 All right, welcome back. It's past 2.30 and our witness right now. I like to welcome David Martins to us. David is, I'm only going to refer to this in public once, David. You're half of the, you're the new Earhart by half. And, you know, your predecessor obviously had a very long and storied history and spent quite a bit of time in this committee and has moved on as we all do. And you have now taken over as director for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, which is actually a growth pattern for VAHC because, because if I understand it correctly, you've been hired to do some organizational work and to really make sure that the organization is sustainable. So I wanted to welcome you to this committee, to the General Housing Military Affairs Committee. I imagine over the length of your time you will be here often as affordable housing is us and one of our major issues. I'd like to start by having the committee introduce themselves and we'll start with the folks who are already online with Representative Kalaki. Good afternoon, David. John Kalaki from South Burlington. Good afternoon, David. I am Mary Howard. I represent Rutland South District 5-3. Oh, David. I'm Chip Troiano. I represent, I live in Standard. I represent Caledonia 2 District in the Northeast Kingdom. Welcome to the committee, David. I'm Tommy Walsh from Berry City. Nice to meet you. Representative Matt Byron, Virginia. Hi, I'm Representative Lisa Hango and I serve Richford Berkshire Franklin and Highgate on the Northern border. Good to see you again, David. Tiff Blumlee from Burlington, South Bend. Representative Joe Parsons from Newberry. I represent Newberry Tops and McGrath. John Palacic from Milton, Chittenden, Kent. Representative Barbara Murphy from Fairfax. Franklin, too. And Representative Tom Stevens. I represent Washington, Chittenden, which is Waterbury, Bolton, Huntington and Beale's score. So welcome. We just wanted to have you in and tomorrow is Homelessness Awareness Day. And there's going to be a whole bunch of folks here as well. But we wanted to give you the opportunity before then to sort of, again, to welcome you to the committee. Introduce yourselves and tell us, tell us where you're, what your plans are. Mr. Byron, it's nice to meet everybody. As I said, I'm David Martin. And I know I think that I would just correct the math that I don't know that I'm half of their heart. I think that I'm about a quarter and that the the college and homelessness is another quarter and the other half just can't be accounted for. Our heart was such a, just such a force, of course, in this work. And so just as a very brief background, I'm actually also new to Vermont. I'm from Rhode Island originally. And my background is a lot of advocacy work, largely, however, around substance abuse recovery and LGBTQ rights. And that's further back in my non-profit work. And I also have a history with the church. When I graduated high school, I went to the seminary to study for the Catholic priesthood. And I left in grad school and went on to later be the pastor of an all-inclusive faith community in Rhode Island at the same time as I was working in advocacy. So that my sites on Vermont, I had crossed paths with Vermont and my my church traveled and decided that this is what I wanted to make home for myself. And I took this opportunity with H.C. So great to be up there. It's great to be found housing, which was no easy task, as I'm sure you all know. I landed in Winooski, which is not one of the places I heard. And I'm sorry about anybody in this committee, but right across the border, right across the line there from Burlington. So as was mentioned, Earhard was just such a force. And upon his departure, VHC and the coalition and homelessness both kind of said, well, what are we going to do now? And both organizations, the steering committees of both organizations kind of decided, well, we're going to take this as our next step in the evolution of our organizations and both groups hired a director. And so with that, both coalitions also began the process of really kind of forming ourselves a little bit more clearly in terms of organizationally and what exactly do we do? And so I think that for VHC, our decided focus is that advocacy work is more than just in the state house or being in the state house digitally as it were. And that, what do we do the rest of the year? And so our real focus has been around informing Vermonters about affordable housing, about how the process works, about needs, and also hearing from Vermonters from different perspectives, both to expand our formal network and also make sure that the voice of every Vermonter really is heard. So taking time to say, well, you know, how does the housing crisis impact people living with HIV and AIDS? How does the housing crisis impact single moms, the LGBTQ community, et cetera, et cetera, we can go on and on. And so we've started that work during the summertime in the fall and hope to continue that work through the legislative session and after. We also have two American VISTAs who are both working on their project. One in kind of community organizing and helping to empower folks do some self advocacy and how they can get involved