 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Washington County Metal Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications. Park Chester Times, www, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns and achievements of the different label. I've always been a host, Laura Seiler. On this edition, we will focus on housing and people with special needs. With us to discuss that and so much more around housing and special needs is Ableton on Air's partner in our program, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Executive Director, Zachary Ralph Watson. Welcome to Ableton on Air. Thank you, Larry. Thanks for having me. So let's discuss housing and people with special needs. First people do that, and I know you've been on the show numerous times. What are the missions and goals of Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity? Well, again, thanks for having me, Larry. Our Habitat for Humanity is an international organization. We're in 70 different countries in all 50 states in the United States. And we have a vision of creating a world where everybody has a decent place to live. We're a Christian, ecumenical, nonprofit, affordable housing organization. And we focus on homeownership. So we build houses using volunteer labor, donated materials and fundraising to build affordable housing for income sensitive Vermonters in Central Vermont. And the homeowners get a mortgage for their home and their payments go to support constructing new houses for other folks that are in need of housing. Okay. I'm talking about people with special needs and housing. What is your opinion about the housing situation? Because as of June 1, we're in Central Vermont. But as of June 1, the COVID relief package or COVID relief for people that are in hotels. Let's talk about that. And how is that going to affect people in need of housing? Yeah, I think the so we received one time once in a lifetime sort of influx of cash during during the COVID pandemic to address the homelessness needs in our state. And Vermont responded with that funding to put homeless populations or the unhoused into hotels and motels across the state. And that program has been ongoing since 2020, I believe. And so the biggest impact of the end of the COVID pandemic and running out of the funds from the federal relief is that are there is no longer funds to support the homeless voucher hotel voucher program for the homeless. And there are currently about 1800 families in Vermont that will become unhoused. So they will be kicked out of the home, the hotels and motels, essentially. So it won't be, there won't be any more funding whatsoever or they won't at the last minute try to, is there a last minute try to not make people unhoused in terms of this? There is. So the the Vermont legislature passed their, their budget, their fiscal year, their 2024 budget, and it did not include funding to continue the program. So if that budget goes through, then there will not be any funds to support no last minute deals to continue the program. Essentially the unhoused populations will depend on. Because the winter months are kind of brutal. They are. Yeah, they'll have to depend on the Agency of Human Services and DCF and other Department of Services, which are already overwhelmed and don't have resources to handle the influx. The Vermont General Assembly, when the budget was passed, there was the House of Representatives was ten votes short of getting a supermajority, which means that if the governor vetoes the budget, then the House would potentially not be able to override his veto. And the legislators that did not vote in favor of, in particular the Democrats that did not, and progressives that did not vote in favor of the budget did so because it did not include funding to continue the homelessness voucher program. So presumably if the budget is not, if the veto is not, if the governor vetoes it and it is not overwritten, then the House and the Senate will have to come up with a plan to continue or come up with a solution for the homeless population in Vermont. Talking about housing for everyone, recently they passed, the Senate passed S-100. Explain a little bit about that in detail and what that is, in this case, when it comes to housing. Yeah, so it's a very comprehensive housing bill. There's a lot of different pieces in it and it attempts to address a lot of the housing challenges in Vermont that have sort of held us back from being able to build more housing over the last hundred years really, or, you know, 80 years I would say. And so the reason this is coming about is Vermont is experiencing a housing crisis and where there is not... An emergency crisis. There's an emergency crisis and then there's for our homeless populations, which is it needs to be addressed now, but Vermont arguably has been experiencing a housing crisis for a long time. Can you explain more about that? It really just means that there's a really low percentage of vacant housing, so the number of housing on the market which is available for purchase. And what that does is it drives up the cost of housing for rentals and for purchasing so that it's no longer affordable for working Vermoners and even people that want to move here to work are not able to find housing. And so rents are really expensive and it's really expensive to buy a house. When you say challenges that Vermont is facing, for example, certain buildings, like for example when we were filming your Barry house, the house was old. Or should I use the word grandfather? I mean what do you do in that case if you're building or rebuilding someone's house? How do you save some of the things that need to be saved? Is grandfathering a problem with some things in terms of housing, in terms of where to put people, especially people with disabilities? Right, so we rehab that house, we rehabilitated it, and lots of challenges with rehabilitation. Vermont has some of the oldest housing stock in the country. I hope that wasn't a bad question. Nope, not a bad question at all. I know it's one of our challenges for the existing housing stock, so we do have housing that's considered affordable on the market for low and middle income Vermoners. But typically these housing units require massive amounts of work. They need new roofs. Rehab, exactly. New