 We are live, and we have Karen Hart from Rump, League of Cities and Tasks. Good morning. It is Brian January 27th, and Senate economic health in general. Helping in general affairs. Karen. Thank you very much for having us. We really appreciate the opportunity to testify on this bill. And the committee room looks, I know I was in here before, but the committee room looks so different on Zoom than it does a real nice person. They have angles. It looks like... Senator, you're like way real in there. I know. In my committee, I'm going to have this bowl in front of me. Yes. Yeah. Yes, you do look like you're in Florida or something. I do look like I'm in Florida. Oh, I know. Senator Bejitman is keeping us well there now. We just all have to eat it. So we are really grateful for the opportunity to talk about this issue. Clearly, housing is essentially a crisis in every town in the state. You heard some really compelling stories yesterday morning. I was watching about people's efforts to find housing. And we've heard those same stories. We've heard about people turning down jobs and going back to wherever they thought they were moving from because they couldn't find housing. There was an individual who was taking a job in the town of Windsor last year who actually had to decline in the end because he couldn't find housing. We do think we need to take a holistic approach to the housing effort. We know we need to amend zoning to reduce barriers to housing development. We also need to address party status and permitting and address substantial impediments to housing development imposed by Act 250. Permits required by the agency of natural resources and VTrans. And as you've been looking at over the last couple of years, costs of land and labor, availability and cost of materials, bank lending practices, and more, all of that contributes to the housing crisis across the country and in Vermont. And what we are hearing is that the problem is more acute in Vermont than it is in other places. I want you to remember that land use planning and permitting are core responsibilities that the voters in more than 253 cities, towns, and villages have granted to their municipal governments. According to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, there are 253 municipalities with adopted plans. 242 of those are current plans and confirmed by the Regional Commission. There are 207 municipalities with adopted zoning or subdivision bylaws. I will send you my testimony afterwards. I always find spelling mistakes when I'm reading it. So I'm sorry, Karen, what was that number again? So 207 municipalities have adopted zoning or subdivision bylaws. 253 have adopted plans. 242 of those are current plans and confirmed by the Regional Commission. So there are a few towns out there that have expired plans that are work. You have to renew them every eight years. So they're working on renewals to their municipal plan. So I think we have 247 towns or cities. So we have cities, towns, and villages. Because there's some villages that have municipal plans. There are villages around the state that actually. Yeah, sadly, I don't know. Yeah, it's 247 now. Because of S-Extension City. Right. So this is a tremendous body of work undertaken by dedicated and volunteer planning commissions, zoning boards of adjustment, and development review boards, emphasis on volunteer. They're trying to do the right thing for their communities. And they're trying to implement the many requirements in planning and zoning statutes that have accumulated over the years. I'm the vice chair of my planning commission in Wartown. Winzakoff, who works with me, is the chair of her planning commission in Brookfield. So we sort of live this in small communities. The workload's huge. It's complex. It's frequently controversial. And it's stressful. And as a result, many volunteers at the local level are calling it quits. And we have a real process in terms of volunteer local officials that's accused of killing people's grandmothers when I was on the planning commission. Who earns everything they want to put the gray union over. Yeah. There's only that. There's no where. There's no use in doing this. It gets very, it gets very, it does. People say something about parking issues. So yeah, I think they're very emotional. They do. They do. So I want to move to the actual bill. But I would also recommend that you hear from the mayor's coalition on housing issues. The mayor's block to make it next week. Oh, you do. Excellent. Excellent. So they put together a legislative agenda, which I actually sent to Scott yesterday, I believe. And housing is really front and center on that agenda. And in terms of moving to the bill, we are concerned that the first five sections of the draft bill mandate how municipalities permit housing developments. And that will eliminate any kind of discretion at the local level for planning commissions, zoning administrators, and development review boards. I understand that that might actually be the full-on intent of the legislation. But municipalities are not one-size-fits-all. And what may be reasonable in one community and necessary, for instance, in the cities where the mayors are working, is not necessarily going to work in smaller communities and may result in exacerbated problems. And again, I want to emphasize that we understand that zoning needs to change. We did have one suggestion that did, oh, and I should also say, we were, we had several conversations with Representative Bonkarts regarding his bill. And you and Senator Bonkarts came into our December BLCT board meeting, where I think they were fairly clear that they had some issues with Senator Bonkarts' draft bill. I think it was constructive that we heard really specific feedback and the need to focus on other parts of the law that it was developed. And I think, Senator, you definitely heard that. Recommendation, I'm not sure that Senator Bonkarts' bill reflects that because it really doesn't address Act 250. So parking spaces, I did want to just take that as an example. The prohibition on more than one parking space per dwelling unit. And not prohibition, but restriction. A restriction on requiring it at the town level. A developer could add more than one. You could justify. Oh, the developer could also see the parking maximums right now, so they don't want to, you know, exactly to that point. So in a smaller, more rural community, where there's more space, it might be fine to just have one parking space per dwelling unit. In Montpelier, where parking has always been an issue and where Act 250 denied a parking garage and where you'd have to move your cars to clear snow, one parking space per dwelling unit would be really problematic. Yeah. That's a good champion for raising that issue on the committee. Parking was when I was accused of killing Grant. Oh, there was parking. Well, it was bringing in a parking lot. And yeah, it's very close to my heart. Right. We understand that. So I also need to comment on emergency shelters. And I think what I'm going to say here is going to be wildly unpopular. OK. That's a promise. Yes. So adding emergency shelters to the list of facilities that may only be regulated with respect to the limitations section of Title 24 will exacerbate an already unmanageable reality at the local level. And I need to explain that a bit. We don't have a good definition of emergency shelter. We're not sure which agencies regulate and manage emergency shelters. Are there staff there to provide support services? Are emergency shelters hotels where people are lodged on a temporary basis? Are they encampments? The governor's budget calls for $26 million for emergency housing, including general assistance and adverse weather conditions to assure every Bermontier has a place to go for the night. The general assistance and adverse weather conditions is our understanding is that's essentially the hotels where people are lodged. At the local level, the hotel program puts local governments in impossible situations where police and emergency medical service calls to hotels of skyrocketed since the COVID pandemic. Do you have numbers? I do have numbers. I don't have them written down. I have a few municipalities who are very reluctant to have their names attached to these comments because they're hopefully not PC. Even if it's de-identified, I think numbers would be helpful. So in one community where there are three hotels, they had about 200 calls to the hotels pre-pandemic and they've had more than 1,300 in the last year. In Rutland City, there are eight hotels and they have statistics about the number of calls to those hotels, not only police, but also emergency medical services. Because there are no, what we hear is there are no support services around the hotels. And there's not staff there. I'm not denying that that takes a lot of our emergency service calls. Our responsibility is still to look regionally at what those emergency calls come from elsewhere when they become from a shop or a bookstore or someone had an episode or a main community. Yeah, so a few corner. A couple of the cities have made that distinction. But I think the essential message is that you're asking police and emergency medical services 911 calls to take the place of the support services that are present in the nonprofits and the Good Samaritans and the cops. I hear you defining shelters there. Yes, I mean, that's what I was going to say here is a difference. Good Samaritan has staff. There's a stark difference in the terms of calls. Yeah, but the hotels are just hotels. Sometimes during COVID, there was, I think, more support, more supervision. And I think now we're here. But I think what I'm hearing you say is you want a definition of a better definition of a shelter. We need a definition. We need some ability to regulate those kinds of facilities. And they need to be located in places where they are proximate to support services and those kinds of things. In just one more example, I'm told that in Berlin, at the Good Samaritan Haven, they've had maybe 30 calls over the last year. And they've had more than 400 to the hotel that's hosting people because there's no other place to turn. That's a helpful distinction. If the hotel is across the street from the hospital, that is water. So we don't disagree. I just doubt it's really helpful. Yeah, we will put that data together. The 300 to 1,300, it's pretty big data, if you could. I mean, that's pretty stark. Hotels generally, unless somebody has a heart attack, you don't get a lot of hotels. Well, it's a hotel. It's housing. I mean, the state is doing a very good job of providing the housing and the shelter. And that's what the focus is. And some of these suggestions might also come with some support if you have ideas for a definition. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I would just mention the requirements in Section 5 for reporting to the Department of Housing and Community Development. We just need to be mindful of the fact that not all towns have access to high-speed internet. Or never let us forget it. We're working on it. We're working on it. I was going to say that. I live in a small pocket every time. Internet desert, so I'm very well aware of that. We need to get the money. We had money originally so that three or four neighbors could get there. I think it was up to a $2,000 grant. But between them, if you got 10 neighbors, we did it. This bear swamp, one of the bear swamp roads that way. Interesting. Interesting. So you all got your. Well, the communications union districts, I think, are doing an epic job. And they are getting out there. But it does take time. But it takes an amazing amount of time before you can stream. It also takes a fair bit of expertise to file reports to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development's non-easy thing to do, having done it. So. You were our poster child. Because I remember all through COVID, the beginning, particularly, when you were driving to your elementary school or where you were driving to be on your fault. Yeah. To me. Yeah. Every sess. Which was always fun. Look, I had a teacher who was teaching her class for the more general store. Oh, yeah. She's down parked in the parking lot at the hot spot. Yeah. Yeah. That's where Karen was. Yeah. Um, let's see. We do appreciate your proposing granting discretion to a town to allow the zoning administrator to approve minor subdivisions. That's been an issue in a number of towns. Because if you have a subdivision, advice of some attorneys will say that you already have that authority to determine what's a minor subdivision and allow the zoning administrator to make those decisions, which are then appealed to the developer review board. But some attorneys say that that discretion is not allowed in the statute. So making it clear would be very helpful. And also, and I think this is really key to the whole housing discussion, but thank you for eliminating the section of chapter 117 municipal planning and zoning that eliminates the any 10 people may appeal the zoning decision. And if you get rid of that section, these are the people who would still be able to appeal. A person owning title to the property, a host municipality, and adjoining municipality or solid waste district. A person in the immediate neighborhood who can demonstrate a fiscal or environmental impact on that person's interest. Any department or administrative subdivision of the state owning any interest in property and the agency of commerce and community development. So what you are really doing when you eliminate that any 10 person section is you're focusing the appeal rates on those entities and people that would actually be affected by the decision. We've done a lot of reading over the last couple of years around the whole issue of appeals and the fact that we discussed this the other day, and the fact that people who have a vested interest who are in the neighborhood of course are going to come to the public hearings and they're going to get involved and they're going to try and appeal. The people who might be there if the units were built who would like to live there, they don't have that same vested