in being a part of the solution. And our other VISTA is sort of weighed down by communications work. So actually right now she's very busy with helping out with the with tomorrow's event, the homelessness awareness day. So it's a busy place and we're looking forward to working together with you as I do move forward. This is certainly not my first time in a state house, but it is my first time in a state house via the internet. So I like you and figuring out how exactly this works. So I'm very grateful for you taking the time to talk with me today. I sent the committee and I think it's posted to your page our legislative priorities for this year. And in large part I were based on what Earhart had done in the past. I think it's a little bit more concise than maybe what you're used to seeing from from VHC. And we it was done very collaboratively because we really wanted to hear the voice and the input of our 90 plus member organizations. And so we tried to on that first page to see kind of our main priorities and on the back kind of a list of not not housing issues per se, but issues that impact housing issues that accessibility to affordable housing, you know, closing the affordability gap and so on. So I just I do just want to point out as kind of our main our main focus this year, like last year, and my understanding multiple years is a rental housing safety bill, which last year as we all know, was vetoed at 79, but now it's this year there's S 210. And so it's a main focus for us as is the just cause eviction legislation that started to be heard a bit this morning. That's one on one, which was the beginning of water wastewater connections and the expansion of the credits to neighboring development areas. We're also another focus for us. And then some main funding pieces, of course, funding for the hcb funding for the sash program services in the home, and we're all familiar with that program, and funding for the taxes expansion, if it manufactured home programs. Those are some of kind of our main focuses. And then there's a significant housing bill being assembled, as you know, in the Senate, we look forward to following that and seeing how we can help with that. And we're also doing a lot of work in the work group that's addressing the recovery residences bill that has been to my understanding, that's also been a few years in the run. And so I think that we provide a bit of a unique perspective on the bill that might help bring together some of the pieces that where there was disconnect before. So although this is kind of a first for the coalition to really kind of distinguish ourselves from the coalition and homelessness, we nonetheless are continuing to work kind of in tandem, because the two issues, although separate and distinct, without a doubt, have an intricate relationship. And so for that reason, we're sort of mutually supporting one another in both of our efforts. So that's kind of a snapshot of what VHC is doing this year or trying to do. Really been focusing on being aware of this, raising awareness, education, educating Vermonters about the process about affordable housing and in a hope to bring more voices to the table. Thank you, David. David, in the time that you've been in Vermont, what you've been able to witness is something that has never happened before, which is the creation of units that are taking people primarily, hopefully primarily people who are who have been experiencing homelessness and take them from the motels, which was a half a step up from where they were before, or perhaps even more than half a step up because they have their own facilities and showers and whatnot. But now with the creation of units for formerly homeless households, have you been able to check out any of the new units that have been developed yet as affordable housing in any of the communities, either in Chittin County or in Central Vermont or any place else that's had these units completed? I personally have not been to any of them, but of course, it's a frequent topic of discussion in our coalition monthly meetings. Thankfully, it's frequently in the good news story portion of our monthly meetings. So it's great to be able to be here as that's happening. And that's fair. I mean, there's a lot and I really appreciate you taking on the organization, but at a time that's so hard, there's so much money that's out there, so much opportunity, and yet I feel like we're almost as worried as we were when we didn't have funding because we want to do it right. For sure. And I think that it's a, you know, the kind of classic concern in this kind of work is always like that there is no money, and it's definitely a very unique situation that we're in where we have that money. But still, as you know, I heard Gus Selig say at a meeting that despite all this money that we have, it's still only a down payment on solving the problem because the problem is so, as you all know, the problem is so dynamic and so complicated and so layered that it's really going to take a lot of not just money, but creative thinking and working together. I really think is what's vital, being able to, for the housing world to reach beyond its own borders, so to speak, and it's like chipping away