roofs, new foundations. They've led, they have asbestos. So somebody that is low income that might be able to afford to buy the house at its mortgage value won't necessarily be able to afford the repairs that are required to make it modern, livable, and even insurable. And if you can't insure a house that is mortgage, then your bank will foreclose on you. So that's one of the challenges with the existing housing stock is that it's old and it's hard to fix up. So the challenges are what I just talked about. You run into lead, you run into asbestos, but also... Environmentally, that's not safe. Environmentally, it's a health hazard. But also for the environment, a lot of these older houses are not energy efficient. So they're really expensive to heat and maintain. And so if you want to bring them to modern energy efficiency standards, then it's going to be very expensive as well. And if you don't do that, then you're going to be basically depending on fossil fuels, which are very expensive and very volatile in their prices. And then it's just going to be expensive to heat and cool your home. Is it, in terms of accessibility and your agency, in terms of, let's say, a person with a special need needs... Well, maybe not a completely accessible home, but some accessibility features. Is it more money to put in for an accessibility feature in somebody's home? Like, is that some of the challenges that people are facing now? So ADA compliancy, you know? For newer construction, there is a cost associated with it. You need wider doorways. You need structural pull bars in bathrooms. There either needs to be a ramp that only goes up one foot over. You know, it has to be ADA compliant. Those things can all be expensive. Typically for new builds, if you're able to keep it one story and you're, you know, it's cheaper with a new build. For a rehab, it becomes, it either is not possible or it can be expensive. But, yeah, they're, to meet ADA accessible standards. What are some of the other big challenges that people face with housing, especially when trying to find it? So the S100, the housing bill, again, there's a, it's trying to address a number of challenges that have prevented development across the state. And one of them is density. So that's the number of... Explain what that means. It's the number of units that you can build in a certain area. So the bill makes it so that wherever a single unit building is allowed, it, you, it enables that municipality or that developer to build two units. So it's immediately doubling the capacity of our, or the density of our communities. It also makes it so that any, the density, allowable density for any acre within certain designated areas has to be at least five units. And in some cases, areas with municipal sewer and water can, where there's two units are allowed, they can build four. So it's increasing the number of units that we can build in an area. So we have denser downtowns. So that's, that's one piece that's really helpful. The other is, is around some of the, with, with Act 250, which has been enormously successful in conserving our state and our environment, but has had some, has not been particularly helpful in areas where we do want to develop, like in our downtown areas, where, so it does create some, it does create some exemptions in Act 250 that allow for larger housing developments in designated areas. And then it also limits the appeals process so that currently you can appeal a development based on its character, which is sort of a loosely defined term, but has, has been sort of a rallying call for the not in my backyarders is sort of a catchall. We just don't. Right. We don't, we don't like this. So it doesn't match the character of the neighborhood. So the house of the people that move in the house. So they say, okay, it's two stories instead of one that doesn't match the character or it has a pitch roof instead of a flat roof. It doesn't meet the character. Or we just don't like the color. And that doesn't say it can be a sort of a catchall phrase. Because years ago they had a thing, you know, not my backyard example. If I know Vermont doesn't have group homes or as many, but some areas don't like certain populations moving in, but that's way in the past. Now we're in the future. So now it all has to do with the building structures itself. Yeah. So in areas in developments that include affordable housing, you cannot use character of the neighborhood as an appeal in the cases of Act 250. So that, that will, that takes some of the uncertainty out of developments and it can be really helpful. But you are correct that density requirements, character of the neighborhood, some of these zoning restrictions that have been put in place. Where, you know, put in place as a way to keep lower income housing out of certain neighborhoods or in some cases to keep traditionally marginalized black and indigenous communities out of their areas as well. Not people with disabilities. I mean, sometimes it might trickle into that. But I'm not specifically aware of that, but it's possible. Yeah. Now let's talk about, let's piggyback. President Carter created Habitat for Humanity. Timmy Carter was a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, but it was a, yeah. He worked to make Habitat for Humanity better, explain a little bit more how people that really don't know how Habitat for Humanity really works. So take us, if someone wants a house, how do they go about doing that and start there? Well, I want to kind of connect it to the broader conversation about the housing crisis that we started on, right? So we talked about homeless populations a little bit, but even populations that are in rental housing that is subsidized, like Section 8 vouchers through the Vermont State Housing Authority. You know, we have something called a benefits cliff, which is if you make too much money, you lose all your benefits. But there's also a housing cliff in some, or I guess you could call it a housing cliff, which is you're in a rental unit and you want to, you've expressed and you have the ability to afford a home, but there's nothing out on the market which you can afford. And so as a result, you are perpetually stuck in your rental units, which means you're never accumulating wealth, you're never building your