interest. And so there's really not any way to represent that interest need priority in the appeal process. I don't know what you do about that. There have been articles in governing magazine around that whole issue in the New York Times in seven days, but it is something that I think we need to be mindful of. The voice of the future beneficiaries. Right, right. Even how do we represent? Like I witnessed yesterday, I was living in a hotel for seven months. To know which towns in the radius of commute from there, you need to go talk to. You don't. I think you've seen great ideas in governing magazine for those now, but I think a lot of times are creating portable housing, task force like commissions and housing director in Burlington who used to go to the state meetings. And you have the YIMBY groups, which I really like that idea. But still, you have to have the time and the wherewithal and the dedication really to go. You have to have the party status. Yeah. I think it's an interesting question. How do we represent the voice of future beneficiaries? I think that's a good question. Well, a good question for an interns project. It might be. Just look at NCSL and all the other sources that might say, tell us how others are dealing with this problem, if at all. Where's Peregrine? Yes, where is Peregrine when we need him to meet? Peregrine's working on other things. OK, wow. What's an issue on this? But that's a classic intern project. You have one. I don't. Go for it. Do really. We had a conversation yesterday with the UVM College of Arts and Sciences. And they really wanted to get interns involved in these guns, fishes, and munitions. So I might suggest that one to them. With respect to Act 250, we're very concerned that the bill does not sufficiently revise Act 250 jurisdiction of residential and mixed use developments. Act 250 often gives project opponents multiple opportunities to appeal and to take several bites at the apple, and ultimately to reduce the size of proposed housing developments. We've heard numerous stories of developers, both private and non-profit, who have restricted the size of their developments to below 10 units or whatever the number of units is that gets you to Act 250 jurisdiction, so they don't need to go through that process. We think it's very important to eliminate Act 250 jurisdiction in designated downtowns, new town centers, neighborhood development areas, and growth centers. We need to define the state standards for administration of Act 250 criteria. And you could have a system whereby municipalities certify that they are taking on that responsibility and not have the double permitting at the local level in Act 250. You will hear from the mayor's coalition very strong advocacy around eliminating Act 250 jurisdiction. And then we think that you really need to eliminate altogether the language in Act 250 that establishes jurisdiction based on construction of housing projects, constructed or maintained on a tractor tracks of land, owner controlled by a person within radius of five miles and within any continuous period of five years. There really is not any reason that we can think of that you would penalize a person who's developing housing just because they're having more than one development within five miles of each other or within five years. I mean, what we want is for them to build housing. And you've seen some of the sections start to take shape in our building. We have. They seem to all be somewhat qualified and not. But we think you really just need to eliminate that provision. Representative Sims has a bill in I think it's H111 with 50 co-sponsors at this point that would eliminate the Act 250 jurisdiction in designated downtowns and so forth and would also address the language about five miles, five years, 10 units. We strongly support the Section 15 regarding connections to municipal water and wastewater. We've been working on that issue for a long, Senator. Very long time. Over 25 years. Right. Very long. We almost actually secured that change to the statute last year. It was sort of nip and tuck, but in the end, it didn't pass. But don't. Pretty hard. Yeah, you did. You did. And the agency of natural resources is supportive of that change at this point. And then we thank you for including the language that would enact the project-based tax and current financing districts. I understand that there's some consideration of maybe having that in a separate bill, which we still support it over there. Right. Right. I've told finance that that may be coming. Maybe we trade off the big tips because the towns that are really in a position to do them have done them and go to the smaller tips. And if we can keep the impact on the ed fund or even reduce it, then I think we've got a good chance. And we think that that would be very workable. OK. Good. You also had an extension in here, I think, for Hartford, which also has a separate bill extended. It's there and I'm working on a separate bill for Barris City so they can go through. And if you've got language, I don't have to get the same language from Barris City. I think it's finally been sorted out, but someone's introducing Barry, right? Me. Yeah. I was going to say you're looking at the watch. I've emailed the manager and clerk yesterday and said you can send me some details. But if you haven't drafted up, that would be. I don't know if it drafted up, but we could get it drafted up really quickly. And Carol Doss is definitely the person that's sort of taking a lead on that for Barris City. As in all things for Barris City. Because that could just tie this bill down or get it set to finance where there's an issue with TIFFs and there always is. It could get bogged down. Or finally, finance could see the light. But this committee will still advocate. Yeah. Well, I think the committee is on that committee. Yeah, exactly. Right. It is economic. So many TIFFs may be the future of TIFFs is what you're saying. I think in Vermont, yeah. I think they may be, I mean, particularly coupled with the auditor's concerns. The auditor's coming in next week. Yeah. Talk about Berlin. Oh, yeah. It's two-on-the-entrance. Oh, right. See what happens to app an hour? And we also support your proposals in the bill to fund the variety of housing programs. That's not just an addendum. Thank you very much for doing that. And we're happy to come back or answer other questions or have conversations or if you need to. So mobile phones. All that other stuff. Yeah, so mobile phones. We're missing the bill, the VHIP, the long-range plan for hotels. I just have a couple of questions. Do you have any towns right now that are making it illegal for people to sleep in their cars? I have not heard that. OK. No. We're just in the house of homelessness crisis. Right. I just wanted to make sure you weren't starting to hear of trends toward criminal housing. I have not heard that. Well, I'm just, you know, it always pops up. I read an article about it in another state just recently. I don't remember where. But I don't think that we have those kinds of efforts in Vermont. I think cities are pretty careful around those issues. Another issue, Bray, I will use a similar preface to yours about a popular pinion. Actually, I don't want to poke bears prematurely. But you know, one thing, I mean, we're starting to hear a couple of things, right? You have planning commissions doing great work. We have great plans. And then there could be appeals to votes where the mature, right? Sometimes it's not the individual going and advocating at a meeting. But it's the collective community saying, yes, I want my grandkids to be able to live here. I want more housing. I want to enact the plan we set. And there's still appeals possible after a vote is what we're starting to hear. So you were talking about the after a vote on a particular project. On a particular project, exactly. Decision? Yeah. Well, there's so many opportunities for appeals. So a zoning administrator can make a decision or the development view board can make a decision. And then it gets appealed with housing projects of any size. It's almost always appealed. And then the DRB will, like, affirm its decision or address the ZAs, the zoning administrator's decision. And then you can go to environmental court. Do their appeals get narrowed if there's been a vote? So saying that, though, would you rate it? You can always petition for a re-vote. If on any vote, if at least in a lot of the towns, I don't know about towns, but in cities with charters, you give, because that's yet. Yes, if you're adopting a zoning bylaw. For instance, we just had a municipal planning grant to rewrite our zoning bylaws to be more hospitable to housing. And we've done everything that's in this bill. One other comment was making accessory dwelling units of public building. It's going to really kind of kill people's interest in building accessory dwelling units. Public building. Well, that's in Representative Bogart's bill. Yeah, I think it is in ours. I think we haven't talked about that. I definitely think it's still a big issue. Like a fair housing kind of accommodation. And so what the language would do, I think it is in your bill. What the language would do is say that an accessory dwelling unit is a public building for purposes of fire and safety code. It has to be. Well, it isn't right now. And so you have your single family house and you're going to build the accessory dwelling unit on the side of it. You're going to do an extension. That's going to be a public building. But I think we need discussion of that. Yeah, we need to discuss that. We don't make it possible for it to be. If you have to sprinkle it, which you do in publicly rented buildings or if you. So if you have to put in sprinklers and you have an old farmhouse, it's an issue. Yeah, the Montpelier had a sprinkling requirement for any new construction or any major rehab. It can add thousands of dollars, depending on if you have to replumb your entire house to do the sprinkle. And then you get in to water pressure and if there's enough, but meet the cover. There is a balancing act between it being publicly available for public rent and still being in a home or on the lawn. So I mean, I think it's a balancing act that we have to both protect the public and make it for a lot. I just want to say a lot on Friday because next week we're going to try to find time to start hearing other issues, hearing how we're all feeling about the bill. I've asked Senator Harrison to just really dig into these sections and take feedback and bring future iterations forward. So Senator Clark. I'd like an update on something we did last year, which is, you know, I'm heart sick that the rental registry didn't go through, as you all know. But I do want an update on how the town health officers and the inspectors situation is working out. You may not want to give it today. You may not be prepared to give it today. But I would love to know how that is working out as we add new inspectors and as they go statewide. I don't believe there's been any rules written yet by the Division of Public Safety around there. So we are having them hand so we need to stop. Yes, so that's a nice thing. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so thank you so much for the time. We probably will have you back in, but we'll also hope that, you know, in other conversations we can share suggestions. Thank you. Thank you. I think one of the things I'm struggling with is when you talk about an accessory dwelling you, when that was first put out, it was like a grandmother or child, which means it's the room over the garage or the room on the third floor that grandma lives in, and I put a bathroom in, and maybe she's got a microwave and a mini fridge. When you talk about a rental unit as a public building, that means I now have to build a fire escape for grandma to the third floor. I will say a lot of this came up because we started putting public money into the use as a housing promotion. So I do think we'll need to look at the definition of ADU. That's come up a lot, and we have one, but I would like us all to look at it and know that we feel good about it. Thanks for your patience. No worries, thank you. Thanks for coming in. Yeah, thanks for having me, everybody. So I'm Zeke Davidson. I'm the COO of Summit Properties. We're the largest private developer of affordable and mixed income communities here in Vermont. We've developed about, no, you're welcome. It's our pleasure. We've developed over 700 rental homes in Rutland County, Addison County, Caledonia County, and Chinden County. We've also developed another 500 rental homes in New Hampshire and upstate New York, and on our affordable housing property management side, we manage all of our own units, but also Forever North Cots in the Burlington area and some other private affordable housing developers. Over what time frame are there 700 units? 700 units was dating back to our founders in the 80s, but about 100 of those have been brought online in the last two years. And the next part I was going to say, we're also under development right now in 94 units in South Burlington, 71 of those permanently affordable and 20 will be for people who are coming out of homelessness or at risk of homelessness through coordinated entry. And that project kind of represents one of the most ambitious, most cost efficient, quick to close in this ARPA funded affordable housing priority era that we're in. Big thanks to VHFA. That funding stack included funds from ARPA funds from VHCB, a CBBG award, local ARPA funding. It was a true testament to what ambitious projects can be in today's funding world that you guys have all approved over the last couple of years. Our next project, that one's under construction now. The next one we're working through permitting on. It's a smart growth mixed income 200 home project in Middlebury. It's the one that the governor mentioned in his opening address to all of you. And this bill could have a really beneficial impact on that. The removal of the population based caps for priority housing projects section 12, page 14 of this bill would save hundreds of thousands of dollars, six to 12 months in permitting and reduce the uncertainty and risk that the appeals process back to 50 causes. So the project started as a partnership between us and Middlebury College. They came to us a few years ago saying we are in desperate need for workforce housing. And we were able to bring Middlebury's resources and their urgency for housing in the town of Middlebury and together to purchase what was the perfect smart growth lot in the town of Middlebury. And the project started as a partnership with us in the college, but it's grown to include the community. We've held public info sessions, took feedback, all of it positive and encouraging about density. The town of Middlebury, we're working with them to jointly file some municipal applications, CRRP, CDBG, NBRC, the Porter Hospital, the other large employer in the town of Middlebury is supportive and on board the National Bank of Middlebury, the Addison County Economic Development Corp listed this as their number one priority on their 2023 priority project list. We submitted our first application to VHFAs, we supported the first application to VHFAs Missing Middle Home Ownership Program to all championed and passed in the last legislative session. We're going through town zoning right now and we're going through a robust environmental review that's required of all of our federal and state funding resources. So that sort of sets the scene as a town even before this project and unrelated to what we're proposing. Middlebury's done all the work the state has asked of it. It applied for and received neighborhood development area designation after a two-year bylaw modernization project. It's got robust zoning bylaws that include the key in on areas for smart growth, this parcel included, that were debated and adopted in a truly democratic process in the town of Middlebury. And the need for affordable housing, I think we all, it's sort of a known that we all know, but it's particularly acute in Middlebury. Middlebury has one of the, has I think the sixth highest jobs to homes ratio in the state of Vermont, that's behind a couple of the ski towns, Stratman-Killington also, meaning that this need is now, that needs to be acute and it really needs ambitious solutions. So after all of these tailwinds, after all of this effort by the town, the project will be subject to Act 250 because we're proposing more than 75 units in a town of a population between 6,000 and 10,000 people. Middlebury is a town of 9,200. The result of that, addition of hundreds of thousands of dollars, fees and consultants, we know that. Delay of six to nine months at minimum after going through the town zoning process, we'll then have to submit an Act 250 application and then as we're all talking about the risk of appeal by one objector and that it's uncertainty, risk and potentially additional time and costs to what just the basics of applying through Act 250. So we're trying to match the ambition of this project with the housing crisis, with the need in Middlebury, but Act 250 is a genuine risk and an agenda barrier. And for really this type of, this reason, impactful, affordable housing developments rarely happen outside of Chittenden County. So of the 10 towns that have a population over 10,000 and that's where there is no unit cap for towns over 10,000, six of those are in Chittenden County. The other four are Rutland, Bangton, Rattleboro and Hartford. The population-based cap regime that we currently have that you guys are proposing to eliminate, I'm here to support. Forces developers outside of Chittenden County to either scale down projects or incur that risk. And it is duplicative in these designated areas. As I talked about, we're going through the environmental review, we're going through a three-step zoning process that's been approved by state, received in the neighborhood designation. And this is after the democratic process of the planning, the coding and the town developer review board. So dense smart growth development really is the answer to affordable housing. You guys have managed to watch at one and a half speed so it's a little nicer and slower here but all of your testimonies so far this week. You've heard it, right? I know you could do that. Yeah, it was nice. You can double-tie it too and it really goes. You too wouldn't let me do that, but one and a half was enough to get the point. But you've heard it this week, we're in a housing crisis, we want to preserve Vermont's countryside and ag lands, we want to reduce transportation emissions, we want walkable communities, we want to fight homelessness and we want to champion social and economic justice. The population-based caps really are disincentivizing, us accomplishing all those and really utilizing the smart growth areas. Our plan is to charge forward, it's what we do, it's our mission, it's what the town wants, it's what the employers in Addison County want. We'll take that risk and we're also lucky to have an employer like Middlebury sort of come to the table and add in another Tamwind. If we did take the pass, the police resistance, we proposed 74 units. As many developers understandably would, it's the 75 and over triggers at 250 in towns between 6,000 and 10,000. We'd scale down the project, not accomplish the density and the perfect smart growth, parcel in Middlebury would go under utilized, the homes aren't needed and the result would be the next woodlands, the next field are gonna end up being developed. And in the meantime, people will continue to drive, mostly combustion engine cars from Rutland County, Chittenden County, or the best place to find affordable housing in Addison County of State New York. So I think this would be negating the good planning that the state has done, Jacob's office, that the legislature has done, I don't think it achieves the intent of Act 250 either. So really removing the population-based caps as this bill proposes is gonna have a, it's a big, the caps are a barrier on affordable housing, especially outside of Chittenden County. And I come to you kind of with one project today, so to sort of lay out the tangible impact those are having. It's been hard enough for decades because of land use rules and decisions and the availability for people with sort of not in my backyard voices to come in late in the game. And this is really an opportunity to take a scalpel to Act 250 to make a really big impact. Maybe that's a hard word to use for those who are the rest of Act 250, but scalpel maybe. We always try. Are there any energy features about your project that are worth discussing ways that you're trying to build a bridge into the future of the post fossil fuel? Yeah, BHFA has been on the forefront of this. Anything multifamily buildings built with BHFA funding are, you know, achieve efficiency from outside performance track. So we'll certainly be looking at that in talks now to your thermal solar plan to go all electric. There's a whole other conversation of, that I think you guys touched on. Maybe it was Gus earlier this week about stretch codes, the costs that creates and the policy decisions that we want to make around that. But yes, I mean, we're exploring every avenue and all of our new construction does meet really high energy efficiency standards. Okay, so the kind of standard that feels feasible and valuably efficiency from outside performance track. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of, it's the gold standard, if you will. It's not the gold standard, I guess. You could always do passive house standard or something like that, but it is a policy decision that the agencies in the state have made on what our affordable housing that we intend to last 30 to 50 years, you know, should be. Sounds good. Any other questions? In an ideal world, Zeke, what's your timeline on the 200 additional units? When are you hoping to have them finished by 26? Act 250 or no Act 250? I said if you're ideal. Both, actually. Our town zoning process that we've started with three parts, right? Sketch plan, preliminary plan, final plan. That process alone, best case scenario, will take us through the end of the summer. If we were to be able to secure in the meantime, we're going on the parallel track and trying to secure all the funding we possibly can, we could break ground this fall. If we knew we had to apply for Act 250, we would do it probably after the preliminary plan. So that would be maybe mid-summer. That's six to nine months baseline. So we're looking at if there are no objectors, if there are no issues, if there are, you know. In the ideal world, you'd have it finished by the end of 24? 200 units, no. We would bring 50 to 100 units online, middle of 24, end of 24. Without Act 250, that gets into 25. All 200 units, talking about absorption, availability of funding, we're into 25, 26. Senator Brown. The cost impact between Act 250, yes and Act 250, no. On a per-unit basis, do you have a sense of what that might be? Yeah, so I think that we can do the best case scenario which is the filing fees, right? That's going to add at least $1,000 per unit, even on a really ambitious scale of projects like this. But the cost really starts to add up in duplicative consulting fees, legal fees if there is an objection, interest on construction costs if there's a delay, if you've already started, you know, incurring pre-development expenses. So that's what I'm trying to do is just get a sense of the elements of cost by adding Act 250 to a project like this. What does it mean when it comes for that individual home to be offered for sale? How much does a consumer have to pay extra for that? Because once you get an idea of that, then it becomes easier for us to evaluate the value of having it. It totally depends on the size of the project. If we were to do 100-unit projects, we know that the filing fees and our baseline could be over $100,000. There's a cap in being a priority housing project in an NDA. There are reductions in the filing fees. But I mean, I've, again, don't quote me, I guess, but it's a few thousand dollars. Well, there would also be the time value. So then what I was going to layer on is the time value, the risk, right? As soon as we start to put premium. How it is, you know, if anybody's actually tried to quantify anything like that. It is so variable. We've thought about trying to do it for the purpose, you know, because in anticipation of that exact question, and there are just so many variables, I would say, best case scenario, we fly through Act 250, it's all perfect, we're doing 200-units, it's $1,500 to $2,000 per unit. Wow. You said 1,000 a unit. It's now gone up. No, but that was just upon. Oh, that's just a lot. Yeah, right, right. And then that's not adding on like a risk premium and legal fees, things like that, if there is an appeal. Legal fees aren't free. Right, and the one thing I do want to comment there is this is we're doing affordable and workforce housing, right? I mean, that cost is borne by either VHFA, VHCB, the legislature through through additional subsidy we're going to need to construct those units, or it's passed on to the consumer, it's passed on to the buyer, the renter, to the extent that's even possible. And so one of those impacts ends up being if you end up being too inefficient and your building cost of project just doesn't get done. And that's sort of why we've always focused on really high quality build, but really cost efficient. And that's what allows us to do these types of projects and scale. Thank you so much. We should, we have to. Well, I know your last task, raise your hand. No, I can ask questions later and I will have to. Yes, you can listen to some things. Yeah. Yeah, so I'll say it for a minute if you don't mind. We can talk on the break. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thanks. We have a joke. Oh, good. Okay, I didn't know something was coming up. Jonah Richard on Zoom. Hi. Hi, good morning folks. Good morning. Yeah, you just want to state your name for the record. I think everyone can hear you from the record morning after that. Yeah, my name's Jonah Richard. Small scale developer and general contractor in Bradford. Great. So yeah, just hoping you can share your thoughts on the bill. Absolutely. So first, thank you. Thank you all for inviting me today. This is a great opportunity and appreciate you looping in some of the smaller developers. I know you're likely speaking with some of the larger scale folks, but it's nice to have a seat at the table as someone that develops smaller multi-family projects. So a little background on myself. As I mentioned, I'm a developer and general contractor to Bradford. I focus on small multi-family housing projects here between two and 20 units. I'm currently building a nine unit mixed use project. So retail and residential and fairly that kicked off in March of last year and set to wrap up this spring. So there's a lot of that goes into construction project obviously with risk, complexity and certainty. And that's been exacerbated by interest rates and rising construction costs in the past few years. But there are two things from policy standpoint that I'd like to discuss here that I'm finding as end up being blockers for the small scale development work that I'm doing in Orange County. So the first is Act 250. I'm sure you've heard quite a bit about this. I just was listening into the gentleman beforehand speak to this as well. So not only does it affect larger projects but it affects folks like myself doing smaller scale projects as well. So I'm not by no means an expert here. I'm just starting to get acquainted with the Act particularly because it's starting to affect the work that I'm doing. So for context, again, this nine unit in fairly that I'm doing is drawn to a close. And so I'm trying to figure out I've been working on determining what my next project will be. My other site picked out in fairly a small site suitable for a three unit projects, Triplex. And I recently, speaking with my attorney and some folks at the state learned that if I went through that project, it would trigger Act 250 due to the 10, 5, 5 rule. So 10 units and a five mile radius within five years would trigger Act 250 for me. And so that called into