be quick and so Sue will be able to get on soon because uh when you go after Jen Holler you often just smile a nod because um I support what what Jen has said about this bill um I will say that I'm coming to you today I'm in a sort of reflective mood today and it's because it was 18 years ago today that I moved to Vermont so I keep thinking about how I've been um working in the housing world for the past 18 years in this state and I was new to Vermont when I came here and um I it has changed in many ways and in many ways it hasn't and and I think it was about Jen would know the date but like 12 or 15 years ago when uh the state updated chapter 117 and made the revolutionary change that accessory dwelling units ADUs were going to be allowed by right there were certain limitations which you see in statute which S237 is looking to expand a bit because it's been more than a decade and we've seen that we can even go a little farther with that but I remember somewhat similar conversations from municipalities at that time where the um housing folks were very excited by the prospect of having ADUs be allowed um in all communities uh and the municipalities were quite nervous about that change and what it was going to do and how it was going to change our communities and as we can see um you know in many ways the ADU tool has not been used enough in in many regards which is one reason why S237 is going to help make that tool even more useful to to homeowners so VHFA just to be perfectly clear supports this bill as it's written when I testified on this in the senate my focus was largely on updating a definition of mixed income housing for act 250 and that got peeled out into another bill so I'm actually happy to be able to be on the record in support of the rest of 237 I support the proposed changes because of the potential net benefits on housing affordability of having smarter more consistent land use practices statewide regarding multi-home buildings and small lots um VHFA was hired to by the state to conduct the 2020 housing needs assessment and yet again we were struck by how dire the drop in residential development in Vermont has become uh you know I I went back and um was looking at how Vermont's housing has changed over the last 18 to 20 years and I'm flabbergasted that our housing market has only gotten tighter and more out of reach since um in the last 18 to 20 years representative Byrong and I just spent the last two hours together uh we both were presenters at the Vermont Community Development Association and he already got to hear me talk about the state's housing needs overall in the reality that roughly over the last 20 years we've been moving in the wrong direction our on average incomes have been going up about 2% a year and yet rental prices statewide have been going up by 4% a year and home ownership prices have been going up by almost 5% a year so that means that housing costs are increasing at nearly twice the rate of incomes so we're losing ground every year and how we got there is largely because of housing supply so um the Ron has uploaded to the committee's web page a power point that where you could see the rate of change in housing supply each year and I I did commit the cardinal sin of limiting many of you to representing one town even though I know many of you represent more than one community and you'll find the same chart for each of your communities where it shows how much the housing uh stock in your town changed every year in the 80s and there's a bar for the 90s and for the early 2000s and then 2010 uh through 2018 which is when the date is from and you can see statewide that in the 80s we were adding almost 2% of our housing stock was coming online every year in the 80s and by the way that's lower than it was in the 60s and 70s but still just going back to the 80s but then that drops in the 90s and it drops again to under 1% a year into the early 2000s and right now since 2010 statewide we're only adding a quarter of 1% of our housing stock every year we are losing in many of your communities you're going to look at my testimony in your committee uh website and you're going to see that your towns every year are losing you're you're having fewer homes than more homes now not all of our communities are growing and so maybe some of this is okay but what we're losing when we lose housing opportunities is we're losing that ability to be more affordable more equitable more welcoming and more available to all the people who are trying to attract especially during this pandemic and so um this bill representative uh zot is perfectly correct of course that this bill is not going to be the silver bullet that solves all of our housing affordability challenges and there are things that we could be doing to supplement the tools available in this bill this is a planning and zoning bill this is pretty dry stuff if you ask me uh this isn't appropriation so we're not talking about the money that vhcb so desperately needs this isn't a finance committee where we can talk about the um bonding um that could be possible this isn't you know there's a lot of other tools we can look to but this will go a very far away I believe in helping to ensure that communities um have opportunities to um to use their land as as well as possible so when I'm talking about incomes going up two percent a year and housing prices going up by far more than that um you know the supply of housing is not the only reason for that but the slowdown in housing construction is most certainly due to some barriers posed by the municipal process and regulations and protests from individual neighbors I believe that the adverse impacts of those barriers and housing prices calls for these statewide policy changes and specifically the ones in section two uh providing more predictability and consistency for home builders working across communities is likely to reduce home prices both directly and through increased housing supply um I know I have I have not read every comment that's come in it's wonderful that there have been so many written comments I understand that there have been questions about if these changes will create limitations on municipalities who are already doing this much or more um I also understood the potential for unanticipated consequences like I saw the Bennington example where they brought water lines out to the edge of town because of the PCOA concerns I think section two addresses that through the ability to appeal to the state for a substantial municipal constraint um I'm open to what the VPA has said about some smart resolution and compromise in some of these ways you know the VPA I if I weren't doing what I'm doing I think I should have been a municipal planner because I have so much respect for the planners and they're much smarter than I am um and I really appreciate because I've worked with them for so long I appreciate the careful effective work that professional planners bring to Vermont communities and have brought to those municipalities that are lucky enough to hire them and you've heard from a lot of them in your comments but I'm probably more focused and concerned about the other towns the towns um that don't have professional planners the ones who are not already pushing the envelope to encourage housing affordability in these ways so um the last thing I'll say is that just by having this bill past the senate uh was um was reason for it to be written up in some national um planning publications it was in strong strong towns and some other ones and it's being touted this bill is being touted as a model for other parts of the country it's the same way that when I speak at national conferences I'm often asked about the adu statute language that's already in statute because other states want to copy that so there's great potential for Vermont to again lead the way with this legislation I don't think that this is the last thing you all need to do to answer the state's housing needs but I do think that um it'll go a long way and and therefore I'm in support I'm happy to answer questions or fade into the YouTube background to this I think you're muted representative Stevens if you're speaking representative Gonzalez and then uh representatives uh more I thank you so much for your testimony and for putting together um the comparison for our towns and so in that uh looked at my town and very surprised to see that our housing stock actually reduced um that it doesn't capture the last two years and that we have had some um sizable multi-unit buildings go up in the past two years but I just want to say I'm very surprised with all the building that we have done in the past 10 years that our housing stock has still gone down um and so that's just something that really stood out for me and so I thank you for doing that very local data sorting for for us so I can see that and just thinking about specifically around that the auxiliary dwelling units that we have uh some small lot sizes in Windows key but also fairly some um large lot sizes and when we do have people that do try to build auxiliary dwelling units um and there's actually currently one right now that that neighbors are trying to prevent from being built even though it is well within the current statute and the municipality water and waste has some being able to handle it so just that that's really nothing else other than thank you and I'm thinking about my my local municipality and the benefit of the auxiliary dwelling units being expanded in this well yeah I was surprised pulling those charts together I um I'm going to be honest with you that some of your community surprised me there were you know virgins there were some that um the the charts were going in different directions and and sometimes you know we can say well maybe there was some outlying years maybe the data um doesn't adequately uh cover when you ski has done a lot with form-based codes and and really thoughtful planning and and growth management and so um maybe uh some of those things aren't captured I'm never going to pick one data point and say that this defines a community but um I I wanted to share it was interesting to me that across the board most of your communities did see that same kind of declining um housing growth or sorry declining how of the housing stock that we see statewide you represented so oh um can you hear me I don't see my uh my okay um um I'm glad to see that you included Barnard um in your charts my question though is is that obviously housing affordability is more than the supply of housing stock right um also a big picture big piece of housing affordability would be rental prices uh because not everyone has the capital or the desire even don't own a home so the fact that you don't have housing stock isn't necessarily reflective of the overall picture of housing affordability am I off it's one indicator but it's not all the indicators right absolutely but housing stock does include both rental and ownership you know so the my my real concern with the I was on my planning commissioner I still am for the past six years and we're just a bunch of uh non-professional local yokels but um you know even if this law were to pass uh they're the biggest impediment well there's several impediments to development of housing stock in Barnard one is second home owners because we have a proximity to both Killington and Suicide Six ski area so people are from out of state who make much larger have much larger incomes buy homes that are infinitely affordable to them but they're not affordable to the people who live in Vermont and make Vermont wages that's a huge obstacle for us to we couldn't build uh dense housing in our communities even if we wanted to because our soils are such that building any kind of adequate wastewater makes it prohibitively expensive to build dense housing and the third problem is the proliferation of uh airbnb properties that take otherwise perfectly viable rental units out of circulation for families and put them again into wealthy tourists hands so we have seen a decline in our rental housing stock that almost matches perfectly with the rise in the availability availability of airbnb's and if this bill were to say we're going to strictly regulate airbnb's to owner occupied dwellings that's just only in regulatory change that I think would go much further in the availability of housing stock for working for monitors than mandating you know lot sizes but you know I'm only speaking from Barnard's perspective not from I don't represent South Maryland and I don't represent Winooski I represent Barnard yeah if I can respond I think um you bring up a lot of really good points and one that I try to always include every time I open my mouth and I and I didn't this time so I'm glad you raised it is um that when we talk about needing more affordable housing that doesn't always mean that we have to build new homes new new a lot of our communities have vacant homes have poor quality homes have homes that need to be um reinvested in and brought back to life and up to code and um be be affordable housing by bringing it uh to be marketed and marketable as well as affordable so um you know I I haven't um done a needs assessment in Barnard but I I don't know um what the housing stock and individual challenges are there but I I can tell you that um sometimes you know what what brings those housing stock numbers down is not just that we aren't building enough to keep up with population growth because we know that many communities do not have population growth but what we see is that the quality of housing goes down so much that homes come offline they become uninhabitable they become um no longer considered by the census and others are reasonable um that the the structure is no longer considered a home it's now there's a whole housing destruction rate so um you know we need to protect that from happening and tearing apart some of our communities that the Airbnb concerns um that was also in the housing needs assessment that we conducted we did um a deep dive into uh what's happening with uh Airbnb so if you haven't looked at our housingdata.org website you can pull up every town in the state and see data around Airbnb uh rentals we limit it to we only look at um it's not just Airbnb it's also VRBO and HomeAway and a couple others um it's the the biggest providers and um we only report on um the responses where homes are the entire unit is available for rent not just a bedroom because I kind of don't care about those and from a housing market perspective um and you can see where we see the most of the um uh impact of Airbnb is is near the ski communities obviously southern Vermont is is heavily impacted by that although we are seeing that in some ways it is in line you know Vermont has long been the either number one or number two state in terms of having seasonal homes uh we