financial assets, and therefore you cannot get out of poverty. So our housing pipeline is broken because there are none of those affordable housing options for home ownership for folks to get out of the rental world. The only organization in the state that is building your single affordable home is Habitat for Humanity. And so what we do is we partner with people that are in need of housing. So they live in subsidized housing currently. Their existing housing doesn't have enough bedrooms. The rent is too much. They live in an unsafe neighborhood. There's mold, asbestos. Their appliances don't work. Those are examples of people that we partner with. They have to earn less than 80% of the area median income based on their family size or household size. And we do partner with individuals, but that typically for a family of four, some are around $60,000 or $70,000. And so you have to live and or work in Washington and Orange County. And that's an important part of having a community. And then the fourth requirement, and this is the most important, is that you have to be willing to partner with us. And that means that you spend up to 250 hours. I think that breaks down to three or four hours a week helping to build your home. So you're there alongside the other volunteers building your home. So we have an application process. People can sign up to receive notifications when our application process opens at our website, centralvermonthabitat.org. But I do want to say a lot of people think that we build houses for poor people. And that's not necessarily true. A lot of people in Vermont qualify for our program. A lot of them just don't know about it. And they just don't know. Like I said, if you and your partner, if you and your two kids and your partner earn less than $70,000 a year, you qualify for our program. That's a lot of Ramoners. And so a lot of people think that we just partner with poor people. That's not the case. We partner with a lot of people who have the means and potentially could afford a home, but there's just nothing out there that they can afford. Now you said, let's piggyback. You said housing cliff. So let's, okay. Like people that are on social security, social security, disability, social security, and other federal programs. Is that what you mean by the housing? What exactly do you mean by the housing cliff? Well, so benefits cliff is basically you receive social security, you receive unemployment or you receive heating fuel assistance, things like this. Some of those are not good examples, but heating assistance is a good one. Or food stamps, right? These things help you in your daily activities to afford to do things. Well, at a certain point you earn too much money and you lose all that, these benefits. But the money that you make actually isn't enough to cover what the subsidies provided before. So you no longer can afford fuel. So you no longer can afford food. And so there is actually incentive built into that for people to not make more money. Unless it's a lot more money. Because if you make more money, then you can't actually afford to live. So that's the benefits cliff. And that is a state sponsored system that incentivizes people to stay poor. And again, that's a broken system. The housing cliff I was talking about is something I just made up right now. But that's where you're stuck in subsidized rentals. And if you make more money, you might lose your subsidized rental and then you can't afford to live anywhere. And there's no way to get out of that into a housing situation which would also help you get out of subsidized rentals. No. Is there a main reason why there isn't enough subsidized rentals or enough housing to go around? I mean, because I'm worried to hear about what's going to happen to all those people that are being literally thrown out and they're going to have no place to go. I mean, the weather is nice, but what's really going to happen to these people? And the organizations, such as Good Samaritan and such, they're going to be swamped. So what's – do you want to piggyback off that? Yeah, I think the legislature hopes that they will figure it out. They hope that the existing systems will support them. And I think most people can agree that that's not the case, that our system is already pretty taxed. It's pretty overwhelmed. And an influx of another 3,000 people into that system is going to be very expensive and it's going to overwhelm our system. So in some cases, people who are struggling, there's lots of diverse reasons for homelessness. Some of it is mental health, some of it is drug and alcohol. Some of it is you just can't afford to live somewhere. You've got two functional adults with jobs. But people who are dealing with mental health or drug addiction problems and maybe have found some stability through the Motel Voucher system and are able to make progress on addressing their addiction, who are then all of a sudden thrown into the streets. Where I believe we will – I mean, this is all hypotheticals, but I believe we will see more overdoses. I believe we will see more suicides. There's New York or other states such as New York. They're having a migrant issue now and they're putting immigrants in – that come on buses. They're putting them in hotels. But there's not enough space. And this is all across the country. So now we just have to figure out where to put these folks. Yeah, and there's no place to put them. In Montpelier, we have an overnight shelter in the wintertime that is sort of – I hope I'm not asking a bad question. No, not at all. It's just for us in the different churches. And they are pretty close to full capacity throughout the wintertime. Maybe there's room for five or ten more. But that's not nearly going to be able to cover the number of people that are coming out of the hotel voucher program. But the other – as I said, people potentially becoming unstable with their drugs might end up incarcerated, which of course is very expensive. So our prisons might be a place that the homeless people end up because they've been forced out of their hotel situations. It's – nothing good is going to come out of this. And because we don't have a system that can handle it. If we did, we wouldn't be in this circumstance. So there has to be a statewide institutional way to address