some questions on what that associated costs and risk would be on my standpoint. So there are a couple costs that I'm sure you are aware of. So you have application fees, which adds 7% to the project or 0.7% to the project. You have attorney's fees, you have delays in construction, we need to hire experts to provide proof that we're meeting each of the 10 criteria. And these quickly add up to tens of thousands of dollars of costs for a small project even such as a Triplex. Even before we know that the project can be built. And so also we have to take into account the timing costs going into zoning before going into Act 250 and quickly becomes untenable the project just due to the risk and upfront costs. And especially as a small scale developer, I don't have tens of thousands of dollars of capital put at risk when that project might not go forward. So what this effectively meant for me is that I'm not going to pursue that Triplex and I have to find another project outside of that five mile radius so that you don't have to bear the added weight and burden and cost of going through Act 250. And so just thinking through the implications understood that Act 250 is meant to one hand preserve the character of our great Vermont towns, but it actually seems to be undermining that goal by inhibiting small scale developers like myself from continuing to build small scale projects. And instead it guides me like you're not to pursuing larger scale projects that might not fit within the context of our smaller towns just because that's the kind of project that can absorb the risk and cost of an Act 250 application. I heard some questions previously as well on the cost of actually getting some hard numbers on the cost of what Act 250 would add to a project. And I was just doing some back of the envelope math before I got on. And so a gentleman previously mentioned 1,000 to $2,000 range per unit for a large scale project that increases on a per unit basis for someone like myself where call it a six unit project we're doing for a million dollars would add three to $4,000 per unit in added cost. And what that translates to in the rental market I do mostly rental projects is about $50 a month in increase of rent that gets passed on to the consumer. The second policy thing I'd like to talk about is financing particularly for small scale affordable housing projects. There's plenty of financing out there for market rate projects, conventional loans, et cetera but when you move to the affordable realm that gets really sparse for folks like myself. So for example, the nine unit project I spoke about before and fairly that had no affordability subsidy. We did that with the market rents and we went through conventional loan and equity programs to get the capital needed. And so as a result, what we're looking at is $1,300 a month for a studio and $1,700 a month for a one bedroom. And these are numbers that barely cover operating expenses debt payments and offer a slight marginal return to investors for putting in their capital. So put simply, I can't build affordable housing projects with conventional loan and loan programs without sacrificing quality. So I would need some sort of subsidy to bring those rents down to something more manageable for a lower or middle income brackets in town. So for the past six months, I've kind of been running an experiment trying to find affordable housing programs that would work for a project in my scale. And so the project that I'm working on next is a six unit project outside of my five mile to 50 range in Bradford, Vermont, where I currently live that I'd like to make and turn into a hundred percent affordable housing. So the project's in great setting, downtown Bradford, highly walkable, close to shops, close to restaurants, close to more importantly, jobs downtown. And the only other affordable housing projects in our town of 5,000 are these two 21 unit projects both set on the outskirts of town. So there's nothing really, not only is there a lack of affordable housing in town but there's a lack of affordable housing in our core downtown area. So I've looked through a number of different programs. I won't get into them all. Vermont Housing Improvement Program, VHIP, which you all are familiar with is good as a part of the capital stack, $50,000 per unit, but that is not enough nearly to cover the $175,000 per unit in construction costs that we have. And so that in and of itself will not work for a 100% affordable housing project. It can be a part of it, but it can't capture all of our needs. There's the Upper Valley Loan Fund in our Upper Valley region that was established as a consortium of local employers looking to promote workforce housing. I applied for that, instantly rejected because my project does not meet the 30 unit threshold. And this is a common theme. They have a lot of these programs have thresholds of 25, 30, 40 units. And if you are below that, you know, you're not, they won't, they can't work with you for whatever reason. Federal LIHTECs, so low income housing tax credits, again, generally only reserved for larger scale programs. And then we have VHCB, which has their ARPA SFR funding, which also traditionally is used for larger scale projects, but they've been up and working with them the past three or four months. They've been willing to work with me on a small scale project, what the, this is kind of new territory for them and it's unclear whether this project will work for that specific program. But net of the matter is there's not a lot of funding opportunities for me to take advantage of to be able to offer 100% affordable housing in town here. And so I connected with Seth Leonard at VHFA who, you know, we discussed this new missing, missing middle income housing loan program that he's helping to drafts that would, that would make a really big impact on projects of my scale focused on two to 20 unit housing projects that could bridge the gap, you know, when coupled with a program like VHIP, could actually allow us to deliver housing at, call it between 80 to 100% of AMI, so workforce housing. I know I only have 15 minutes, so I'll pause there. If you folks have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them. Questions for Joanette. I just a request if you could send us your testimony to be really helpful. Email it. Absolutely. Okay. I'm here because there's a delay. People keep talking when there's silence. Right. It's really interesting to hear from a small scale developer. Thanks for being here and to understand the financing that you're looking at. Now, the upper valley fund is interesting because that's a good effort from locals. So have you talked to them about changing their parameters? I mean, they would have that ability to change their standards because they're not a bank. Yeah, so I have like, I think the major issue, I think the real reason these programs do this is just because of administrative overhead. They can have a lot more impact with the limited budget that they have for administrative backend operations to do larger scale units than a bunch of smaller scale projects. And so I just don't think they're yet set up to be able to handle six to 10 unit projects. That said, they did express interest in continuing the conversation. Hopefully that translates into something that either opens up that the pool of money to smaller scale developers or creates a separate set of funding for projects of my size. Thank you. No, just for town, you know, a 30 unit project in a town like Fairleigh or Bradford is gonna have a major impact and might get some more pushback. Infill in those kinds of towns are much likely to be in the three, four, 10, the smaller projects. And that may be, yeah, because a hundred units wouldn't be appropriate for those towns. That's exactly it. There's a lot of smaller scale infill lots that are available for development that can only fit between two to 10 units. They can't handle the scale that a traditional affordable housing developer is gonna need to deliver. You do a mixed and you've got a small lot you might be able to do two, three, four apartments above a retail, but not 20 without building a monastery. Exactly. Yeah, and remember one of the early partners on funding that Upper Valley Fund is the hospital. You're right, their notion of solving this problem is a lot of units in Lebanon. So I mean, yeah, and infills. Well, but isn't that my work? Yeah. Exactly, that's my work. So, yeah. That's your plan for sure, so. Thank you. Well, but it's for both sides of the program. Thanks so much, Jonah. If you don't mind me saying so, that's a beautiful space, too. You have a great taste, so. That's fine, thank you. Oh, my partner decorated it. Yeah, I can't take credit. I made you meet Pine Bureau behind him. I know, we're like, we're admiring him. I'm looking at the plan. I was looking at the plan, too. Anyway, thank you, Jonah. We'll get it in the office with the chair. And you're welcome to stay on Zoom and listen, or you know, you might be busy, so. I have to duck back out to the construction site. We're trying to wrap up, but I appreciate your time and thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. So I know there was a request to switch order, but I am actually going to use my chair as prerogative to keep the order, just because we don't always have the natural resources for it in here, and I want to make sure we give you as much time as we need, and that might, sorry, Jacob, that might bring us right into 1030, and we have you more often, and we've already had you in the ministry, if that's okay. Yeah, and our presentation is not, we've tried to keep it within the 15 minutes. We have lots of questions. We have lots of room. We have lots of time for questions. Okay, well, I think you're missing length in this story, so. You might have used your prerogative. And you can pull up a chair so that both of you, however. Okay, great. Yeah, let me, I hope I won't get any feedback here, but let me get the zoom link open. Well, you could also send it to Scott. Scott, come on. I think it's really one of the nice luxuries here. I'll just put one of your seats behind you. You can't do that. I don't want to pull up that up. No use. Have a witness walk behind you. Yeah, just, just say it. No, we're excited. We're excited. We're happy to pull right up. I know. Yeah. I might have a bed with a something. I don't know. The chair's gonna trick something. We can join without video, right? It'd be best we film it. Otherwise we get it sliced, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah, we'll pull it to the side. Oh, okay. I just understood what you were saying, excuse me. Oh, yeah. Okay, with him, I meant, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. The foot. Are you, am I leaving this in your good hands, right? Yeah, it's, that's brave of you. It's brave of you. I think, I've been holding that pager a few times. Yeah, we, you're often in our committee, you know, so it's welcome to have one new senator. Yeah. I will see one of my last five. I recognize the ties to the Nullis Falls. Oh, great. That was nice to see that connection. But, are you ready for me all to begin? Yeah. As long as you're good. One second on the tech side of things. There, hold it. Okay, so I'll just do a share screen and we should be good to go. Give it to the three of everybody. Yeah. Make it big as well. I will say, I think, for the general watching public, it's better if people do bring it on the sides and Scott can do other things but not to keep it dancing aside. So, all right. So, we'll go take a seat. Good. Good for me. Good on that side. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. We all know that housing is at a crisis point for mom and it's heartening to see all of us working together to move it forward. I want to thank you for inviting us today and for letting us be part of this conversation. There are a lot, some lots of different parts to this. And I am Sabina Haskell. I'm the chair of the Natural Resources Board. I've been here 13 months in this role. I've had many other roles around the state, which I won't bore you with, but I recognize a lot of folks. We've seen you in very different paths. That's right. That's right. And with me today is Pete Gill, our new executive director at the Natural Resources Board. And I'm going to let you say a few words about yourself before we jump right in. Good morning, senators, and thanks for having us. So yeah, Pete Gill just started as the executive director. I've been here for two months with a large caveat that prior to that I was with the Natural Resources Board as associate general counsel for about eight years. So I have some background in Act 250, but I didn't have this little interlude, five years at Norwich University. And so I've got a lot of education law crammed in my head as well. I'm also getting back into the Act 250 realm and very excited to be here and help you guys through navigating Act 250 land. Great, thank you. And thank you very much. And I'll just jump right in with a few background remarks and then we'll share with you some statistics about the housing units we've permitted and the PHP units that have not obviously been exempt and everything. But just to make the point that everybody already knows, 40,000 units by 2030 according to the VHFA is pretty daunting. And we get the, the NRB has already been talking with legislators, the VLCT, environmental advocates, regional and local planners, housing developers and others to be a part of this conversation and the path forward. So I say these remarks to let you know that we're being open-minded and we want to do our part to get there. I would also say that I think it's a shared responsibility that we've all had a role in somehow getting to this bad point, this crisis point. And likewise, we all need to recognize we're all part of the solution as well. We will continue to approach these conversations with the recognition that Act 250 law does need re-examination and modernization to get us there. I'm sure you're all aware that we are working on a legislative report that is due at the end of December. Necessary updates to the Act 250 program. It's due on December 31st, did? Oh, no, I just, December 31st is not passed. Of 2023. Oh, darn. Yeah. Okay. Yes. If it was due last December, I would have had it done. Yeah. It's not. We bet it won't be long. So we have 11 months, or 10 months at this point, right? Oh my God. Amazing. We're making sure we have the slide thing. We're all set. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. The first directive, there are six different directives in this report. The first one is to focus on location-based jurisdiction. And this is the regulatory framework that enables the compact growth in areas where we already have development and while at the same time protecting our open spaces, forests, and working landscapes. And a good example of these place-based jurisdiction is the state designation programs. And I don't want to steal your thunder, but you'll hear more from Jacob about that and how we're recognized in these designated centers. The designated centers were created to target public and private investment. And most of the designations were not intended for use in a regulatory arena, but many are used for that purpose and it's helpful to build more homes and smart locations. There's a broad stakeholder engagement program to help the Department of Housing and Conservation to evaluate and improve the designation program. They're going to be doing a report as well this year. The RPCs are working on a way to map, consistently map to show where we should grow and areas to protect. And as you all know, Representative Von Garts has another bill H68 that asks, excuse me, H5, that looks at the way RPCs can explore integrating municipal and regional planning policies, et cetera. These conversations are going to take time. I'm sure we'll be back and see you again, but I'm confident that the NRB as an organization can come together and help build consensus and find a way to align both state and local regulations for a better, stronger, more equitable and sustainable communities across our state. We understand that looking at Act 250 in the role of place has to be part of that solution. I'll take a just-aside step and say that said, as you know, we are blamed many, many times for in these regulatory conversations and I want to speak on behalf of our staff and tell you that it's not a lot of fun for them to always be the bad guy. But they work really hard to administer the law fairly and we do issue over 400 permits a year, uncontested permits a year and they're doing a darn good job. Do you have figures on if something is uncontested, the average time it takes to improve? We do track timing and how long it takes to get permits through and by statute, we have to report that information annually in our annual report, which is due to the legislature in two weeks. Yes. February 15th, well, two and a half weeks. So perhaps we'll have you back in that time, Rob. Just a question in terms of what you track. Do you make any attempt to track how long it takes the person who applies to prepare the material necessary to make the application one and two to document the cost associated with Act 250 permit, including the preparation time, cost, experts and so on? Answer to your first question, do we track how long it takes them to get their application together? As far as I know, we do not. We get the application, it's reviewed for completeness and once if there's information that's missing, we request that the applicant supply that and then we deem the application complete and it goes through a review process with our district commissions. I can share some information on fees that are assessed to the housing projects in the last six years, but we do hear that as a comment very often that applicants need to invest in consultants and engineers and so that they're complying with the law but we don't keep track of what those costs are. No calculation of what Act 250 actually costs to the applicants. That's correct. And it obviously it differs for each applicant to your point, right? Would that be something you could track in the future? I think we would have to add a question to the application and then you were relying on the applicant to be sharing that information. And you said for our analysis, would you like an estimate or something? Is that something? Sort of being an optional, not mandatory question, but one of the things that I continually hear is that the Act 250 process in terms of the amount of time it takes particularly for those applications that are routinely approved is not the issue nor is the cost of the fee the issue. The issue is all the things we have to do and the time we have to take before we're able to get an application in in the first place. To get ready, right? And now there's just a shortage of availability of those professionals. I mean, we also hear from those professionals saying we wanna get out of this business because this is really frustrating for us to have our expertise question. We're just tired and we're not gonna be engaging in this work. I'm, my mind is going because I'm thinking maybe there's a, there may be a way to get to that and I wanna have a conversation with some folks and staff about that. So I'm hearing you and I'll let you know. Yeah, sure. While we're talking about Act 250, as we all know, it was written, this law was written on a typewriter in the late 1960s. And it was enacted 53 years ago and most of us don't live with typewriters anymore and it is something that needs refreshing for the way we live today. And that is why we're excited to be embarking on this study that just due December 31st of this year. Yeah. And while we're, I mean, we're at a crossroads of a lot of important policy decisions that are affecting housing and the livelihood of Vermonters. And I believe we need to be open to embracing changes to the Act 250 law. What they will look like, how we get there, that's to be, we'll go through that whole process this year. Are you thinking about things already? That's a good question. We are, no Act 250 is one of the things, but I'll joke here too. Right, there's a lot of conversation about trying to not have duplicative levels of regulatory review with zoning and us. If you're a 10 acre town, and if you have robust zoning and municipal ordinances, do you need Act 250? That's a conversation we've had with the mayor's, with Mayor Weinberger. We've talked about whether the possibility of that a city like Burlington and others that have that type of robust zoning, could they be exempt from it and try it on a pilot project? I mean, there's lots of different conversations coming up and we're trying to capture them all for that study. That'll be a lot of, I mean, a lot of these things will come up in the conversation about the study is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, okay, so, turning back to the Omni-Best Housing Bill, and I know you know about priority housing projects that are then they're exempt from Act 250. There are also fee reductions for the qualified projects located within certain designated centers. And now I'd like to turn it over to Pete who can provide you a snapshot where we are with housing projects over the last six years. Last year we were asked to bring this information to Senate natural resources and we provided all the different projects and we've updated it and done a little bit more evaluation of it and to feed this conversation is what I'm trying to say. Happy to take it over. Did you want to touch base on any of this slide? We don't provide that, yeah. So as you know, PHP's have been exempt since 2013. We have reduced fees in the neighborhood development areas. There are no fees for the downtown designated areas, the 6086B process, and then we've been talking about the two reports, so the designated area report that you all are going to be doing and ours at the end of the year, they're both going to be kind of simultaneous, if you will. I just want to pause and say, you know, heard me do what some folks have said, testified before you. I had someone from the natural resources world in the legislature come up and say, you know, I hear it's only 3% of the cost to go through Act 250, which, first of all, is still a lot. And second of all, if you take that over the whole life of the project versus when you're upfront trying to get capital and get your permits in place, that's a very different figure. So I think it's always been concerning that this conversation has lived in the natural resources committee and not in the housing committee because we're talking about how you get housing built and looking at a lifetime of a project or just to get it going, exactly. It's very different. Right, so when Pete goes through his slides, we've got some information in there about the fees that you may or may not find surprising, but back to your point, we heard often that the cost for applicants to get ready to apply. Yeah, so that is not captured in the fees, obviously. Right, yep, but we appreciate that the reduction. Every little bit helps, right? Okay. Should I take it over? Yeah, you wanna, yep. So just to set the context of my next remarks here, just wanted to give you kind of the broad brush data. We're still cramming a couple of the numbers, but this is kind of a little preliminary. So you have a little understanding of what we, the data that we have at the moment on some of these things, including PHPs. And before I get into that level of the data, I just wanted to go through kind of the flow chart on the priority housing donations. Don't be too overwhelmed by this slide because it has a lot of pieces to it, but I'll highlight a couple of areas that I want you to focus on or kind of walk you through this chart. And just as a precursor here, the next slide is gonna be this same chart with an overlay of the bill that is under consideration of this committee, the 23DR-91, is that it? Yeah. So at any rate, this slide, just to write to you, first to kind of that upper left box there, you've got to determine whether your priority housing product that's with this flow chart is dealing with. And if you look there, you can see there's four different designations that you need to be for your housing in order to be priority housing. It's kind of a threshold issue. And then you go through and you decide whether you meet the mixed income, mixed use or any combination of those two. And you can see maybe in small print there, off to the right, the definitions for each of those. So nothing that we have to micro-focus in on right now, but just so you're aware that those are there. If you don't meet those, you're not a priority housing project. If you are, as long as you meet the thresholds that are in the statute, and those were changed per Act 182 last year, and you can see sort of what those are, minus a little blockage there from the screen, the projection piece. So the jurisdictional thresholds, once you reach these other portions, if you're over 10,000, you can have, in terms of your population of that town, you can have as many units as you desire in that area without triggering. You can go up to 74, if you're in that population of 6,000 to 9,000 men or 99. And then the one you probably can't read there very well is less than 6,000, you can go up to 49 units. Again, if you're within those designated areas, you've got that population, then you would be, you'd be a PHP, you would not trigger active jurisdiction for those projects. So that's kind of the sum for that, the more complicated slide. And that last part is new as of last year. Yes, so there were some changes based on the threshold limitations last year. And so this is up to date as of last year. That's a good question. Did you see any uptick of applications? I mean, it's only a good year. Well, it just got approved, you know, it just went through July 1. Okay, so we haven't had time to figure out that. We haven't digested that data, and there's a fairly limited amount of time to make those projections, but it's an interesting question. I think it's probably good. Maybe we have had time to... This is just with the priority housing project. It's the only thing we did. We just have five minutes, so I'm just gonna ask that. I'm sorry. Yeah. Great. So next, just as an overview, I won't linger on this, but this is just, you can see how the bill under consideration changes this. You've got some direct lines coming down on the priority housing level, you're removing the thresholds. And I believe there's some other changes there, too. I won't linger on that, but just to give you a quick visual. Okay, so in terms of PHP Tally, kind of the data that we've got, again, initially scrubbed on this from in a six-year period, 2017 to 2022, we're talking about 2,700 priority housing projects that were exempt from Act 250 during that period. So the way we determine that is, just so you have an understanding folks can ask for a jurisdictional opinion from our district coordinators, and they can determine whether it is a priority housing or not based on those factors that we just looked through. And if they know it's gonna be exempt, there may be some applicants that didn't ask for jurisdictional opinions, so we can't count them. But this is from, we don't have a way to count them, is what I'm trying to say, right? We're guessing that's a limited number of folks. The anecdotal evidence points that folks will ask for a jurisdictional opinion is a false instance. But true, it does, there may be more. There may be more. And then we've got a breakdown, rough breakdown here of the various districts where PHP's have been exempt from Act 250. There you can see the distribution of the various districts and it's got the counties that represent those. No surprise district fortune to count as a bulk. I'm not going to report that. Thank you. Just a few more slides. And then, so kind of the flip side of the PHP is the housing, what we tried to do in our data, and we've done this, I think, over the last couple of years, is provide kind of a corollary to the PHP project. So we're looking at large, fairly large scale projects that are for multi-families. We're not talking about duplexes and triplexes in this data. We're looking at a fair overlap of the area within those designated areas. So they, comparable to what would happen in the PHP realm, that makes sense. Everybody following? I kind of think of it as like this donut where, you know, around the towns where we're talking about an area that fairly well overlaps the same areas as the PHPs. And so within that Act 250, where Act 250 has been triggered, where there isn't a PHP exemption, because of either they haven't met the unit threshold or they're not actually right inside of the designated area, for instance. So any of those, we've permitted over 70 plus housing projects, we estimate that to be approximately 3,000 units. So fairly comparable, again, to the PHP number within the same kind of area. We've got, so within that, when you're looking at process-wise, we've got about 90% that are processes-miners without any hearing going through that process, and then about 10% that are processed as majors, whether it is a hearing involved. And then the fees that Sabina was alluding to earlier, it's about 1.4 million in fees that were assessed for this, which comes out to about $480 per unit to cover the direct and indirect costs to the natural resources board and administering. But that fee number, just so it's clear, there is a portion of our overall fee that goes to the agency of natural resources. So this number reflects both of those costs and administration. You just have a couple of minutes, and I feel like I would tone in on anything that we can't see really clearly from the last slide. Okay, great. We're gonna go to concluding. Yeah. Thoughts? Is that the last slide? Yep, this is it. This is the last slide, so. Great, yeah, we might have a couple of questions. Yeah, I think you've got some questions. Are you rebuting the bill and making comments directly off the bill, or? We are doing that, but we haven't finished. Right, thank you. Yes. Yeah. Do you ever look at, we are hearing about fast-tracking processes in New Hampshire or other states that are you looking at good ideas from other states about how to get housing built more quickly where we want it? Yeah, because that's my question is, what are your ideas for helping fast-track? Yeah, we've had these conversations part of the downtown board, but, that's another part of the... And given the urgency of the housing crisis, I mean, we could talk to you about slide after slide of information about homelessness, the number of jobs versus number of housing listings, the delays that we're already looking at, the 10-year period in which we should have already done this to be bringing more housing online, do you have ideas that you could share with us this year for changes based on the work you've already done? I would say the most logical one is the designate, you know, continuing the exemptions with designated areas. Yeah. So it's our banding that coordinating those and keeping the integrity of the designated areas with. I mean, we were at a housing conference in Lamoille County last October, November, and only one of the towns in Lamoille County qualified for designated area and the exemption. So, do you feel like... So that's a zoning that, you know... Yeah, let's say we did accept those areas, is there anything you feel like would be significantly missing that you contribute right now to the process? I can't answer that right off the top of my hand, but if there in designated areas where there's already development, and there's wastewater and sewer, et cetera, and river corridors, which is already in... So if we said there's exemptions, but these things have to be in place, that's something you could comment on to make sure that there's nothing missing that you feel like would otherwise be captured. Great. We'll take a brand new process. Super quick. Are there other A&R permits that are required even when a development is exempt from Act 250? Things that the towns don't do or can't do, like stormwater. Yes. Okay, so you can let us know what those are. And it depends on the project, sir. Right, yes. Senator Clarkson. Yeah, no, I just wanted to tag on to Keshia's comment, which is if you do have additional sort of low hanging fruit that coordinates with the work we're already doing, and because it would be great, I mean, you see it most closely every day, other than the developers. You are more intimately, I mean, you see what we can fix and not fix. I mean, we really, I think this is our opportunity to do some of that with our dependent village centers. Senator Brown. Do you ask applicants to evaluate the process and to help you identify glitches in it? You mean the Act 250 permit process, yeah. Well. Do you get feedback from the applicants? We get very limited feedback from the applicants in terms of like a sort of any kind of thing. Do you seek feedback from the applicants? Do you seek feedback from the applicants in a formal process way? Yeah, we have a opportunity to fill out a survey on our website, which rarely gets filled out. We, I mean, we get calls from people, but. We get calls from people. Yes, yes. She's there. Yes. I guess as we go through this, is there something you absolutely feel you should not give up? What are the most vital? Precious. Precious or the, you know, where would something really bad happen if we chinkered you there? And just to build on that, I mean, when we do finally get your report, it would just be nice to see it framed in kind of a sense of like aspirational goals that someone doesn't need to have a lawyer to be heard, you know, that this doesn't favor those who can afford to get through the process that, you know, this creates housing where we want it. And like, I mean, we have our one compact middle of settlement and the strength by working lands that we've lived without going, that's great, you know, but now I think there needs to be a next iteration of what the principles are, that guide, this process when we get this report. Period. When we were afraid that all those hippies from the cities were gonna move in here and build houses everywhere is over. And so it's time to look at today's reality and how do we do that? Those hippies have to come. They're asking the next generation. We're not the oldies that want to pull off the door, but we're good, you know, to say it, that's what we're gonna create. In comments, you'll always be a hippie, you know. You're the only one. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. We would really like an ongoing exchange. We're trying to spend the next two weeks really fine-tuning. Okay, we'll go back and put our heads together and share what we can come out with. I think it's good that you're here. Frankly, you know, hopefully it engenders a lot of user experience development of the next wave of our activity. So thank you. Thank you very much. So we will be back at 10.45. Ah, okay. In 10 minutes. Okay, and we're live. Thanks so much, Rachel, for being here. Welcome to this role, I think, kind of house. Yeah, thank you. We're gonna be up. As you may know, we had your colleague, Kellyan, to talk about the labor side of our work in these committees, but we are eager to talk about the housing side. We currently have provisions in the bill on fair housing, which, you know, Vermont Legal Aid has been a real leader in making sure that we keep a focus on fair housing in the state. We are certainly open to what I will take the liberty of calling like more fully baked ideas where coalitions have been filled around other provisions that support our tenants that are lowest income for monitors, you know, if there's anything else you feel like has really, you know, been on the agenda for a long time and hasn't made it. We are also looking at rental risk mitigation, which some of your behind the scenes is really valuable for, we can't force our landlords to do anything, we want them to take a second chance on, you know, our folks that we're looking at that condition as well. So thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. My name is Rachel Seelig. I have two hats at Vermont Legal Aid. I'm both the director of our disability law project and our staff attorney for government relations here in the building. I met most of you already, but Vermont Legal Aid is the largest civil legal services organization in the state. We receive approximately 20,000 requests for assistance along with our sister organization, Legal Services Vermont each year and housing is the largest area where we receive requests for assistance. So I really appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk about what you already have in the housing bill as well as some additional suggestions. So first, we really appreciate the change to Title 24 to enable the development of emergency shelters in our communities. The disruption to the lives of Vermonters to become homeless is tremendous, not just for the individual, but for the state. And when that disruption means moving across the state in order to have shelter, it just makes it so much worse. I can think of unfortunately many examples of children that were serving in the disability law project who although they had the right to continue going to school in their home district, the logistics of traveling from Springfield to back to Chittenden County was just such that that was not a right that they were going to be able to use. So having those shelters in our communities when people lose their housing reduces the disruption. So really appreciate that change. We do want to ensure that the definition is broad enough to encompass the hotels and motels that are continuing to house homeless Vermonters either through private pay, transitional housing or the general assistance program. And looking at the primary purpose language, I did have a question for all of you to consider of whether those hotels and motels would be considered to have that primary purpose or not. And if not, I would want to make sure that that is broad enough to include those facilities. I'm happy to pause there. No, I'm not. It's a rhetorical question in a way, but I am like, you know, I don't know if it engenders actual questions. But I can explain it to that. The use of zoning to prohibit emergency shelters is also, in our view, a proxy for unlawful discrimination against individuals who receive public assistance. We actually have a case currently sitting in an environmental court where a community issued a zoning violation against a hotel for housing people who are receiving the traditional housing benefit. So that's something that is a current and live issue. So I really appreciate the change there. And I would say that just it dampens the ability to get other hotels and motels to provide this. Absolutely. So it has this spillover effect. It's not just the harm to that particular facility. It makes others less willing to house our fellow workers. You know, I think very clearly the primary purpose of what you have here is to reduce barriers to building more housing and especially more affordable housing, and that is absolutely something that we support. Our clients need affordable housing, and they need it now. In October, 5,400 families whose income is between 31% and 80% of AMI who do not have subsidized housing lost the help of the VRAM program. 2,700 of those families pay 50% or more of their monthly income in rent. It's not sustainable. And at the end of this fiscal year, the remaining 6,000 households whose incomes are at or below 30% of AMI, which is also known as the federal poverty level, 100% FPL, they will lose their rental assistance. And these are also families who do not have subsidized housing. And that rent burden creates tremendous housing instability and puts us at risk of having an even larger homelessness population. As you consider those these changes, as you previewed, we do hope that you will keep the value of inclusivity for families with children, for families that include people with disabilities, for BIPOC families, and for others who face disadvantages in housing at the forefront. It's especially concerning for me as the Disability Law Project Director that the population that remains homeless right now is grossly disproportionate in terms of those with disabilities to the overall population. DCF's report is that 37% of adults in emergency shelter have a mental health disability, 22% have substance use disorder, which if it's in treatment is also a covered disability under the ADA and Fair Housing Act, and 34% have some other disability. Yet the most recent US Census shows that only 10.4% of reminders under 65 have a disability. So some of the folks that we are struggling the most to find housing for are people with disabilities. And so I would encourage being mindful about not just developing more affordable housing, but affordable and accessible housing. And one recommendation I would offer is to be more explicit that the VHIP program can be used to make investments, to make units accessible for people with disabilities. Want to move on to the enforcement provisions regarding the Human Rights Commission and referrals to the Attorney General's Office or State's Attorney's offices. As currently drafted, I think our concern here is that it's possible a person would be left with no one to take up their case. Because of the referral process and the permissive language that the Attorney General or State's Attorney may choose to prosecute that case, a person can end up with no finding from the Human Rights Commission and no prosecutor to prosecute the case. We do think that there needs to be more enforcement of the fair housing laws in the state of Vermont. One path to consider would be to ensure that all landlords get fair housing training so that they understand what their responsibilities are and that we adequately resource the Human Rights Commission to provide that training, to have enough staff to investigate all housing cases and to have enough staff to litigate for enforcement within the Human Rights Commission. And right now, we don't see that as something that isn't existence. So in terms of the bill, I think those are the three primary comments that I would have for you so far. Two additional suggestions. One is rental subsidies. Right now, 76,000 households in Vermont are renting households. 38% of those are rent burden, which means they pay more than 30% of their income on housing. And 19 of the thousand of those 38,000 pay more than 50% of their income on rent. Over the course of the pandemic, the VRAT program has helped more than 16,000 families cover some, call for all and now some of their rent. And again, that help will go away at the end of the fiscal year. At the same time, the median rent per month in Vermont has increased $400 a month over the last year. So it's become less and less affordable for these rent burden families. What we saw though was that providing rental subsidy through the VRAT program resulted in fewer evictions. 25% fewer evictions were filed during the year where we had that assistance in place. And 13% of those cases that were filed, we were able to settle through rental or re-reach assistance. And so we are facing a potential spike in evictions at a time where the courts are also telling us they are overburden and backlogged. And so that is a significant concern. We are, I just want to pause because I care a lot about rent to rebate and making sure it's better utilized and there's been a big change in the last year. Are you, do you feel like that's already helping people? In the last month, eviction filings have risen from 25 a week to 40 a week. In the last month. In the last month. So I hope it will, but I'm not sure that we're seeing that in terms of the court cases that are being filed. Unfortunately. 25 a month to 40 a month. Let me just double check that. 25 per week to 40 per week statewide. Oh, okay, sorry. 25 to 40. Yeah, over the last month. So rental assistance we do think is key and certainly the rental rebate is a piece of that but I think fundamentally folks cannot afford to pay 50% of their income in rent. I think the second piece of that is an eviction diversion and rent rescue fund. Eviction for non-payment tends to be resolvable with $3,000 or less. And then we can keep those folks stably housed in their home and that's much less expensive than the month after month after month payments to put people in rent house. In addition, an eviction diversion program can help prevent at risk tendencies from leading to eviction by doing a warm handoff to whether it's a repair fund, a rented rears fund, existing hop funds, existing subsidy programs, legal counsel, even mediation. If the issue is more bullying, more tenant dispute than mediation can be a really good solution. And so that would be our second significant suggestion is to create kind of an Ombuds program to connect people to the resources that exist. We've talked to the judiciary about this. They're feeling overwhelmed. We've talked with the state housing authority about this. They seem open to at least housing the rent-a-rears fund if we could put a million and a half dollars into rent-a-rears. And I think we're still exploring some options in terms of who might be open if we could get the funding for the eviction diversion staff themselves. So we're working on it. Thank you for working on it, Senator. We're not just coming to you with, we have no idea, we are working on it. I'm interested in a little bit in your experience, current experience with the judiciary. Sure. We had a bill in here in the last session in which we said that we recognized there was the inability of the judiciary to act in timely fashion regarding some of these environmental court cases. And that we proposed adding an additional judge and funding it as well as adding additional administrative staff and funding it. And the judiciary rebelled against that. So we don't need any additional people, interestingly enough. And that we don't think the legislature should be interfering in telling us how to run our operation, even giving us additional money. Can you just comment on what your experience is? Is the judiciary capable of handling the issues that they have right now? And if not, do you have any sense of why not? Is the judiciary capable of handling the issues before them? I mean, yes, they're hearing cases. I was just supervising one of my attorneys yesterday in a case. So they are hearing cases, but I do think the length of time, especially on the criminal side, that trials weren't happening and it created a challenge. I don't want to speak for them. I never really understand when people say no, we can't benefit from more resources. So I don't know what their logic or thinking there would have been. But if they feel like they have all that they can handle right now, we understand that. We have twice as many calls of legal aid as we had a couple of years ago. We have what we can handle right now. And in order to do more, we ask for more resources. And so that is why we are trying to explore other homes for a housing diversion program, if not the judiciary. We thought it would be a really nice fit with the ARC that's getting set up there, the accessing resources in the courts program. But again, we don't want to be deterred by just one person saying we can't handle it. So that's why we're exploring other options. Well, are things like eviction cases from your experience being handled in a timely fashion by the judiciary today? Yes, I do think there being, especially the rent escrow piece, those are happening very promptly, not always to the benefit of our clients, but certainly to the benefit of the system overall, I suppose I would say. So yes, I do think that they are moving the cases forward. I think if you ask a landlord's representative, they might say, no, they're not moving fast enough. But again, the concept of an eviction diversion program, we keep those cases out of court all together. Like we don't have to worry about how fast the judiciary is moving if we can use resources or mediation to resolve the landlord tenet. Well, the landlord comes and wants to evict a tenant who's a tenant that's one of your clients. How long does the process take on average based on your experience currently? You know, the numbers are really skewed right now because of the moratorium. So I would have to go back and look at like what those numbers have been since the moratorium came to an end. And I don't have those off the top of my head, but I'm happy to get them for you. Thank you. Absolutely. Learn from the best to say. Yes, well trained. Any other questions I can answer? That is really helpful. Okay, thank you. I think, I mean, we've said this to a few different witnesses, but we'd love to stay in touch with you. Absolutely. I mean, go away. I'm around the building a lot and I can also bring some of our folks who do the housing work day in, day out, talk to you more and get into even more of the weeks. Sounds great. I'm just interested a little bit in your comments regarding housing homeless people at hotels and hotels turning them away. And I think you said, particularly in cases of people who had disabilities of one kind or another, including substance abuse disorder and mental illness. So to be clear, those are populations who are currently being housed in the motel, the percent of people in motels with those disabilities. Yes. So not that they're being turned around. They are, that's the number that are currently being housed in motels. What's hard is to find them housing out in, in like, permanence work. I'm trying to understand what is their case in which people that you're trying to house in motels are either not being admitted or being kicked out. And the issues are those two forms of disability. I have. Oh, sorry. No, I've been working with a young woman who I've known for 20 years. She's the best of my knowledge. She has no, she has some, she has some mental health issues, but nothing particularly severe. Best of my knowledge, she has no addiction issues. The motel told her that they had pictures of her dealing drugs in the parking lot. They would not show her the film. And they did not evict the other person she was accused of having this transaction with. But she was out, the social worker that was working with her said, oh, they're doing that a lot because they get more money from the state when they take somebody in. And she and her two severely, I mean, children were living in their car for several weeks until they found a domestic violence place. And she started here in Barry with a sexual assault against one of the children case. The person was in a nursing home, they got delayed and it's now been dismissed without prejudice. So it is happening. Oh, what I'm trying to understand is from the debate between the two parties of how the issue is defined. For example, you have a motel that says, I have a person who's using illegal drugs in the property and is purchasing and selling the drugs, one. Two, I have a person who has a mental illness that is manifesting themselves itself in either disruptive behavior or harassing behavior or noisy behavior and so on. Where does legal aid stand in terms of dealing with a case like that if that person is one of your clients? Is that behavior appropriate? Is it prohibited? How do you deal with that? So when someone is a current user of illegal drugs they're not covered as a person with a disability under the Fair Housing Act. If they're in treatment, they are. But what if they're in treatment and they're currently using it? That is an unsettled area of law. At least that's a clear answer. So I think our position would be what are the reasonable combinations that we can put in place so that a person can remain housed and have their disability related needs adequately met. And I think the reality is and no one will disagree about this. Hotels are not the ideal place for anyone to be living. It is harm mitigation, right? But until we have the housing available and the supports available for people to move out of the motels we have to make them work as well as we can. And so it's always individualized. I can't tell you this is the blanket solution, right? I worked with a client a number of years ago with Autism who has very loud vocal stems. The solution there was to soundproof the apartment so that they weren't bothering the neighbors, right? So there are, it's always very individualized. What is the specific behavior here that is because of the disability and how can this person be reasonably accommodated to maintain equal access and enjoyment of the housing that's being covered? In a situation like that, who's responsible for paying for that? It depends. When, it depends. I mean, that's the reality. So under the Fair Housing Act, it's not the responsibility of a landlord to pay for reasonable modifications. Unless someone is receiving a subsidy like Section 8, then it's still not the landlord, but the landlord and the Section 8 provider would work on funding that physical modification to a space. Otherwise it can be on the tenant themselves to pay for a physical modification. If there's no federal funds involved. I think we have. And I think you have a second. Yes. So, but I would be very happy to come back and also be very happy to bring our Housing Discrimination Law Project staff in to talk more about Fair Housing. Thank you so much. Rachel, I apologize for missing. You're just being so lovely to see. We haven't heard about your housing dilemmas for so long in this committee. Yes. It is wonderful. Firstly, it's finally resolved. I found a house. So, yeah. Yes. Which is great. Your father is... You're in a committee that's like one at a time. We'll house you. Thanks so much. Yes, good morning. Hi, some of you know me. I'm Kathy Byer and I'm senior vice president for real estate development at Evernor. And you may remember, we used to be called Housing Vermont, but in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, we merged with a sister non-profit based out of Portland, Maine. And my company now works in the three northern New England states. And collectively, over 30 years of experience, we've raised over a billion dollars of equity for affordable housing. And we have to add the recipient of a major award that many of us were lucky enough to witness earlier this fall. Thank you. You in particular. So, we love to talk about the whole bill and one subject we just started to touch on is energy and how that's coming into Shway with. Sure. We want to articulate this bill as a housing bill, but also a housing bill that fits within our environmental crisis. That's great. So as a non-profit real estate developer, my work, specifically in Evernors is focused in Vermont. And you know we work with partners like Shamblin Housing Trust, Women and Winsor Housing Trust and Down Street and Central Vermont. And I just want to say that a decent, affordable home is as essential as having clean air to breathe. And we know this, right? A secure home is what you need to have a good life. It's what you need in order to have physical and mental well-being. So just as government has a role in ensuring that we have clean air to breathe, government has a role in ensuring we have decent and affordable homes. And that is why this housing bill at this point in time is essential. I'd like to talk about three aspects of the bill today. Density for land on town, water and sewer. Parking and a section that's not in the committee bill related to energy codes. So first, land that is connected to town, water and sewer should be considered a precious resource to the community just as we can serve our farmland. We should look at our land that's connected to town, water and sewer because it is a finite resource and it is the only way we're gonna build our way out of this housing crisis. The committee bill does that by recognizing that if you're in a zoning district with municipal water and sewer, if you can build a single family home, you can build a four months. And you also directs the town to have a density of at least five units per acre. Honestly, if I have one particular bill, it might be to even look at increasing that density. But I know some folks are gonna be offended by this requirement. Why should the state tell towns what to do? The flip side to this question is, why do we continue to consume so much of our land and infrastructure for single family homes to the exclusion of housing with density? We have been doing this for decades. And if you've read that book on the bookshelf there, color of law, you will be astounded by the impact and the prevalence of single family zoning across the country. And we can look at ourselves, like many of our children and grandchildren are not gonna be able to afford that lovely single family home on a fifth of an acre, but they might be happy with a half of a duplex. I can give you a real world example of how hard it is to find land on town water and sewer. In West Brattleboro, Melrose Terrace, 80 units of public housing that was built in the 50s. It was built in not only the 100 year flood plain, it was built in the floodway. It had been flooded many times and in Tropical Storm Irene was severely flooded. We had to move, we had to build new housing and get those households, many of whom were disabled and all seniors out of there. We're fortunate we found a parcel in the other Brattleboro High School, built 55 beautiful new apartments called Red Clover Commons, but we still had about 20 households left in what was not a safe place for them to be. It took us three years to find land that was zoned for multi-family housing on town water and sewer. And do you know where we eventually found it? On the same parcel where we built those 55 units. So we took a density, we were at a density of 20 units per acre. We went to 26 units per acre and have a beautiful community. But if that density wasn't allowed, we wouldn't have been able to do that. I'm not suggesting that kind of density needs to be mandated, but what I'm pointing out is, and I, because I've been doing this a long time and I work across the state, I can tell you in every community how hard it is to find land on town water and sewer. So. And I just, I don't know if you're gonna go to parking. No, but I was not quite yet. I feel like I've heard Evan North talk a lot about Act 250 and I'm surprised it's, is it not gonna come up in your thoughts? I wasn't gonna mention it today. Okay. We, I can come back sometime or we'll see if we have time today. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I honestly, I think the most important part of the portion of this bill is density. Yeah. So we have a housing crisis. We are not gonna get out of this housing crisis by building a single family home after a single family. And that's what this very significant portion of this bill does. And we are also making, it appears significant investments in water and sewer infrastructure through directing federal dollars to the town. So like, is this exactly exactly when we should be asking this question? You are gonna improve your water or sewer infrastructure in the town. What's your density? So it's actually fortuitous that this came up. No, it's amazing. They're all aligned at the same moment. Yeah. And the federal money, everything is fine. Yeah. So next I was gonna talk about parking. And for years it was standard to pick up a zoning ordinance. Two spaces per dwelling unit was very standard. And you would think, well, why do I care as an affordable housing developer? Honestly, it's not the cost of building the parking. It's that the requirement to have two spaces per dwelling unit often means we can build less housing. You all state funders and we want to build in our downtowns, our village centers these tight infill sites. And if you have to put two spaces per unit on those sites it just means you're gonna build less housing. And I have a real world example in Stowe, not to pick on Stowe, but it's very expensive to be a number of our communities. We had the opportunity to create 14 affordable apartments in Stowe where that was 2020, 2021. And doing so there was an existing building with three apartments easily converted to four apartments. Wouldn't cost much money. The building would have laid out better. We had no more room in the parking lot to add two more spaces so we couldn't. There was no waiver provision. And it may seem silly, like one more apartment, but believe me, one more apartment in Stowe. Oh, we're being pranked. Yeah. And I do know from talking with property management that the parking lot's never full. So the third thing I was gonna talk about is something that's not in this bill that is in the House bill, which has to relate to energy code. And the House bill acknowledges that many towns want to do more of a climate change by adopting more aggressive energy codes through their zoning ordinance. And what the House bill does is says, you can do that, you can adopt the state stretch energy code. And that one thing that does, that means we won't have a patchwork among towns. You know, I go to the city of Montpelier and they have this energy code and then I go to Waterbury and they have this energy code. So from a builder's perspective, it would be helpful to know this consistency. But more importantly, it means that equity is also part of the consideration. So the state's 2022 Comprehensive Energy Plan actually has a very good section on energy justice. And one of the things it calls out is that regional planning commissions and towns through the energy committees need to do an analysis of the potential equity impacts of the policies they adopt. At the state level, the public service department has to update the energy code every three years. I've been involved in that process several times. And in that update, the process includes a discussion of equity and consumer economics on the proposed code. So if towns are gonna go beyond the stretch code, the question is, can they also do this equity analysis? And I just think it's helpful, right? Town by town, it would be a heavy lift. So that's what the section of the House bill does, it says you can adopt the stretch code. The stretch code is in accordance with what the public service department is mandated to do that by 2030, all of our new construction will be net zero. So it's on a path to getting there. It's now 2023, 2030 is not that far away. So I'd encourage you to look at that section of the bill. There, I have also, and I wasn't as prepared to talk about this today, but I have been working with what we're calling the energy justice and housing working group. And I actually will send you, we just are ready to release what we're calling our charge paper. And there, I would say it's, and actually the state's comprehensive energy plan calls us out that the state energy policies and incentives and benefits have not been equitably distributed across the state in a moment. And we know that the energy burden on lower income for monitors is three times that of the upper income level. And so it is, I welcome that discussion. It wasn't as prepared to talk about it today, but it needs to be talked about, particularly in this time of trying to address climate change. Right, so I'm actually just getting confused because I'm curious what's in the equity analysis and who wrote it and what it's driving toward. Right, because I think if you talk about environmental justice, what I think you're getting at is eventually creating less volatile energy for people requiring less of their income to go to the cost of energy and subsidizing their path to get there. What I'm struggling to hear from like just adopting a more streamlined energy code is how that happens. Yep, that's a good question. So I think the difficult part of the energy equity discussion and housing is that our lowest income households, our lowest income households are renters. They may be living in apartments where we call the split incentive. The landlord doesn't pay for the heat. No incentive for the landlord to do the upgrades. Yeah, that's an unfortunate situation. They may be low income homeowners and tend to live in older homes that have a lot more needs. How do you, the challenge is how do you make sure our lower income households are first in line for this decarbonization that we need to go through? And that's challenging, because it's gonna cost more money. And our energy policy, and I've been working with Peter Walk on this, and our energies, particularly our energy incentives, our energy efficiency efforts have all been focused, have all been since the start of efficiency for a month on basically the lowest hanging fruit. Let's go after, I mean, it makes sense, right? You know, by spelling, I'm like, it's easiest. The easiest, the easiest, right? And we need to flip that on its head. We need to say, and it was done for good reasons, but I think now we need to say, no, it's not gonna be the lowest cost. We're not gonna go after the lowest cost. We're gonna prioritize the hardest, the lowest income. And we have not, right now for, well, not this year, but in past years, for the affordable housing that we build, or signing up for restricted rents, got the same incentive for efficiency for month as a market rate developer. It was $2,700 a unit if you met, you know, you met this checklist of energy efficiency. It was the same for affordable housing as it was for market rate housing. And we did that for 20 years or more. So it's a good time to start having that. And I know efficiency for month is having this conversation. Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah. So I don't know if we're talking about the same goal with arriving at it in different ways, but I personally would be really interested in looking at reducing, you know, providing active 50 exemptions or reducing barriers to development, reducing duplicate permitting and really incentivizing or fast tracking if you were doing a net zero project or a no fossil fuel project or reading and efficiency for month standards. You know, I mean, this is actually the time, I think to push that with all the incentives coming from the federal government. And I'm starting to talk to developers who are essentially doing some time to net zero projects like in South Burlington and have no additional benefit from the state for doing that. So I guess I'm trying to think of creative ways to actually get new housing on the market that doesn't require those huge, you know, doesn't require all these retrofits and start off with renters who have to pay high energy bills. And I'm just not hearing from just leaving the energy code where it is, how we help renters get there. For new construction or for existing? Either way, like what about leaving the energy code at stretch helps renters? That doesn't help renters in existing housing and I would actually be, maybe it's controversial, but I would say don't focus on our new construction. I mean, we, the private developers, we are building really highly energy-efficient buildings that are near net zero and we're doing it today. It's the existing housing. The equity of the long route, that's where our long-term households are renting, are owning, that's the most difficult to get at. But in terms of, I mean, all you gotta do is drive around any town and look at that old building and it's like heating the outdoors, right? Those are the hardest to get to, but that, to me, is where the equity lies, is like, no, we're not gonna focus on new construction. New construction is so close to getting there. And in many communities already electrified or decarbonized, but I gotta take this, I mean, we have within our own portfolio multi-family rental housing that we purchased in like the 80s or 90s that was already 30 years old and it needs more. I mean, I don't know. So, but just help me understand how not letting communities depart upward in their energy code help build equity or helps lower income people with their energy bills. I guess I was trying to say the reverse that rather than having a town by town adopt a different energy code, and again, that's mostly focused on new construction, that let's use the state code where there has at least been, there is, I guess I've been involved in the process, there is an analysis of what is the impact for this new construction and adopting this energy code? What is gonna be the burden? What is gonna be the energy burden as an outcome of it? So, I think the energy code is about new construction. And like I said, I don't infer both a climate change perspective and an equity perspective. I think new construction is not where our focus needs to be. We can talk offline, but I think I'm misunderstanding how that provision that we've left out of the bill achieves greater equity and helps people with their energy bills. Yeah. And if you think it does, you think that piece of the bill achieves greater equity and helps people with their energy bills. If we let towns adopt their energy code based on what their energy committee recommends, right? That's what happens. And I'm not confident an analysis of equity will be done because it's a difficult analysis. You have to make assumptions about what's the cost of going from this much insulation to this much insulation. It's a complicated thing to assess. And it is assessed on the state level. Maybe towns can do it. Yeah, what I hear you saying is consistent energy codes is much more helpful. So if we allow every town, if we allow everybody to use, adopt the stretch codes, that is a consistent measure that will be much easier as we go forward, both for renovations and for the construction. So if you could send the equity analysis of the stretch code, that would be helpful. Because I don't know, I don't see the state do equity analysis. All your concerns may be embedded in that. And I thought that bill didn't allow a town to depart upward in increasing efficiency. It lets them go to the stretch code. It says you go to the stretch code, yeah. It says you go to the stretch code. But it keeps them, it limits them from going beyond the stretch code. That's what it does, right? It doesn't, it can depart downward somewhere in between the energy code and the stretch code. Honestly, as I started out with my statements, it's not the most important part of the bill. The most important part of the bill is the density. Yes. It works very well. Density, marking. I mean, we have our colleagues asking us to say, can you say no to fossil fuel cookups, you know, right? So I'm just confused as to where this would fit in that conversation. But feel free to share other things. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Happy Friday. Thanks, Bridget. Thank you.