at an iceberg. We have to chip away at it from multiple angles. And I think you're right, you know, there's all this funding, and what's going to be vital is the moves that are made and what we do with it. So what do you think the next three months are going to look like for VAHC? Not just in terms of advocacy here in the building, but outside the building with all of the affected groups here. What do you envision happening over the next three or four months as we head into spring? Well, a big part of our, as I mentioned, we're trying to sort of bring light to the affordable housing conversation from the perspective of different communities. And so in February, we'll be doing some work with the BIPOC community to get kind of that conversation around how the housing crisis impacts that community in a particular way. We also are going to be doing some, within the coalition, we recently established a DEI subcommittee. And so they're going to be very busy at work, helping the sort of a multi-layered thing, first of all, showing our own folks how to make sure we're always looking at issues through that lens, but also to try to reach out and connect more and more with communities who are doing that work or organizations that are doing that work more directly, so that we could sort of help make sure that that element is present in all that we do. Another portion of our work is we're trying to solidify and mobilize a young people's group so that some college students and college age students, hopefully statewide, ultimately, that they'll be able to get involved in the process, hopefully ultimately in some advocacy work, but also just in bringing their voice to the conversation. I think that it's no secret that people in their 20s are impacted by the housing crisis in a particular way, and so we want to shed some light on that and bring that voice to the table. So we've already started with bringing some college students together, and so another big portion of our work outside the state house will be continuing to build that group, to mobilize that group, to bring those voices into the conversation. So those are kind of some two major things that are happening for us right now that we're very excited about. Great, and acronym alert, it's early in the year. DEI means? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Thanks, Delward. There's so many. Any questions for David? When I started at the coalition, I was given a guide. I looked at the document. I thought it was just going to be a short word document, but it was actually quite lengthy of all the acronyms, and for my first very many meetings, I always made sure I had that file open on my computer screen so that I could refer to them, and almost all of them had a V and an H in them. So it was kind of hard to keep them straight at first. Yeah, when FEMA was here after Tropical Store Irene, I found an acronym dictionary from FEMA. It was about 800 pages on it. It was pretty incredible to think that he needed a dictionary for acronyms, but from a governmental perspective, I suppose it makes perfect sense. We're also very excited about our work on the Recovery Residence Bill, because that work is, as you all know, there's a real gap between sort of what happens to or a big point of contention on the bill is what happens to an individual who has to leave a Recovery Residence. Where do they go? And I was involved in a lot of work in Recovery Residences in Rhode Island, where the landscape is very different than it is here, both figuratively and literally. And through my work in the Recovery Community, I also had the opportunity to make connections across the country. And so I kind of had a really good idea of what was going on in other places around recovery housing. And really, we just have this missing piece here in Vermont that could really bring the whole thing together. And so we're really excited to be a part of that conversation and that work that's happening around really putting together a support system that's best for everyone and that upholds and strengthens the recovery of both the person in question and the rest of that community, and that also ensures housing. But it really is sort of the challenge surrounding that situation has its own particular struggles that are particular to Vermont. So we're excited to be hopefully be a part of the solution and hopefully be kind of a helpful third voice in the conversation. All right. Anything else for David? We have to get ready to go to at least switch our computer screens to be on the floor at the very least. But thank you so much for your time, David. Nice to meet you. In under these circumstances, can't wait to see you again in 3D. But we'll and I'm sure we'll see you a little bit tomorrow. And I fully expect to be able to see you for, you know, as we move forward with a lot of the different housing bills that are that are in place here. So thank you for your time. For sure. Thank you guys. And thank you for your patience and your ability to roll with things during these during these crazy times. So thank you for working on it. Thanks, David. Is there a chance you could share your acronym dictionary with us? Sure. I'll send it off. Yeah. All right. Thanks, all.