always compete with Maine for that distinction of who's number one who's number two so um while now um all the vacation homes are more obvious because we can look at these data sources looking at Airbnb's and we can go on Airbnb and we can see um these websites we also know that um the reality of Vermont being a vacation home destination has long been a part of our identity and and impact on our housing stock the question becomes is it getting worse and I think with COVID a lot of us are looking at a lot of indicators to find out what is getting worse and will we see more people coming to Vermont and using homes for um vacation homes and not being available to year-round Vermonters are we seeing more out of status come to the state I'm as desperate as anyone to get my arms around this data because you know how much I love data but um a lot of that just isn't available yet it's just we we need a little more time so um more just in terms of to to get back to this kind of um there's not enough new housing being built or developed versus housing that's being lost I mean it's been pointed out that we're losing housing because of short-term rentals um but the other idea is um building or developing is uh primarily a commercial choice um someone has to make piece of land or develop a piece of land they have to go through already an existing um laundry list of permits especially in the denser areas though this is one of the things that we're trying to do here is to try to make it easier within designated downtowns and designated village areas and neighborhood areas we've already done work to try to make it easier for people to develop in a dense fashion um where the services and in the case I think less important I think I think the services are less important to developers than it is the infrastructure that would allow an of a building to be built I mean in their mind affordable means I can build this I can then rent this out and pay at the very least my taxes and my mortgage you know that those are things that private developers bring to the table how do you view this in terms of the interplay not just with what Vermont's stated needs are in terms of the need for more housing but in terms of what the developer might be needing when they come to try to say I'm gonna I want to come downtown and build eight units here four units here um can I build it on the small of a lot um yes it scratches the back of the need for more downtown dense um things but that's a decision that's being made in the community anyway is that I I mean does this does that question make any sense at all or is this that the idea that that it takes more than two people to tango here in in trying to create affordable housing I don't know if it takes more than two people to tango but I definitely know that um it it takes more than just some um than reading a municipality's bylaws to understand what's going to be possible so I have heard from multiple developers non-profit affordable private market rate and everything in between that um a lot of developers look at what is allowed in but in the zoning or the bylaws or whatever governing document you're looking at well how many units per acre is allowed and they they can expect to get half of that of whatever's on the books they um ideally always try to push for a little more than half but um I believe that was one of the concerns that tied up the Woodstock affordable housing development for 10 years in the state supreme court and um was that it was supposed to have allowed for many more units than uh were ever going to be proposed to be built or that got built um so in many ways you know we have to go beyond just what's on the books and look at what actually gets done on the ground I probably told you before but I teach at UVM on the side and I love academia but academia is not reality you know and so there is what's on the books and there's what the zoning says you know maybe it's a um one unit per acre maybe it's one unit per half acre but that does not mean that if I have two or four acres that I can do the math and figure out how many homes I'm going to actually be able to build because there it's a um there's a lot more to this process than just the zoning so by uh having the zoning rules be flexible and encouraging to increase density it will only help start the conversation in the right direction and then from there we have other considerations like lot setbacks and um and well any number of more factors so um I do think that that's some kind of predictability that's why I mentioned um you know knowing what some of the the base standards would be across communities would be helpful to developers who work in more than one town um they they would know what to expect a little more moving from town to town not exactly but hopefully all right question from representative Hango thank you um I'm back on your housingdata.org website and um there's really nothing showing in my district because it's pretty rural and um there aren't really any big municipalities um however I'm a little bit curious about what what this I'm looking at the inter interactive map now what this interactive map is actually showing us is this um subsidized housing is it um is it just housing developments because it certainly isn't all affordable rental housing vacancies in vermont so I'm I'm trying to understand what it measures okay I think you're so the main part so housingdata.org has two main parts and um most visitors care about our directory of affordable rental housing by 80% of people that's where they go it's only about 20% of nerds like me who go to the community profiles that pulls up the data that I was sharing with you all um I'm guessing that you're looking at a map of the directory of affordable rental housing and that would be mapping out roughly the 13,500 affordable apartments that have some kind of government subsidy in them um and so from there yeah you may not see not every district will be represented um and so it it may look like there's no affordable housing in that community although one of my not so funny jokes I like to make is that there's many there may be 50 ways to leave your lover but there's many only three ways to make affordable housing and um one of them is by building a structure like uh representative Stevens speaks often about french bloc above obichon and montpellier some of those buildings we can go that's affordable housing that's one way of having affordable housing there's also section eight vouchers that are used in um any number of um apartments um I believe representative is a landlord who you know um people will live in regular uh landlord owned apartments but it'll be affordable because of that voucher and then the third way to make affordable housing is to have really crummy housing and just have it be rented at a really affordable price because there's not a lot of people who want to live there and um you're limited as to your options so that map you're looking at is just the first of those three categories um if you go to housingdata.org and scroll maybe a little bit you'll see a community profiles link and that brings you to more housing data than you're ever going to want to know and um there's you know a map there that talks about the number of households but on the left there's I'm looking this way because I'm looking at my my um I have the website up you know you can get information about population income home ownership costs rental housing costs housing stock which is where I found that chart that I shared with all of you housing needs housing programs and you click any one of those like I click housing stock there's information on the number of housing units short term rentals I was just speaking to the rental vacancy rate how many vacant homes the year homes were built um the number of bedrooms uh home fuels that's important to look at um utility costs and then the rate of change in housing supplies the chart that I shared with all of you you can also see information about building permits broadband access and the number of days on the market that homes for sale stay on the market because that's an indicator of um how hot or cool our markets are any one of those categories homeownership costs rental costs will bring you to a dozen more charts than for any of those you can um then when you click on the chart and you see it where it says location there's a little um search glass magnifying glass and that's where you can start to type your community's name and pull up your community's information so thanks for explaining that I guess I'm a little confused as to why when you click on the first one find rental housing all you find are subsidized housing or places that are available for section eight vouchers and um not even all of those one of my towns has nothing listed um and I'm sure they have something available but I really do kind of want to take exception to the crummy housing language because um today on the governor's press conference there was a local reporter who asked a question that was pretty derogatory about one of my towns so my ire is up if you want to say my hackles are up today about that and we have in northern Vermont as I'm sure they do in the northeast kingdom as well we have a lot of really nice places for people to live they may not have a lot of amenities like transit centers or grocery stores um or other supportive services but they're beautiful places to live and they're really affordable and they're not derelict and they're not against code they're you know they're nice places that that nice landlords rent so I really do kind of take exception to that and I hope that those types of properties are taken into consideration when somebody's looking at a map for a place to live that's affordable in Vermont thank you I just I would love if the legislature ever wanted to uh create a rental housing registry where um I could list all of the rental housing that was available to rent in the state then we could add it to this site and we would be able to do what you're speaking about we could have the affordable ones listed and then we could have all the market rate ones listed and then we would have that full picture of where the rental housing is in the state but um right now we only know about the afford the government subsidized affordable ones because we finance most of them we work with our partners to know where these ones are when you do search for the vacant ones if you look at vacancies only on the website there will be um you may know of vacancies they're not listed sometimes affordable housing has such a long waiting list that those managers don't bother to tell us that they have vacancies because they know that they have 40 people on a list for one apartment vacancy it's not worth their staff's time to type in I have a vacancy and get all these phone calls um when they already know they're gonna have no problem filling it immediately so we know that that's a drawback of this system um and but otherwise I think it's a great idea to um take the government affordable the subsidized affordable apartments add to it with some of the market rate and then we could truly give renters and people moving the state and others a really good picture of what's available to make sure that we can um keep all the units that we have available occupied and so we don't have as many vacancies as we may have now because there's not that one repository so thank you for that and that was truly a faux pas of mine because I'm not certainly not suggesting a rental registry that includes private um places but I do wish for people in the state to understand that um there are government subsidized places to live that are affordable but there are also a lot of private homes and and apartments that are affordable as well um that people just need to look into some of the outlying towns for that it's not really all about government subsidy subsidization subsidization thank you sorry for the background noise there's lawn mowing going on so morah um before we move over to sue I just a couple of things that may actually may not be that quick um one of the things I noticed is I was looking at your chart of course of the decades that you are taking them apart um and we know that in 2008 with the recession that the construction industry in particular was heart was hit hard and and truly hasn't and I think this shows that it truly hasn't recovered to the levels that it was prior and there could be a hundred different reasons why um that I mean it seems to me like there's been a lot of construction as as um as as Representative Gonzalez was just saying there's been a lot of construction in waterberry in the last you know little bit um uh it don't it's not that it's not reflected here but it just shows that there's the larger thing at at hand but with that our population has also stagnated yet we have the oldest how we say we keep saying we have the oldest housing stock so I guess like my question is for you as a as a data nerd um like okay so so you're taking you're taking the data and you're being nerdy about it but we're saying I'm asking um how do we interpret that data I mean because we can pick and choose right I mean there's lies and there's damn lies and there's statistics and you know and we can we can pick out of this chart or your website a hundred different ways of interpreting things that might fit our politics just for sure for lack of a for lack of a word so I'm just curious to know you know from from your perspective and so here comes the question so we have um so there's that there's there's also this bill at least a section that that is most controversial in this bill is dealing with the differences between inclusionary zoning and exclusionary zoning and exclusionary zoning to me means that each town can set up bylaws that say for these reasons you can or cannot build in this area and the inclusionary language here is saying well if you do these things if you have a bylaw against short-term rentals so that we're not advocating to turn ad use into into air b and bs if you do these things then you you get these benefits because we want but but you can't deny someone the opportunity to build in this case multi-unit housing um on smaller lots so I guess my question is you know how do this how does this data fit in the existing data fit into the existing world of exclusionary zoning versus what we're trying to do in this bill I mean what's the bone I mean what's the benefit for for I mean this isn't all about affordable housing this is about available housing as well yep um that's a big question to answer uh so I'm going to start at the beginning of what you started saying and hopefully I'll get to answering it um that's fair that's how I ask the question so yeah um so early in your comment um you asked about population stagnation and you know do we really I you didn't ask this specifically but I heard a whiff of and maybe I just I've heard it before people saying well do we really need to grow our housing stock if we have population decline and I just want to um remind you all that you know population is different the number of people in Vermont is different than the number of households in Vermont and our population may be steady or slightly declining uh but the number of households in Vermont has actually been growing and the reason that is is because uh we are living in smaller and smaller household sizes used to be you know you'd put you'd have six eight people living in one home and that would be a family maybe because they had multiple children maybe their grandma and grandpa were there there are a lot of reasons why we had larger household sizes I'm an Irish Catholic that you know we know about large household sizes but then as time has gone on that has gotten smaller and smaller so when you think about your grown children uh let's say um well I'm going to think of one of you I know you know you have three pretty grown children you lived in one home let's just say in Waterbury and now maybe if they all were in Vermont you would now need four homes you know one for each kid and one for the parents uh in divorce situations you have one family home that now becomes two um there are a lot of reasons why our household we we have more households and therefore we need more housing in that way the next one I hate to point out but we don't have the oldest housing stock in the country we have the ninth oldest housing stock in the country just want to put that out there um but your your bigger point um of inclusionary and exclusionary zoning um you know this is attempting to be a step towards being more inclusionary and having that be the default and and to strip away some of those exclusionary practices um as Representative Hango pointed out and I think it's so critical that we always go back to this not all affordable housing has to be government subsidized affordable housing you know what we put on the website that's the government stuff and all that but there is a lot of housing that is affordable because that ratio between incomes and housing prices matches up for people and the trouble we have is as I started my testimony over the last 20 years incomes have been going up but home prices are going up twice as fast and so we are losing ground in that regard and um so there are fewer of those non-government subsidized affordable housing units that are affordable to us because we have more child care expenses because transportation is more expensive utilities are more expensive taxes are up as well as healthcare and other things so um as we lose ground we need to double down and work harder to make sure that the housing that we have is affordable and not all that we can't afford for all of our housing to be government subsidized affordable so we need to do things like what's being done in s237 to make sure that we're adding to the housing stock so that the market rate housing um can come in at a lower price point and one way for private for-profit developers to have market rate housing come in at a lower price point is to increase the density that we allow and so that's what this bill ultimately one of the biggest things that I hope it will accomplish as for the data matching up data is always looking backwards you can I mean you saw my charts it only goes to 2018 the world has changed in the last six months I don't have any data to prove that the world has changed um and I'm not going to have data for a while on that so we do have to just look at what's happening around us and you know remain somewhat flexible and and know that no none of these charts no pretty website we can create is ever going to answer all these questions for us um but based on what we see from the past looking out the rearview mirror here's where you know we think as a state we should be going which is what's in s237 representative's on representative's on can you hear me now is it working okay sorry I don't know why my computer does that I know it's I know it's disruptive sorry um one one other thing I just wanted to raise with the solutions that you just laid out in your last answer is this idea of government subsidy versus the market and of course there are there are other options um you know I would just argue you know that obviously healthcare the market has not delivered affordable health care to americans the market is not delivered affordable housing uh either subsidies or one approach that's the approach that we've taken with healthcare hasn't delivered what we want either uh the government in could also provide housing um the state could in institute large scale housing trusts and then achieve some of these goals as well uh we could become our own developer uh as we have some of those models around the state um so again I see how that would deliver affordable housing I don't see how lot sizes mandated by the state's going to there are much better tools we keep calling this an affordable housing bill in my view it does very little to accomplish affordable housing uh I think there are very meaningful things we could do there's meaningful things we have done like the housing bond phcb's work has always done it this bill just seems like it's terribly misnamed okay uh thank you um all right with that um mora thank you and we're gonna go up to sue and please if you're if you um if you do black out your screen just um if we do call for you um we'll you're more than welcome to stay um and we'll notice I'll notice anyway when you take off but um if you need to that's fine too um I want to welcome sous filian from Brattleboro um who's here to talk I think in part about um the mobile home development that we've that we were just talking about so welcome to our committee um as you've noticed in the time that you've been here we will have a you know the microphone is yours and when um you're done then we'll do some q and a thank you for having me um I'm sous filian I'm the planning director for Brattleboro um I am here primarily to speak um about tri park and then I will probably give you my opinion on a couple of other sections in the bill um so I'm not sure if you're familiar with the tri park housing cooperative um but it is the largest mobile home park cooperative in the state of vermont there's about 293 total units um in three properties um it has about seven there's anywhere between 700 to 900 people um which is actually six to eight percent of Brattleboro's population and I would also point out that it's larger than a lot of municipalities in the state um and despite that they don't necessarily have access to what municipalities do for funding sources uh and we'll get to that um tri park stated mission is to provide affordable housing to predominantly low and moderate income homeowners and um many of their shareholders are elderly or qualify as low income um they also you know have a lot of of people who work in the community um teachers firefighters um people that work at the hospital um so it's an important source of housing for Brattleboro and it does provide important affordable housing as well um they are also located they have several of their housing units are located in the floodway in the flood plane and um have had repetitive flooding over the years um Irene was particularly difficult with for them um they lost many units in that and had a lot of recovery to do um and you know they like many mobile home parks in the state they have infrastructure needs um failing infrastructure uh that's that they really need to deal with um back in 2008 the town of Brattleboro and tri park signed an operating agreement uh because they needed to in one of the parks they needed to replace the water in the sewer system and as a part of that agreement with some pressure from DEC um Tri Park agreed to develop a master plan to remove homes from the floodway in the flood plane um and it took some time for us to get for all the partners to get that going but in 2019 with some funding from the community development program um we set to work on creating a master plan um that master plan was basically looking to guide the relocation or removal of the mobile homes from these hazard areas um but it was really important that we that the conditions of the property be considered the financial um situation of the park um and so those were key pieces of it and basically there's 42 units um that were you know basically that need to be moved um some there had been a higher number but some were demolished as a result of Irene um and so they we've come up with a plan um at least a first step of a plan where we think that we can create 25 infill lots in the mountain home park um but at the same time there will be the loss of some units and that um and then this plan also addresses some of the infrastructure needs that they have so in two of the parks there are um wastewater and um sorry wastewater infrastructure that needs to be updated there's one bridge that needs to be replaced another bridge that needs to be rehabilitated and then there's some stormwater issues that have to be dealt with particularly in mountain home park which by 20 um 31 I think I can't remember when the date is but they'll be subject to a general stormwater permit so they have significant infrastructure needs that the plan took into account um and then their current financial situation is tenuous at best they have a very high debt ratio with a lot of capital projects that need to be undertaken um it would improve after 2031 when some of the debt is retired but they can't really wait on their infrastructure improvements and really they're just a flood away you know any of the next floods could wipe out more of the housing units and is going to you know be really difficult for them to withstand so um any project that they are going to need that they will undertake is going to need to require financing of their refinancing of their loans um and probably grant assessment assistance sorry um and they have been working with various state agencies to kind of figure out where the funding can come from and I guess as a final note um I would just like to say that since its inception tri park has been dealing with social and environmental justice issues head on um they purchased the land because the property owner was going to sell it and this important source of affordable housing was going to be lost um there was a lot of political support to form the cooperative um and I think there was a lot of excitement to do that um I'm not quite sure that there was the due diligence on what kind of infrastructure they were inheriting um and you know so they took it on to preserve their housing they took on six million in debt to bring the water in the sewer systems up to good repair in mountain home park but in the other two parks they're still failing um and then you know there's the environmental issue of the flooding and low-income housing being in the floodway which is not uncommon probably throughout vermont either um so they've done a lot they continue to work hard to preserve their housing and to make it safe and keep it affordable now but they do need help so I just really want to um impress on you to support the the part of the bill that that deals with directing de c to work with them and and consider options um it's just really important for their community and for the entire community of brawl brawl um so with that I guess I can I can take questions on tri park or if you want to hear some of my thoughts on the other parts of the bill I'm happy to share those whatever works best for you the um I know that someone who testified earlier this year about tri park had mentioned the same figures that it represents close to they're almost eight percent of brawl borough's population and I think that's um again gives us the idea that that affordable housing is not the same every place um and I know that brawl borough has a substantial um a substantial number of units downtown or in non-flood areas that are that are also um that are also affordable but um when it comes to the long-term planning I've heard a lot of dates that go out so far and um are you worried that that at some point the state will whether it's because of nature or whether it's because of regulations that the state will force this park to close down or is that what the the DEC language is is for no I don't I've never heard a discussion of that um wanting to close them down um I think the the situation is that if they had another flood and they lost more units they're they're not going to be able to it's going to be difficult for them to recover and um part of the reason that the town is involved is that you know we backed their bonds and so it's you know there's also debt for if if they don't make it then it's the town of brawl borough that's holding it as well so it's in everybody's interest to keep them viable but most importantly to provide a safe safe housing for the community okay no I this was the language regarding the park and DEC was probably one of the least controversial parts of the bill I think as far as we were concerned um other questions for Sue before she moves on to different testimony no okay go ahead yeah so um just really briefly I wanted to um support some of the expanding of the the tax tax credits both in the neighborhood development areas and then also for flood proofing um we know we have bridal buildings in downtown braddleboro historic buildings in the flood plain um where the flood insurance rates are just going through the roof um because they had the shift to the actual or actuarial rates um and so like the latches theater is one of those buildings um and so anything that can help with the investment in flood proofing these buildings I think will help preserve the building values and it's just really important um and then I wanted to say that um there's been a lot of discussion about the inclusive zoning provisions today I feel like some of them were written based on braddleboro um our accessory dwelling units are what is exactly what is proposed in the language it's been like that for some time um our minimum lot size through most of the town water and sewer areas is six thousand square feet so just slightly larger than the eighth of an acre that is being discussed in the legislation um and yet still we have an affordable housing crisis um and so I I don't feel like the minimum lot size is the key in braddleboro I share the concerns that some of the other towns have mentioned some of the other planners have mentioned about this one size fits all approach um actually tonight in braddleboro our select board is considering an interim zoning bylaw um where we're proposing that we get rid of the density caps because I feel like that is the area that is kind of restricting some housing development at least in the regulatory realm um you know I think there's lots of variables um construction costs and um just the market I mean in braddleboro our most successful housing projects have been the ones that have been undertaken by wind and winds our housing trust um we've had you know most of the subdivisions that we had in our town since the 1980s all except one that I can think of have pretty much gone bankrupt so we just have such a low development pressure for um building larger uh developments um and unless there's some sort of financing subsidy that's going on like wind and winds our housing trust can take advantage of it's really difficult to build it so I'm not sure that the minimum lot size is the best approach I do think that DHCD is enabling better places zoning guide is very insightful um our regulations were audited through that um and so some of the proposals changes proposed changes that we're bringing to the select board tonight are come from that and so I think letting that be out there having the rpcs and other consultants and town staff work with towns to kind of look at their regulations and and figure it out I think is could be important to let that happen first um and then even with our 6000 square foot lots I would say you know we do have areas of town that where the water in the sewer extends past those areas and I am just a little bit concerned sometimes the roads are in in great shape or um you know they were extended for various reasons such as the Vermont Welcome Center in Guilford you know we extended our lines down to to help make that project happen so I think that there are other costs to municipal services to consider um so I think the suggestions that you'll hear from vpa and maybe some of the other planners I think that there are probably tweaks that can be made to to help improve that so thank you great thank you well thank you for coming up um in a manner of speaking um so it's 426 and Ron were we scheduled to be here till 5 or 435 um I I scheduled us till 5 the the calendar has us till 430 but there's not there's no conflict so I just given the number of witnesses I just alerted people that it could run longer no that's fine um so um Ellen are you still with us yes she is um I know I had one question from Representative Byron to to get to I think as he has a question specifically about this I guess it's about the cookie cutter part of this or it's about the lot size um so Matt you want to go ahead yeah no thank you thank you um chair students um so my question is is around that section with the 1 8 1 8th lot size um my um municipality my primary development areas obviously for gents and so the question is is you know would any parcel hooked up to city water have the ability to be subdivided to a 1 8th acre a lot and and sort of the the mindset because we're in the middle of um redoing high density low density medium density designations right now and they see that as making sense in the historic and high density area but they have concerns about the medium and low density areas because of how they also a but other areas so essentially the question is like would a 1 acre lot be able to be subdivided just sort of as a benchmark standard into 8 1 8th parcels and sort of like you know you could drop like a townhouse or carriage house kind of concept on each 1 8th acre parcel does that make sense the question uh it does um and I don't know I would need to I need to think about it a little bit I don't know off the top of my head um because as the language is phrased uh so no bylaw she'll have the effect of prohibiting the creation of residential lots so I don't know I can look into it yeah there's a lot of development interest in this area so we're just trying to understand how this would have the impact here I mean we have a very very hot real estate market very very very low rental inventory and where we're at right now is just trying to understand does this make it an applied standard that a one acre lot could be obligated to be subdivided 1 8 1 8 1 8 bang bang bang unit unit unit so as we're designing our our long-range plan that's something that keeps popping up I wonder and I just would wonder out loud too just about whatever existing zoning exists or or requirements I mean we we talk about parking but that doesn't necessarily mean that the parking plan for and you know essentially putting 32 people on an acre is what you're talking about right you're talking about eight units of of the you know 32 units um where would you find parking for 30 cars um at the same time so I mean this is where the this is where things the interplay comes in but I but I totally appreciate the the theory of like is it possible to just plug it in that way and it's like does one acre become like you know a four level unit of like apartment style condos but the way it reads is on this one eighth lot like you're looking at like bang unit bang unit bang unit bang unit and then it just the the square footage on the property is just starts to get a little tight right I guess it depends on what's available what's what is it now with with your water and sewer I mean I'll use another example from from Waterbury there's there's a series of apartment buildings across the street from Shaw's right out as you get off the exit and um when they were being developed when they were being the plan was going to be that they were not on they were not on water and sewer and so the zoning for them the act 250 zoning for them was well if you build a nine unit building you don't need an act 250 permit you know no matter what the water sources are in that case it would have been um whatever water plus if they if they had septic fields and not didn't use the town water and sewer the village water and sewer well the sale of the property was contingent on them being annexed into the village and using the water and sewer so that they could so that they could bring that so they didn't have to deal with septic and it was only revealed later that we only discovered this later in our thinking was that we went from allowing 36 units of four four buildings of nine each that didn't have to have active 50 permits to to having um the density because they became part of the village of having over 100 units you know because of the water and sewer so I guess it depends on anybody's local what what what is your village what is your village zoning when it's on water and sewer already versus um and what's acceptable throughout the existing bylaws versus what this is proposing but I totally appreciate you know I think I think your planner wants to I mean when you have language the way that Ellen just read it it is you can't deny me the right to subdivide this and I think clarity on that probably needs to be yeah and we're in the process of redoing all this right now and pulling the last like parcels that are currently agricultural which basically aren't being used right now into medium and you know different densities so what we're looking at right now as we are literally in the process of doing this is how does this language impact the plan we're looking at there right because they seem to be like intersecting points that are currently being rewritten and you don't know how they're going to interplay with one another okay yeah and I mean are they part of I mean are you designated downtown is that it going to be is that going to be an adjacent neighborhood area uh you know lots of questions you know and then we're getting into the nda component with our designated downtown and how that you know becomes more expansive so yeah there's a there's a lot of nuance popping up with this within my my planners and also our regional planner our county regional planner so yep uh representative Hango thank you so I want to thank Matt for bringing that up because that's a really interesting point and I'll be interested in hearing the the clarity on that I just want to comment that that that conversation probably won't really be taking place in in most of my towns just because of um how rural we are and even though a few of them have their own municipal water and sewer systems um I can't I can't even fathom you know that that road with one acre lots of townhouses going up so that I guess goes back to my point that this shouldn't be a cookie cutter approach it should be it should allow various municipalities to have a say in what's best for their own area and um I think sorry this bill is written I think in section two just does not allow for that um so again I think we really need to take a look at section two thank you represent Toronto thank you um I did notice um actually the highest number of or highest percentage of decrease in housing stock um in hardware at one of my towns I was kind of surprised about that more um you know uh Jim Levinsky and Memorial Housing Partnership have been working pretty hard in town and adding units every year there's another fellow that's uh you know added units to the downtown but one of the reasons I've been so quiet here is that I live in a town that has no multiple family dwellings has two acre zoning in the village four acres in outside the village and 25 acre zoning on in rural you have no water and sewer so it's a little difficult for me to relate to some of this stuff so I've been quiet I couldn't imagine my town dealing with some of these issues at all so you know I just kind of keep quiet but I was curious about the decrease in hardware um housing stock I thought we had been making some inroads there is that a question for mora or just sort of a just sort of a comment okay on my quietness unusual as it may be um but do you have any comment on that mora as to hardware and any of that okay that's cool I really don't it does go back to don't forget that housing destruction rate it's not just all about construction but there is destruction and sometimes units do come offline I don't know if that's the case in hardwick I have to drill down further um but you know we it I know that after the last recession there was a lot of talk about um the surprise at how much housing construction was happening and in in some ways I read some good articles that were talking about you know perception being reality and how we went for so long it took so long to come out of the last recession therefore so long we were not used to seeing construction and capital wasn't flowing and there was a credit crunch and so it took so long for construction companies to get raise the capital they needed to undertake big projects that um by the time capital really started flowing again um we all weren't used to there there was some pent up demand that then is spilled over and we probably saw um a decade's worth of construction kind of compressed into five years in some ways and so it seemed like a lot but we had uh forgotten what it was like that that we hadn't seen enough construction for um you know during late oh eight through maybe well then there was Irene and 11 so I just mean there was a um some of the construction that was happening was just making up for um problems that Irene and things like that and we really weren't adding until um well into the what do we call the 2010 decades and and I wonder again how much of that too is you know the difficulty in developing um housing that for a commercial developer again it's expensive um there's no question that when starter homes in in Chittenden County are being can't be built for less than three and a quarter um or can't be you know that just points out um how difficult it is for for um one of the witnesses who was not able to appear today Eric Hochstra I saw him at a at a at a conference five years ago talking about how difficult it is and and and to build affordable housing and what the numbers were and if he had subsidies Burlington has Burlington has more opportunities to more regulation and when it comes to building and what credits he could he could qualify for but nevertheless it was a pretty high number that he still had to charge for rent just to you know that was not in the conventional way that an affordable housing organization can build it um with with the way that their funding is done so um and so high-end homes you know got got built I think or at least that was a perception is that the first the next blush of rush the next blush of construction was for higher-end homes and not so much for um what we've been developing the 120 up to the 120 of AMI which has been part of our conversation so all right I was reflecting on having lived here for 18 years but you know so much of my background is not Vermont based and I'm just so much more used to speculative building where you know you just you you build developments you single family homes multiple and then you sell them you know in some phases but you just you build and then you sell now I mean in Vermont that would be way too risky the land use laws here I mean it's too expensive so the only people who can build are those either with means who can get a custom built home or affordable you know government subsidized housing is a form of it because they can put up 30 unit apartment building and then fill it and because it's subsidized you know that market is really there um but you know when it comes to the home ownership market we just don't see a lot of development and and some of that is really good we don't want to see speculative building in our country's sides um you know negatively impacting we we we have smart growth and and it's worked well in our state and yet there is this we we do things differently here and that may impact our prices in that way well and we saw I mean when you do conventional you're talking about how data looks backwards and um you know down street housing when they were developing the the the French block and then the Taylor street I mean that was a substantial number of new units and a substantial number of affordable units for set for a particular price range and I know that the project development folks were very concerned about flooding quote unquote flooding the market because based on old based on the looking backwards adding 40 plus units in a two-year period was was was asking for vacancies but as it turns out all of those units rented almost immediately because the need is so great and you know there's a waiting list for for them and and that price point again without subsidy is still um it's still pretty high so um I mean stuff costs money to build and I get to the point of why people would want to build more multiple unit places um to spread the cost representative Howard trying to unfair um thank you I I wanted to say thank you tomorrow for her chart but um being from Rutland County um I was sad to see that uh as of uh 2018 we're in the minus but I would like to say that now we are headed in a better direction so I'm you know grateful for that but um thank you