it. So since we have some time left, let's go into – so there's an application process for Habitat for Humanity. How can people – what types of information do they need to fill out those applications? The initial application is – we ask for your income, your expenses. That helps us determine – you know, give us a sense of what – whether you would qualify for our program in terms of your ability to pay an affordable mortgage. We do ask for a description of your current housing needs, your address. It's just a paper application. I think it's about seven pages, but you don't need any information to fill it out. If applicants meet the initial criteria that I described earlier, you live and work in Washington, Orange County, or in less than 80% of the area you meet in income, you have some reason why you need housing, and you're willing to partner with us, which is just an attestation. Pretty easy application. Then we go through a verification process where we verify your income and things like that. We might change our process a little bit to make it easier for folks, but it still works. Okay. So what are the – so two main questions. What are the misconceptions around poor people in housing and people with special needs if that group comes into play? And then second, what are the future goals of Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity? So I think – I don't know if I can address the question about misconceptions, because I'm not really sure. Okay, so, you know, if you – let me see if I can – if you run into meeting a house, but like if you can't afford it, but you need housing, is that a misconception? Are there misconceptions around – Well, I think there's misconceptions around homelessness that people think that – I'm sorry if I – No, that's okay. So, you know, some people might assume – you know, I think the most visible populations of homelessness that we see are oftentimes during the day on the street, on the bike path, and that can create a misconception about who our homeless populations are. And those people that we see visibly are usually a smaller percentage of the actual people that are unhoused, because most of our unhoused populations are working or they're taking care of their family inside wherever they are right now. And so there is not one reason for homelessness. Providing more housing is not going to solve the problem. It's also a mental health and a drug addiction problem. It's, you know, so we need more social services in addition to housing. So there's lots of reason why people are unhoused. And in terms of, you know, affordable housing, I think, again, when people think of affordable housing they think of, you know, maybe it's low-income rentals where you have – which are, you know, you don't have people living there necessarily for very long, or it's transient by nature or something like that. And as a result there's less buy-in to the property and the community. That's not always the case. But when we think of like the bad examples of low-income housing, you know, that's where people want to go. But, you know, affordable housing is a broad spectrum and there are lots of people, most people really care and are grateful for the support they get both from rentals and from homeownership and that they are fantastic, wonderful neighbors. And actually having a diverse economic, diverse community of low, moderate, and high-income creates a stronger and a better neighborhood. So, you know, that's our sense anyways. Everybody benefits from it. Yes, so we are currently building a duplex in Randolph as our first duplex, so going from single family to multi-family or multi-unit. And so that's pretty exciting. We're partnering with an organization called Bensonwood to help build the exterior to help us build faster. And so we – because we are doing our part or trying to do our part to build houses more quickly to address the housing crisis, after that we are planning to – the city of Barry is selling us a property of land, property for $1, basically donating it to us and helping us with the cost of demolition and so that we can build a new house, existing houses, unstable. And then we have a couple of projects lined up that I can't really speak too much about, but for the last couple of years, we've been working on an architectural and engineering and feasibility study for a larger housing development on Northfield Street. It's – right now it's a conservation plan unit development, so approximately 25 acres of the 50 acres a half would – is planned to be conserved as a publicly accessible neighborhood park. 12 acres could be developed for anywhere between 100 and 200 units. Right now we have a concept design that envisions 115 units as a mixed unit – mixed income community with workforce housing, single-family and townhouses, senior housing, transitional housing for seniors, low-income rentals and affordable income-sensitive home ownership opportunities that we would construct. Well, we would like to thank you for joining me on this edition of Ableton R&M. For more information on Habitat for Humanity, where can people turn to get help if they would like? They can – yes, people can call us at 802-522-8611. We will pick up if we are there and glad to help you through our program or direct you in the right place. It's the website that people can go to. Our website is centralvermonthabitat.org and that is all spelled out – centralvermonthabitat.org. Okay, for more information on Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, you can go to www.centralvermonthabitat.org or 802-522-8611. That number again is 802-522-8611. Again, thank you to Zachary Ralph Watson of Habitat for Humanity and I'm Martin Seiler. See you next time on the next edition of Ableton R&M. Major sponsors for Ableton R&M include Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton R&M include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW – this is the Bronx dot info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton R&M include Yechad of New York and New England where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton R&M has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW – this is the Bronx dot com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton R&M is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists.