 And so the committee decided to pull those sections and move them to potentially another piece of legislation, which hopefully we're starting this morning. I assume several of the people on the call have testified in front of House General about this, and David, you were probably there for some of it, having pulled together some of the language that you were talking about. David, you were probably there for some of it, having pulled together some of the language that gave DCF and ACCD responsibilities to administer, create, implement programs, consolidate, change, whatever. And there was some talk about dollars, which I assume we may get into at some point in terms of making a recommendation to the Appropriations Committee. If you don't mind, maybe you can start off and give us a background of what you heard there and how that committee came to its recommendations. Is that something you could do for us? I can do that. It's going to be a pretty short tail, to be honest with you. Okay. Well, let's hear that. So for the record you are keeping my name is David Hall, I am an attorney of the Legislative Council. I have a staff attorney for housing issues and worked on a bill which I trust I can share my screen at this point with you. I think I've been made a host. So, is that working? Yes, it's this point are you seeing draft 11.1. I believe we're seeing it's in the middle of the draft so we can't see, but I assume it's 11.1. Yes. So it would start here at section seven. So basically, the way this all came about, the house, having technical issues, I think it's working now. So the house essentially was general committee was charged with coming up with proposals related to leave and other benefits which Damien drafted. And then charged with coming up with pieces about housing and specifically, assistance, which in large part dealt with the inability to pay rent as this crisis continues, but also assistance to homelessness, homeless populations and providers. And then, sort of after those pieces, they also came up with essentially some placeholder sections on the moratoria concerning ejectments for closures and also at the time utility disconnects. So I have to tell you that section seven, eight and nine as originally constituted were things that I drafted that were very general and were initiated in that committee as placeholders for discussion. As you know, the stakeholders in the community of landlords and tenants and also on foreclosure actions worked a significant amount to flesh out what was section nine, in which you eventually passed in your draft 3.1 of s 333 So to be honest, the section seven and eight that are in this draft 11.1 I did not hear testimony on those pieces. The number you see in section seven $5 million was sort of a initial placeholder figure that was batted around. But there was a recognition early on that any amount of money was obviously in great flux, and they did not devote any significant attention to how much money should be involved. The piece in section eight, you'll see section seven speaks to the Department of Children and Families and refers to section eight. And that's because the way section eight was crafted. And they essentially went back to the materials that I have collected concerning the hot program. You may remember at the beginning of the session there was a report and recommendation from legal a concerning investments on the front end of the project to help with tenants who had fallen behind so that they would avoid an ejection action and they felt that that would be a good investment of money so based on that research earlier draft language there and then on the tail end of this crisis, needing a placeholder for section eight. So I can't pull together a section eight which again would essentially charge DCF is the primary authority here because it does administer the housing opportunity grant programs which provides a lot of the services that are referenced in this section. The scope is a little more expansive it does direct DCF to coordinate with DHCD, the Housing and Conservation Board and other partners to come up with policies and procedures to administer funding. And it's specifically for housing related emergency relief necessitated by the spread of COVID-19. And so the scope of the duties that were contemplated in section eight. CRIPROD, you'll see housing search and placement housing stability case management, landlord tenant mediation follow up and supportive services to maintain housing, financial assistance for security deposits and rental payments, rental or rears short term rental assistance and the purchase or lease of existing housing units for purposes of isolation or quarantine so these were all these are all things that DCF does. But this is specific again to housing necessitated needs made necessary by this, this crisis. E contemplates the administration the development of a process for outreach to community partners landlords and tenants, developing an expedited application process for emergency relief and criteria for prioritizing emergency funding, based on the income projected duration severity of the need for assistance other factors gives a lot of discretion to DCF. Subsection C would require DCF to maintain adequate records and data concerning funding it provides and make that information available to the General Assembly. This is the piece, and it's short but I don't want to lose the significance a lot of people in the housing community were are concerned about the impacts on the homeless population service and housing providers to that population. And so it was intentional effort to include something about homelessness here in subsection D you'll see that DCF and DCD shall provide information technical assistance and necessary guidance to homeless shelters, community housing partners and landlord attend associations concerning the resources and requirements of this act as well as relevant existing resources. So that was section eight, you'll recall in the course of not only the discussion in house general but also before this committee. But I think it's fair to say that for the landlord community, recognizing that a lot of tenants are going to have a lot of difficulty making rent, staying in housing but should not be dispossessed. There's a significant need for landlords to have relief, whether it comes through tenants to landlords or directly to landlords and indeed things have happened at the federal level that would provide some assistance. And several of the provisions in the CARES Act do prevent foreclosures as long as the landlord agrees not to evict tenants. Also any any federally insured or guaranteed or directly lended loans, do any federal partner or program FHA, any Friday, etc. Those all have temporary moratoria they have the ability to renegotiate terms of lenders. And then, additionally, if tenants are receiving sort of a federally supported or guaranteed rent, so section eight housing or other programs like that evictions have to are paused on those as well so there are some programmatic temporary protections in place and some of the forbearance on on mortgages would extend to the owners of these multifamily properties again as long as they do not evict people during the time of the moratorium and forbearance. As I said, I think there's, there was recognition in the house and there's been recognition in this committee that more money will need to flow directly. And so I would frame your task is determining how much money should flow to whom it should flow and what of that money could be sourced federally and what will be for sourced from state sources. That's about all I've got. Okay, thank you. So I assume other people who who are vested in this area of services could describe a little bit more detail of what they're seeing from the federal government in terms of resources and what they can be used for and perhaps what they're seeing in other states as well. Was this language. You say you didn't weren't there for the testimony, but was this language in some fashion approved by the House General Committee. I would not say there was any formal approval of any of the language I think recognition was one of procedural timing and process that once they took it to the point of draft seven or eight. They handed it off to you in part to address issues about whether the bill should deal with commercial leases and then also my understanding is that both sides house and Senate will continue to discuss the money issues. Michael Allison, my understanding is they had come in our email from Tom is that they were in agreement, pretty much with the draft the last draft, we got which was a lot of, you know, eight or nine point one, as David said, but that they were in pretty My sense from time to reread Tom's email, but that they were in agreement now the thing that's changed considerably is of course we now have the cares act and have a very clear notion of what money is available to the state. Well, not only to federally but to the state and so that will be, I'd be curious to understand that I understand the CDBG money is about 4.7 million to the state. So, I mean we now know more in terms of what money is available for what pot. Okay. So just end to that point David is kindly put up the all the housing money up on our website under today's testimony, if you click on Tuesday, April 9. Okay, that would be very helpful. Yeah, it's right there. We're sort of developing something we have a little bit of an outline here where, at least the house was going but we're sort of developing this from scratch in addition to, to knowing what the resources are at a state of federal level. Right from one. I'm not clear yet. Well, it's early as to what people are seeing as the need, and what they expect to see as the need. We have certain resources out there. I'm not sure we have heard from people yet as to what they're seeing on the ground or what they expect to see on the ground based upon not only COVID-19 but I'm past experiences is nothing comparable but obviously experts can project what they expect here. So, I'm going to ask Josh to testify next because as far as I can tell he does have a bit of a bridge between what the house had asked us to look at and what we ultimately passed and the reasons we narrative somewhat and he can from the administration's perspective as can can say what they can use as help from us and what kind of direction they'd like to see. So Josh, if you can hop on that would be great. Sure, can you hear me, Senator. And we can see you. Okay, excellent well good morning. I'm Richard, Josh Hanford. Well, I'm glad you're having this discussion. I wish there was a lot more detail. I'll give you what I know. I think there will definitely be a need for state support to fill in the gaps from the federal money. We're coming out each day. We know we're getting 4.2 million in CDBG COVID response, Burlington's getting the balance of the 4.7 number that's thrown out there. They have not given us the date that that will be will be able to submit our plan and use for it yet. In fact, just this morning I got the letter that goes to the governor saying, here's your allocation, here's your waivers. It's not going to be immediate money as much as we want it to be. And I'd like to point out that, you know, it's about a little more than 10% of what we got after Irene and the estimated needs from this crisis or 10 to 15 times the amount that we need from Irene. I know there's more CDBG COVID response money coming based on formulas that will be known in 45 days they say there was 5 billion in total awarded. Our 4.7 that Ramon is getting is only the first 2 billion of that. The other is coming out in various formulas and as time goes on. So we will get likely a little bit more but I still think there's going to be gaps and frankly, you know what CDBG money can use be used for it put some limits, you know, you have to go through communities. First off, you know that it doesn't waive that requirement where a municipality is the only applicant for CDBG funds they can pass it on to someone else. And that's sort of a timing and logistic hurdle of these funds that we have to work through. And the ability to use CDBG funds for direct rental assistance is unclear. At this point, I know the advocacy organizations are national liaison group, they've all asked for a waiver of that. CDBG normally is prevented from being used as rental assistance. It's meant for, you know, building homes and revitalizing downtown and doing infrastructure projects and supporting business expansion. They are rarely given out for direct sort of rental assistance. 80% of HUD's budget is in the form of rental assistance through Section 8 program and others. And they've, you know, specifically restricted CDBG from that purpose because so much of the HUD budget goes for rental assistance. Josh, may I ask you a question here? Yep. There is identified 1.25 billion for tenant-based rental assistance, independent of this. And do you know yet how much Vermont is getting of that? That would be a question for Richard Williams, who I believe is on the list later on. I know just a few days ago he did not have the details yet, was hoping for some more info from HUD yesterday. But, you know, we've certainly talked about how that rental assistance, they're going to get something, an increase could be used to support, you know, the situation out there where, you know, a lot of property, a lot of landlords are not getting rent right now. And how we could use these funds to put money in the hands of tenants so they can pay their rent is certainly part of the puzzle here. And I don't have the details and not clear how that puzzle is put together at this point. But I am very concerned about the impact of the nonpayment of rent on the rental housing industry, the whole industry, private nonprofit, public housing. There are some protections that certainly David Hall mentioned about properties in Vermont that are assisted with certain federal backed mortgages and guarantees and whatnot. It's not very clear how extensive that is in Vermont. The discussions I've had and you have a few other folks on the call that know more about this as well, but some of those programs are not widely used in Vermont. So it's unclear how much protection that's really going to provide us. I'm really concerned about folks that are already on the edge, you know, being able to maintain decent, safe, you know, housing rental housing, how, you know, months of nonpayment is going to affect that and all of the things that comes with that come with that you know, if you're not getting rent, how are you able to pay the furnace guy and fix the leak in the roof and it just goes on and on. So, one of the areas that I'm certainly advocating for is a sort of housing stimulus and whatever legislative package comes through you know, I'm sort of thinking of it as a housing relief fund where there's some sort of 0% deferred or forgivable loans that can be provided to property owners suffering from nonpayment of rent due to COVID-19. Maybe the loans are forgiven if the property is participates in some sort of rehousing program for bondable populations. You know, that's where maybe we can make some of the rental assistance, try to deal with some of the massive transformation that's going on with the homeless population and the shelters and maybe we could keep some folks from returning to homeless shelters and actually house them permanently. So there may be some sort of transformational change that comes out of this if we can get this puzzle right that it could have some lasting change that's actually good. But so the administration leadership is talking about putting together a legislative package as we speak. You know, part of the challenge here is understanding where this federal funding is going to fill the gaps and then what we can come in afterwards and plug the holes serve the folks that are sort of left out that are harder to serve that are maybe missing from the federal response and I don't have those answers right now, but I do think that there is some sort of need for a program that puts, you know, loan money, forgivable loan money deferred certainly until times are better in the hands of property owners. You know, folks that own rental property that aren't getting other assistance. The tenants are also going to need rental assistance but months of non payment in a large fashion is going to have a devastating impact. And many of these properties might not qualify for some of the SBA and other loans that are out there right now they don't have large payroll that have a large staff. They have, you know, sort of capital intensive businesses meaning they need to maintain, you know, safe and decent housing for folks to live in they don't have a ton of staff. They may be set up a certain sort of corporations that don't qualify for some of the SBA stuff. So we'll have to see but I think there is a role for the state to provide some funding here in a creative way and put it in the hands of folks that provide housing for for monitors. Okay, thank you Josh is there is your, I haven't been able to pull up yet. I think I will get there. Your handout does that sort of identify all the various federal funding sources in the stimulus package. I think I looked at. So this this comes. I'm not sure where this came from but I quickly looked at it. It's a non market discussion that identifies where up for housing I don't see. That's what I expected to see in there I've seen various summaries from Senator Leahy staff, other sort of liaison groups in DC. And this is what these are the buckets of money I have seen. Michael, it's, it's on our, our web page under today's day. Yeah, I know where it is I'm just trying to get there without without losing the zoom. So I think it's from the treasurer's office from our state treasurer's office put this together. And it's, it's what I have seen. It's good. Michael may I ask Josh a question. Please do. Josh, I have some concern. All of us do about how this interplays with the current building things that are on schedule for construction that are also new additional housing. So I know your CDBG meeting got rescheduled till June. And I'm a little concerned I know I know we have three big projects that have gotten VHFA credits, 9%, and I'm just concerned about what's happening to the three big projects in Rutland, Dallas Falls and and Hartford where they're ready to go. They would have been being discussed in the April meeting now put off to June. Can they, can we expect that that funding that's already should already be there is ready to go and that those projects will be able to be in construction on schedule. There's a lot to that question that that I can answer but what I do know is, even if we had the April board meeting, there was more requests for those four projects you mentioned, then the entire pot of CDBG money available. So, I'm not sure that all of them would have moved after the April meeting anyways, many of them would have to come back to June. So we have existing CDBG dollars that we will be giving out in June it'll be a larger pop because it'll essentially be to to to board meetings combined. That's June 3, I think or June 11, I can't remember. Or 11. What I don't know is if they will be impact, even if they receive funding at that point, the delays that everyone's having to experience right now may create a backlog, you know, I hear we get requests daily from contractors, construction companies they're saying, you know, we don't get this order lifted by April 30, we're on to a new job somewhere else, you know, our workforce will essentially leave and take a construction job somewhere else because they have to. This is a big issue. It's a big issue, you know, trying to keep people safe. I'm looking at three emails this morning, very specific cases around this there are folks that are, you know, calm full time RVers that are due back in Vermont. This week to their RV, this is where they live from April through October, and they don't, they can't get in okay to move in. You know, they're housing in another part of the country is ended, they're supposed to be here. The RV parks aren't being allowed to open up unless they're serving emergency relief, you know, COVID relief or housing workers or vulnerable populations. So, all these specific requests and waivers, you know, people's homes that were supposed to be finished this month that are supposed to be moving in those jobs have all put on on hold so it is a major disruption to the whole housing industry that we have to unwind this we have to unwind it as quickly and as soon as possible. But I don't have that date. You know, right. And of course it's a bit of a catch 22 because we need the housing finish to move people into, and to have that transform transformational impact you're talking about in terms of the homeless. All of these projects deal with homeless plus low income plus moderate so. I know it's really a challenge. Oh, man. So it. You made mention, Josh, of the fact that the administration may have a proposal on all of this or some of this. And is there a working group of some sort that is meeting regularly or irregularly to are putting ideas down on paper I know you're a lot you're in the same situation as the legislature in terms of waiting on some guidelines and directions and allocations from the federal government but what's what's what's going on in house in terms of who the players are and what's what's how close you are to putting something together. There are there's been several task force formed with different leadership and then some outside sort of you know, folks in the field and from businesses and from industry that's relevant to the sort of sector to sort of give some guidance those have just been formed. I don't have a detail across because this is across all sectors you know everyone is feeling that they need, you know, support relief some package from the legislature. You know I know the governor's talking to to the leadership a couple times a week. We're having briefings with the governor twice a week from the economic mitigation and recovery leadership team is what it's called and under that there's three task forces formed that are sort of gathering data right now and dealing with you know immediate short term midterm and then long term sort of recovery needs and the legislative package is sort of in the midterm. You know, it's not actual response to the crisis today, you know these are funds that are going to come in and will be able to use for more of the recovery. The sort of response crisis money is is you know it's being spent and we're requesting you know FEMA presence and disaster relief and those things have all been approved. I don't have details maybe after my today's leadership team on this I'll have a little bit more of the broad schedule. I just know that my comments and contribution to the needs from the housing community. I've already started to sort of put together this this idea of a recovery housing recovery fund. And when I get some more details about what our total sort of ask is going to be I can start giving some more details and then also be coordinating with some of the other industry folks that are on the you know on your witness list today for their feedback and then of course we have to design how we use it and come up with all those parameters. But I would say that the original $5 million in the sort of outline uses that the general had is is a good starting point for all of us to consider I don't think that that should be thrown out. So. All right. Go ahead. So I'm just when you say it shouldn't be thrown out. Are you suggesting that that would be a good starting point for a new housing stimulus bill or are you suggesting that it would be an amendment that we should add this back in as an amendment to our bill. I'm just saying the development of that. I wasn't really involved in that and I didn't testify at all on House General and I'm not sure if Commissioner Schatz did or others. You know I think what David put together there is is is some good some good stuff that we should build on I'm not sure if it's exactly the right number if it's exactly they're all the right areas. You know a lot of it favors heavily towards sort of the direct rental assistance for tenants and I think a missing component is some sort of deferred loan forgivable loan to actual property owners that are struggling. You know if they can't reopen their housing or address you know life safety needs. You know rent that's going to come in next month is not going to help them get people in there. You know what I mean so that that might be a place that we need to focus on and the administration needs to come with the proposal to add to that list is kind of what I'm saying. Right and I think they had weighed in on that list the Angela and the landlords Association had been a part of this I believe everyone had supported this and I think the landlords were viewing. Well, I mean they couldn't speak for themselves but the tenant assistance I mean at least then rent was getting paid in some capacity if there was assistance for for renters. So I, sorry, I don't have more to add at this time but I think there was a need and I think that we will be able to provide our thoughts from the administration on a housing component to the sort of relief that the legislature, you know, is working on. So is it possible I don't know if you're the right person to ask but I'm looking at best handout now from it's on our web page, and I see some breakout in terms of the overall amount of money nationwide. I see a breakout as to what in one place anyhow what Vermont is likely to receive and what strings are attached to any of their pots of money. I would assume that the CDB G block grant, this would be added money that you would administer in the same way as. Well, maybe not maybe you have to segregate that money for impacts caused by COVID-19. Well, I guess, I guess has helped for the committee that we can have in our files is if we had all these sources of money broken out by how much the state's going to receive and what parameters those monies can be used either restrictions or flexibility to start getting a better picture and maybe some of our later witnesses who are in these areas have looked at that to see what's available I mean I think the, the big wildcard, especially if housing rises, sort of to the top of some of the needs for our state is the 1.25 billion that Vermont's going to get that's discretionary money, we're not necessarily limited to these six bullets or seven bullets here is a whole very large amount of money that everybody's going to be looking towards the you know backfill the state shortages, but also could be used for, you know, housing. Exactly that that 1.25 billion that's coming to the state for a variety of uses. Everyone's going to be looking for that money to, to, to, you know, to access like you said, I don't know backfill was allowed but to keep operations moving forward from every sector AHS education, you know, you name it what I can tell you is on this list. Different breakouts of what Vermont is getting that we know of today is if you scroll through, you'll see the bold under each section. Those items we know Vermont share, many of these other areas that the formulas haven't been written or run yet to say what Vermont's getting. And I did in the CDBG money to, to answer your question that 4.2 that the state is getting in the 450,000 that Burlington is getting. Yes, it's for COVID related items only the one flexibility, it gives us is we can use for public services, typically there's a cap we can only use up to 15% of our CDBG money in any given year for what's deemed public services, sort of expenses so that's a good flexibility for these funds. Think of operations for a food shelf, we can use our money to pay you know staff volunteers and operations of a local food bank or food shelf. We're in the past that public, that's a public service we could only use 15%. We normally get about $7 million a year in regular CDBG funds. And for this year coming up that's that's roughly our allocation as well. In addition to about 750,000 we're getting from for recovery housing, you know opioid recovery. This was a new this was going to be the big new thing this year before this crisis hit that we had a special pot of money to work on to just address recovery housing needs. So, good news is this year is going to be all said and done, one of the largest years of CDBG funding into the state since Irene. But I still think it's going to, it's not going to address all the needs out there, and there are going to be areas where more flexibility state general fund to address housing needs would will be needed. Okay. So, one of the things that I think we've learned from our appropriations committee and it makes all the sense in the world is that part of 1.25 billion is, as we've said is going to be sought after by a lot of people. To the extent we can find some other funding either in in these dedicated sources or elsewhere. I think it's going to be for housing I think it's going to be viewed very favorably by the appropriators. So we move forward so we've got to like, you know, turn over every rock here to find potential money for housing. Okay, let's, if anybody has any more questions of Josh. Appreciate all that. And I'd like to move on to Ken. I'm going to look on my here. Okay. Morning. And how are you. I'm doing well thank you hope all of you are too. I'm Ken Shatz the commissioner of the Department for Children and Families. I do want to start by appreciating you taking the time to look at these issues. We're all struggling to address the issues raised by COVID-19. The homeless population is a particular interest and concern because they're so vulnerable. We, as you know, have been doing a tremendous amount of work, trying to support that population. And like other things that we're dealing with, whether it's childcare or sub to care system for children in custody with respect to the population that told us we're trying to address the immediate needs presented by the pandemic but also try to maintain a stable system of care so that we're ready to continue providing support as we come out of this crisis. And frankly, that's challenging in every sphere, including this situation with respect to support for people who are homeless. So again, I appreciate the approach you're taking here. As you may know, we're, we're, we have totally waived any restrictive rules regarding emergency housing. So we are putting up a substantial number of people in motels. I get daily reports we have approximately 1400 people in motels today. And that obviously is a pressure and a challenge in numerous ways. Many of our homeless shelters are also doing their best to support people in their communities. Some of them have had to close, whether that's because of the nature of their facility and they could be affected by the health department guidance is regarding social distancing or for that matter staff. I've not been able to work because of issues affecting them on an individual basis. So it has been an ongoing challenge. The state is working hard to set up recovery and isolation facilities to address the needs of people who are symptomatic or have our COVID-19 positive. Arbor Place facility in Burlington that you are probably quite familiar with has been identified as an isolation facility. Goddard College campus has been identified amongst others as potential recovery sites. So a lot of that is going on as Josh mentioned we are working to look at the sources of federal funding to see what we have available and how we have to use them. We have to be careful to abide by federal rules. And so that work is ongoing. So I certainly appreciate the proposal to appropriate money in this bill. I'm not at a place where I can tell you a number either in terms of what exactly we need. Although as Josh indicated clearly the effort is being made to provide some sort of supplemental appropriation request to the legislature generally and it will include housing issues. I will say that as others have mentioned the CARES Act certainly does have some resources that will be very helpful. And in that vein we also did get noticed that we will receive some money from HUD for the emergency solutions grants program. So that is one of the pots of money that we typically use as David mentioned in our hot program housing opportunity program. And so we have actually as of Tuesday issued a supplemental grant application opportunity to enable providers to give us applications with respect to the needs of the homeless population in light of COVID-19. So we're working on that. Again as David said the hot program and OEO in particular does this kind of work on a day to day basis and so is well suited to administer any supplemental grant program that is eventually approved. I will put in certainly a plug for our staff. I think we have a great team with great leadership with Sarah Phillips as the administrative director of OEO. We do our best to work with all stakeholders and partners on an ongoing basis. I will share though that if we're asked to do a substantially supplemental program, I'd love for legislation to be clear that we can add some staff to manage not appropriately and successful. Senator Clarkson, I'm glad you appreciate this. I can't be a good bureaucrat and not at least make the point that this does require work and we need people to do it because we want to do it well. And I think that is the reason I mentioned that. And so looking at the specifics, one of the things that I'm not sure is there is whether or not this legislation or this money would be contemplated to support the emergency housing need that we have. I'm only totally on board with all of the ideas listed in Section 8 with respect to supporting tenants and addressing the needs of landlords in terms of enabling people to stay in place. But as I mentioned, emergency housing is clearly one of the substantial expenses that we are undertaking and committing right now. So again, that and obviously the advantage of a general fund appropriation is that's the most flexible money, as opposed to federal money, which has substantial restrictions. So in the context of continuing to suggest that you think broadly, as you look at this legislation in partnership with appropriations. So let me sort of stop there because I want wasn't sure exactly what you're looking for for me and glad to do my best to answer questions. And you mentioned 1400 people being in hotels. What is the is there a account as to the number of people that are considered homeless right now in the state of Vermont. But the others may be better than me. I don't know that there is any particularly definitive way to identify that I see air hearts on the on the panel here. There is the point in time study that is done. But again, the results of that vary whether or not it's an all weather conditions night. And so it's really challenging to identify the number of homeless people in our community. And at the same time, much less over time. And when you mentioned homeless shelters and being able to follow separation guidelines. I mean, are shelters functioning given that they're congregate settings right now or I've heard talk about trying to move people out of shelters into individual units. That's right. So some of that is definitely going on. I think there are some shelters that are still continue to operate. There are a number of people in there to maintain the separation that's necessary. But by way of example, a new place a shelter in Burlington decided to close because they could not abide by those guidelines so instead and this was a really a tremendous effort of stakeholders all coming together. Basically with the city of Burlington and lots of CVO activity and others. We put together a program an approach to immediately bring trailers to North Beach in Burlington to provide shelter for a homeless people who had otherwise been in that shelter in Burlington. One example there's others around the state. We are part of the reason for so many people in motels is that with respect to the decrease in numbers of people in shelters we've moved them into motels. And some of our homeless providers are actually helping to support and manage those efforts to I want to point that out in appreciation for people coming together to try to address this situation. Are there any numbers on homeless folks that have been tested positive with COVID-19. That is it's very small, literally yesterday my understanding was three, but that is, again, one of those things that it depends on the communication but right now, the number the good news is that number is actually very small but again we can still grow as we hear from the health department that we're still moving towards peak in terms of spread of the virus. Can I ask a number of our communities have places that conceivably could be recovery sites. Are you getting people funneling those kind of like for example we have a in Hartford, there's a closed down nursing home called Brookside. It's completely vacant. It could, I mean are people funneling that stuff to you. So, I am noting that that that particular place to make sure I follow up with that but the, as you may know the state. The operation center has a human services branch that is looking at sites and is getting information and obviously there's a variety of needs as I mentioned, there's the need for isolation for people who have symptoms. There's recovery centers, there's also surge capacity with respect to medical and healthcare needs. So yes, a lot of that information is being gathered and people looking at appropriate sites. And if we have ideas like the Brookside nursing home which is vacant at the moment. Who should we send them to. I would, I'll volunteer Jenny Samuelson from Diva, who is leading the human services branch of the SCOC. Sam Samuelson. Yes, I could send you her email address. That would be great and I'll send her the Brookside nursing home name or you can give it to her now. Great. Can I ask a question, Michael? Absolutely. Ken, are the people that you're putting in hotels being tested. We have not generally the guidance from the health department is still to have the decisions related to testing made by the primary care physician. So we do have better capacities I understand to do testing that's certainly growing, but it is still based on whether or not there are symptoms that warrant testing. Did you testify on this language in the House General Committee at all. Very generally and briefly. It sounds like a significant portion of DCS work in the housing area deals with the homeless. Is that a wrong assumption on my part. Which right so we have the through the general assistance program and OEO. We do a lot of work with respect to emergency housing for the homeless, particularly through the hop grant process which is through OEO part of DCF. We certainly address more of the kind of preventative kind of approaches and stability kind of approaches that are described here. So that is part of our work also in addition OEO manages the family supportive housing program, which is an approach to provide case management families to enable them to move into stable permanent housing. So we're not the entity that creates new housing to be sure, but we do provide the support for homeless and case management approaches with respect to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. So I'm trying to not rectify I'm trying to understand I guess in terms of the language I saw. It seemed like you were going to be the lead agency on all of this and in conjunction with other partners. But it seemed like the list of things were not necessarily exclusively dedicated to homeless issues or emergency housing issues. And I didn't know if you had volunteered to do that. Or it was just in general, putting players together but you always appeared first on the list. I think it's fair to say we were voluntarily told no I actually think as David indicated this this list is actually quite consistent with the approaches taking under our existing housing opportunities program. So, again, I'm it's not as if I mind if someone else wants to step forward or is a better manager for this type of approach but I do actually think and appreciate that we might be the right ones to do so because of the existing hop program. I guess I'm narrowing in on the fact that it seems like what the house may have been focused on was homelessness and emergency housing for people who may be displaced. And not necessarily more general approach that would sweep in perhaps a lot of our other housing programs that are a lot of our other witnesses are in charge of or work with on a daily basis. I just wanted to get that picture a little clearer. Does anybody have any questions for Ken anything else you want to add Ken. No I again I appreciate the work I will need to sign off now to move on to another meeting but I'm glad to stay in touch and answer any further questions that you have. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, thanks Ken for your work. Welcome thank you all to find out we're all so grateful. Allison do you have the witness list in front of you there. Thank you. Who is next up. Erhard Erhard and Dick Williams. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning. How are you. Thank you. I'm hanging in there. Okay. Well as well. I know we're all in the same situation. It's just getting old. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. Just before I get going just to your line of questioning. Senator Sarrotkin on the draft bill. Sections. Seven and eight that came over to you from the house. Just bear in mind those were sections. an incredible job under the circumstances. They were written on March 12th and 13th. And so the focus, and we worked with House General as did several other folks on that list. It was all focused on sort of what were the immediate crisis emergency needs from the perspective of March 12th and 13th. And obviously we've learned a lot since then. And we still have a long ways to go in terms of learning what is going to be available through the federal government. But I just also wanted to thank you and your committee for all the incredible work that you did in conjunction with House General on the eviction and foreclosure moratorium, which was one of our highest priorities when we were kind of looking at the impending crisis back on March 12th and 13th. And I'm glad that that's nearing. Hopefully we'll get across the finish line soon. And I think as someone pointed out early on, one of the understandings and one of the reasons there was such an unprecedented agreement around something that might normally be incredibly controversial, like eviction moratorium, was the understanding that there would be assistance at some point, whether through the federal government or the state government or some combination of the two, to make sure that renters were actually able to pay the rent and that property owners would be able to in turn pay their bills. And obviously, I think one of the things that Bear's mentioning as you continue to work that bill through the process is that folks have an obligation to pay rent. And we need to make sure that that is part of the messaging that comes along with the bill. And that said, they're clearly with the job losses that we're seeing, even in spite of the enhanced unemployment insurance benefits that we're getting through the federal government, I think there's still going to be significant potential for income loss as a result of cutback work hours or job losses and resultant challenges with folks being able to pay the rent. So I think the bill that came to those sections, seven and eight, that came to you from House General, ours, Josh and others, had said a good starting point. But we've come a long ways in the three to four weeks since the legislature adjourned in terms of learning. And I think it can be significantly enhanced. I also will point out that the $5 million was it was a placeholder completely. Just to get something in there, to get a number in there and to make sure that it was understood that there would be a need for a supplemental appropriation to deal with a housing and homelessness emergency response. I also want to point out, and I just want to make sure that folks are aware. We've talked for many years now that housing equals health care. And that health care and housing are integrally intertwined. And I just don't want to miss the opportunity to point out that one of the things that I think we've just universally learned through the pandemic and the need for people to be safe at home is that secure, safe, and affordable housing is absolutely essential to health and is an integral part of health care. And I don't want to miss the opportunity to kind of step back and make that observation. I'll also say that over the last three weeks, and huge kudos to Ken Shatz, to Sarah Phillips, to their entire team, to Josh, really to all of the folks in the agencies that are supporting the folks out in the field, our members, whether they be nonprofit housing providers or homeless service providers and shelters, are really at the front lines of this. And there are a lot of concerns that have come up over the last few weeks. And I would say the first couple of weeks were just incredibly hectic as people were moved out of shelter, as Ken pointed out. Some shelters, for instance, in Central Vermont, the two warming shelters, the seasonal warming shelters, one in Montpelier, one in Barrie, and then the permanent shelter in Barrie, their entire census, their entire population was moved into a motel because it was pretty early on recognized that they were not going to be able to keep any kind of social distancing in those situations. And as Ken pointed out, our homeless service providers, in conjunction with community support networks in each of the different regions, are continuing to support folks that have been moved into motels. One of the things that DCF and OEL wisely did early on was to identify a new class of folks that they identified as hyper vulnerable due to the pandemic and immediately moved those folks out of shelter into motels. And so the network is, as you can well imagine, incredibly stretched. The homeless service provider network, whether they're supporting folks with potentially decreased staff, because there have been some staff losses as a result of not necessarily people being infected, but folks having folks in a compromised health or potentially more vulnerable at home. And so some of our homeless service providers have lost staff because they need to stay home, staff that would normally be face to face with guests in shelter. And they're also, I think, going to increasingly be experiencing some level of staff burnout because it has been a very intense time for homeless shelter staff and homeless provider staff and the entire anti poverty network, which would include the cap agencies, which are also a critical part of this. Just as an example, CDOEO here based in Burlington, St. Albans, and Middlebury is working on standing up the congregate recovery center for Chittenden County, which is one of the facilities that Ken mentioned. I believe there's probably, I think four or five of those are being stood up around the state. Separate and apart from the isolation centers, Light Harbor Place down on Shelbur Road, which Champlain Housing Trust has, basically they took all the guests at Harbor Place and moved them into motels in order to create room for isolation housing in Harbor Place for folks who are, who may be showing symptoms or have been tested, but the test results haven't come back yet. So these 1400 folks that are in motels, many of them are being supported by provision of food and supportive services by the service providers around the state. So that, as you can well imagine, is incredibly challenging. And our housing providers are incredibly challenged as well because collectively they are housing some of the lowest income, most vulnerable folks in the state, whether it's public housing authorities or non-profits like Cathedral Square Corporation, which focuses on folks with disabilities and elders, Champlain Housing Trust, Rural Edge in the Northeast Kingdom, they're all supporting in place folks in the affordable housing units that are now sheltering in place. And so there may be emergency repairs that are necessary and folks are having to go into people's homes to deal with emergency repairs. There's folks who are shut in that need variety of social supports, especially in the elder housing and also food deliveries. Another concern that has been voiced and has at least to a certain extent found some resolution is the issue of hippoconfidentiality and that when someone in a congregate situation actually does contract the virus, hippoconfidentiality basically prevents anyone from knowing that unless that individual volunteers it with their property manager. And we do have hundreds of units of congregate housing still around the state, SROs, single room occupancy facilities where people have shared bathrooms and shared kitchens and the potential for folks to become infected in those situations. And then for that to spread throughout the individual facility are high, perhaps not as high as in a nursing home, but certainly very or as high as in a residential care level three or four residential care facility, but still quite high. And these are homes where folks have individual rooms and then a shared bathroom or shared kitchen facility. So the potential for spread in those situations is relatively high. Another concern that our folks are seeing is with the say stay home order and while non-essential folks to work from home or not work at all, depending on their work situation, we've had a construction stop all across the state. So all of our housing developments and I think Allison, Senator Clark, Clarkson pointed this out earlier, there are projects that are underway or projects that are shovel ready and about to go that have all been stopped and that's a serious issue for the nonprofits as well. And lastly, the other large concern that folks have had is since houses and homeless service providers all have close contact with people. The issue of cleaning supplies and PPE has been an issue for our network of folks as well. I haven't focused a lot on the issue of what is the potential for the federal government to help with things like these emergency expenses coming from the pandemic as well as potential rent loss. And I will tell you, I don't have a lot more information than Josh does. It's still unclear, it's still unclear exactly how the funds, some of the funds will flow and to what extent they will be able to support low income renters. We do know that, and this is perhaps a little different from what you heard from Josh that CDBG funds, there is a provision in CDBG funds that allows them to be used for up to three months, sorry for the barking dog in the background, up to three months for short term rental assistance. And there is a waiver that came with the CARES Act. Normally there's a 15% ceiling on the public service category of CDBG expenditures that has been waived. And so CDBG is at least as I understand it from some of our national folks that have been looking into this can be on a short term basis, up to three months used for some form of rental assistance. Emergency shelter grants as well, I believe can be used for that. I'll leave section eight to Richard, but I will quickly point out that we have quite a large number of affordable housing units in the state that don't have any form of rental assistance, attendance with rental assistance in them. And so that is a major gap in the COVID-3 bill from the feds. These are federal loan come housing, tax credit subsidized units that don't have rental assistance in them. The other major gap in COVID-3 is there was no money for USDA rural development funded projects. And there's substantial about 12 or 1300 rental assistance vouchers in that system statewide that don't have any additional funding to increase people subsidies. And there are also what are known as USDA rural development 515 projects that don't have rental assistance. And similar to the federal loan come housing, tax credit properties without rental assistance. Those also don't have the wherewithal to make up for lost rent as a result of job losses or work hour, work hour cutbacks. So there are gaps and also just quickly say we're also beginning to work with just all of our partners in state as well as our regional partners in the New England housing network and our national association starting to focus on what might be needed in a potential COVID-4, COVID-4 bill to fill some of these gaps. And then also looking forward to the notion that COVID-3 may have been an emergency relief bill and COVID-4 will hopefully be more of a stimulus bill much the way our was back in 08 and 09 and that that could help get the economy back up and running. As we know, housing is infrastructure and housing jobs pay well in construction. And during the recession, that was housing money for affordable housing was one of the ways that contractors kept their people busy. And that is one way to start the economy back up again. So I'll stop there and I want to leave time for the other witnesses and any questions that you might have. Thank you. I have a question. I guess I'm not understanding the lack of money that in the various areas you talked about of public housing and Richard probably will get into this a little bit more. So if a tenant in one of these places, aren't they covered by not having to pay more than 30% of their income towards rent? Yes, if they have rental assistance and that is in the COVID-3 bill, the money that's going to public housing authorities, the money that's going to tenant-based rental assistance and the money that's going to project-based rental assistance will do that. But there is going to be a gap because not all affordable housing apartments, rental apartments have that type of assistance. So there will be a gap. I don't have that exact number. We do know that there's approximately roughly 13,000 households in the state that do have some form of rental assistance, whether it's tenant-based or project-based or through a housing authority. 13,000? Approximately, yes. So how many don't in that cohort that you're talking about here? I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that, Senator. Do we have an idea of how many people are in affordable housing units that don't have that kind of assistance? So I will defer to others. I know that the Housing Finance Agency and Housing Vermont and VHCB are working more directly with some of our housing providers. Our housing providers individually are going through their portfolios and identifying how many of their affordable apartments have folks in them that are supported by one of those rental subsidies. And so that's a number that we're still working on getting. It's not a number that's easily identifiable, quickly identifiable on a statewide basis without kind of getting reports back from each of our regional nonprofits and public housing authorities that operate affordable housing. It's because of the different types of subsidies, some of which are capital subsidies only upfront, and then others that are ongoing. And so parsing that out takes a little bit of work. But I can say that the number that I just gave you, 13,000 is my sort of back of the envelope calculation using the Housing Finance Agency has the directory of affordable rental housing online at housingdata.org. That's something that VHFA does for the housing community and keeps up to date. So when you look at those numbers there, you can kind of back into, there's so and so many tenant-based section eight vouchers in the state, and there's so and so many project-based subsidies. When you add those all up, you come up with about 13,000 of those. And the reason it's hard to parse out is because we have approximately 5,500 tenant-based subsidies in the state. Some of those are in private sector, for-profit rental housing, like the folks in Angela's Association, and some of those are in affordable housing that's owned by our nonprofits that may have been otherwise subsidized. So it's hard to parse out, to parse that out. And we're working on that. I was just asking a basic question. I may not understand it, but I thought all affordable housing projects or units by definition had, were not able to charge more than 30% of a person's income. It depends. If they have a rental subsidy, if the tenant has a tenant-based rental subsidy, a section eight subsidy, then that is true. If the unit has attached to it, what's known as a project-based rental assistance subsidy, then that is also true. But if the unit of affordable housing, and it could have been funded, by the eight or nine or 10 different sources that developers need to draw from, federal income housing tax credit, VHCB, CDBG, et cetera, if it just has those capital sources and no rental subsidy, then there is not that kind of adjustment to 30%. Those units need to be affordable to people at certain income ranges, lower income ranges, based on the 30% standard. But they're not what I, borrowing from another sector, they're not what I would call income sensitized. So if somebody's income goes down in those units, the rent does not necessarily go down because there's no operating subsidy that's attached to the unit. Good, thank you. So, Erhard, just as we're all trying to understand this, are you saying that the 5,500 tenant-based rental subsidies, plus the project-based subsidy group, they get direct money from HUD to pay rent. So in some ways those landlords are at least getting some income, is that what I'm understanding? Well, yes, and Richard can describe this process, but if someone that has that form of subsidy loses their job and their income goes down, they go through a recertification, an interim review process, which the housing authority has to look at their new income. This is true if their income goes up as well. And so the subsidy is adjusted up or down depending on the change in the income. Of course, during the pandemic and with social distancing, all of this becomes very difficult. And there's HUD guidance coming out on a day-to-day basis about how you do this, how you do signatures on forms that testify to what somebody's income is and how you do income certification. It's all made far more complicated by the pandemic and social distancing. Thanks. Okay. Does anybody have any other questions for Earhart? If I, sorry. We're going to move on to. If I could just say two things before, before I pass the lebaton, one is I just wanted to point out there is a study, and I'll, there's an article in the Wall Street Journal that someone just forwarded to me last night that shows that preliminary reports are that close to one third of renters either were unable to or did not pay rent during the month of April. And I'll forward that. It's just a stunning number. And it just scares me in terms of what, what might be out there in terms of the repercussions of the pandemic. And the other thing I'll say is that we really also, as much as we're dealing with the emergency and the crisis, we do need to start looking forward. As Josh said to using this as an opportunity and using the, the federal funds and whatever state funds are made available to house people in permanent supportive housing. So all these folks that are in motels can either be housed in the community the way pathways Vermont does through their housing first program or through things like some of the micro units that are nonprofits have stood up off as permanent affordable housing. And I do want to not be totally focused on the emergency. Make sure that we start thinking forward in that way as well. But thank you for the time. Thank you. Michael. Sorry. Sorry, I was on mute. Richard. Good morning. How are you? Good morning. Hi, Richard. Good morning, Allison. Thank you for the record. I'm Richard Williams. I'm the executive director of Vermont state housing authority. And thank you to all of you folks for what you do out there. And. This very important bill that you're working on here. I'm probably not going to be able to answer a lot of your questions today because HUD. Is typically lagging on getting us information and they've been promising for the last two weeks that they're going to give us a notice that would explain specifically what we're going to be able to do. And what waivers we're granted to operate. Our rental assistance programs under. And we've also been waiting to see how much additional money may be available to us. It probably won't be a process of actually saying that we get a certain amount. But what it does would allow us to do is to go through a sort of recovery process. And I think that was also touched upon a little bit by David earlier is that the. HUD does have a temporary eviction moratorium. Even if forbearance is not requested or granted. For 120 day period beginning on the date of the enactment. And I think that was also touched upon a little bit by David earlier. Is that the. HUD does have a temporary eviction moratorium. For 120 day period beginning on the date of the enactment of the CARES Act, which was March 27th, any owner of federally impacted property. As well as property subject to the Belch violence against women act or role housing voucher programs. May not initiate initiate a legal action. To recover possession of the covered dwelling. From the tenant for nonpayment or rent or and may not charge any other fees. Or other charges. They can't charge fees or penalties. Related to nonpayment of the rent. After the 120 day period expires the owner of the federally impacted property may then issue a notice to vacate to a tenant, but may not require a tenant to vacate that covered dwelling. Before the date is 30 days after the date on which the late less or provides a tenant. With such notice to vacate. The owner can. Send reminder notices to continue to pay rent, but they can't threaten or terminate a lease or voucher. And they can't charge any additional fees. My understanding is that. Owners could still terminate for health safety, drug or criminal activity. So. That's the one thing we do know. The other thing is that anybody that's participating in any landlord is participating in the program. That's the one thing we do know. That's the one thing we do know. That's the one thing that's receiving rental assistance. We'll continue to receive that. How does advancing money. Not only to my agency, but to other public housing authorities. And just a reminder, there's eight other local. Housing authorities in the state of Vermont. That either operate. Public housing or operate a section eight housing choice voucher program. As well as a national insurance. In particular, contract administrator for these project-based subsidies. Airheart reference. Those payments are going out. As well. And as we understand this, as part of the cares act and part of. In relationship to. To HUD. Is that they're putting additional money in there. that people are losing income and will require, as Erhard said, an interim re-exam of income. Therefore, their portion of the rent that the tenant would pay goes down, but the housing assistance payment that the federal government pays directly to the landlord will go up. So I've got a lot of questions out there because I was hoping that maybe we could use some of that money. So if tenants, you know, fell behind in their rent, could we just increase the housing assistance payment up to 100% to make the landlord whole? I was on a phone call yesterday with the Boston Regional Office. Unfortunately, they can't answer that question. I've also asked to see if there's any way, I've been told there's no new monies in that bill in the CARES Act that would allow us to issue for new vouchers. But there is possibly a mechanism where we still may be able to increase our baseline by some of the monies that may be coming directly to us so that we may be able to offer additional vouchers. But as I think a lot of folks have already might have mentioned it's a real challenge to do lease ups right now. And we are continuing to operate and we are doing lease ups. And we've obviously had to set a lot of protocols, you know, for safety, not only the resident but safety of our staff as well. And so we're doing lease ups on empty units. And sometimes that's being done remotely or through video. But we're looking for a lot of waivers that will allow us to some other options. So I think, you know, at least for people that have a voucher or in a project that has a subsidy attached to it, they're in a pretty good situation as far as being protected. If they report that they've had a loss in income to us, you know, we can do a retroactive decrease in their payment of rent increase. The landlord payment. Richard, man, just ask a question of the number of people that Earhart had identified of the 13,000 people who receive rental assistance or are in affordable units. How many does that, do those two groups of people, how many of the 13,000 does that represent? Where you say that the rent is going out to the landlords and that? So I'm at 13,000. I think we have about 8,000 of them. And so I know for about 8,000, I know that they're getting paid. That's great. A portion, right? Because the renter is responsible for some of it. So they're getting roughly, you know, 75 to 80% of what their rent would be is paid through the housing assistance payment from the federal government. Right. Thank you. Senator, just to be clear, that 13,000 was all folks in the situation Richard's describing. All those 13,000 have some form of rental assistance. So Richard, I understand the assistance for the income-based programs. How does, in the project-based program, how does that rent get paid? Is it split in any way by the tenant and the housing authority? Good question. Yes, if it has project-based vouchers or project-based assistance assigned to the unit, same process works. The tenant would pay a portion based on their income. Like 25, then, or 30. Well, it's typically, you know, 30%. It could be as high as 40% of their income. Some of the other types of housing that Erhard referred to is like, I hate to get into acronyms, but USDA World Development Program offers rental assistance. And they also have, if they are not providing rental assistance, they have what they call a basic rent or a market rent. It's usually below what the market would be. And it's typically affordable for someone. It's, you know, it's based on affordability, but there's no, so they're paying a higher, so they usually are in a higher income situation. So they're paying a higher rent to be able to live there without a subsidy. So, Richard, when you said that the HUD was being slow about lagging behind on money, and it's unclear what Vermont is gonna get, I see two areas that affect your area, the tenant-based rental assistance and the project-based rental assistance. And that's 1.25 for the former and a billion for project. You don't yet have a notion of how much project-based rental assistance you'll get. Unfortunately, I do not at this time. We're being told by this Friday that we'll have additional information. So we're waiting here for more. What we understand, there'll be a lot of waivers granted to us to do business differently than we have, and to hopefully be able to delay, delay something that's a lot of the requirements that's under the program. So, may I just ask a follow-up question, which is once you have clarity on the money and what you can use it for, would you also be addressing the mobile home lot rent help in any way? Well, the only way that would apply is if someone's living in a mobile home park and it has a section eight housing choice voucher that could help those folks with their lot rent, could increase their lot rents. But for all the folks that, and that's a good point that you brought up, Senator, is that for many of the mobile home parks in Vermont, they're owned by nonprofits or their co-ops. So they're going to also need some relief if there is some type of a stimulus package here in Vermont to help the owners, those park owners, because we typically will notice in a park, they're more, definitely more income sensitive. So, as they're strained for loss of income or whatever, those lot rents start to appear delinquent sooner. We've already started to see that happen just in a short period of time that we've been operating under this COVID-19 situation. So, basically what I'm saying is we anticipate the delinquencies will go up in the mobile home parks. And when are we going to get a notion? I mean, because obviously this is something we're pretty concerned with, along with the rest of you. When do you think we might have a notion of how we can either help or how much money will be there to help or what we can do legislatively to help? I think that we will start to see those delinquencies show up and I think we'd be able to offer some suggestions to the legislature. Also, I see Angela is on this as well. And she represents a lot of the private mobile home parks and she could speak for those folks, but it would be pretty easy to, I know BHCBs in constant contact with the non-profit sector that owns the parks. And there's several parks, as you know, are corporately owned here in Vermont. And it's easy to reach out to them to find out what the impact would be to the co-ops as well. But I guess the point I was just trying to make is just, you know, they're landlords too. Just like the private landlords. And so they just need to be part of that package as well. They will be also looking for some relief. Okay, anything else you'd like to add, Richard? No, the only thing I noticed was that, you know, as the whole emergency process in Vermont, you know, I know there's lots of people, people are on that, you know, the operations committee for emergency management. But the one thing that I think we need to work on in the future is getting some housing providers on that as well. There's a lot of data that's coming out of that that would be very helpful for housing providers to be seen. You know, one of the challenges we've had, and it's been talked about a little bit, is just the communication between Dale and Department of Health. You know, people are struggling trying to determine, you know, if there's someone in there, properties that, you know, have the virus. And with all the HIPAA rules and regulations, we're unable to really sometimes protect our people because we're not aware of it. We were relying on the tenant to tell us if, you know, if they are sick. And then, you know, we, you know, there's more advanced protocols that we go in with, you know, fogging the building or whatever and, you know, trying to kill the virus. But that's only as good as one touch away. So you constantly have to be doing it. But we've had quite a few scares, you know, we've been told that people have had, you know, that have contracted this disease. And so, but there's no way to really to confirm it. And so we've had that in three or four of our elderly housing projects around the state. And, you know, people, you know. Is there anything you could see the legislature doing quickly in that regard? That may be, you know, a one-on-one educational kind of approach that's necessary. Well, I think that we're seeing, you know, we're seeing actually them reaching out to us now because I think originally they were focused on the long-term care facilities and nursing homes and such. And now I think they're realizing that, you know, there's a lots of elderly housing projects, certainly in Chittenden County, you're aware of, Senator, there's many very large senior housing projects. Like Christ? Yeah, that, but, you know, like the Decker Towers, you know, Brogdon housing authority has, and Winnowski housing authority has some huge high-rises 12, 14 stories that are senior housing. And same thing as if the virus gets into a, you know, into an elderly housing project like that, it will go through there like a wildfire. And so that's, they're all housing authority directors. I've been hearing it because we're on, we have weekly meetings and that is a big concern is that just there's lack of communication and protocols. So. I'm no expert in HIPAA, not an expert in senior housing, but could there be like a visiting nurse that comes to the building and sits in the lobby or something and offers their services to talk to people to try and get this information voluntarily? I think a lot of those providers are not going into the facilities any longer, you know, and so the services that a lot of the seniors were getting are now on hold, I believe the sash, you know, coordinators or whatever are being restricted on what they can do. So many of these residents were receiving services that are really no longer getting those services. So it, you know, compounds challenges. It's not a bad idea. I'm coming out from a totally lay perspective, but it would strike me if there's a real risk there is somebody thinking about offering testing services in these congregate housing for obviously for free, but make it really easy for the tenants to get tested. Hopefully as these, the testing becomes more available and easier to be done, that we'll see that in the future, but it really doesn't exist now that I can see. The only time it happens is when someone's ill or you read about some of the situations that's happened up in Chittenden County, that's when they do the contact tracing back and that's when people learn that there's an issue and they're building if they already weren't aware of it. A lot of times a lot of these health providers work in different facilities. So, you know, that's, you know, I don't know what's being done to protect those folks, but you know, going from one facility to another, you know, there's always some dangers that the virus travels with them. Okay. I just wanted to bring it to your attention that it just has been a real challenge, just not getting good information, not knowing, and I understand. I mean, nobody's been through this, you know, ever. So. I mean, I hone in on this as I'm sure the rest of my committee does. I mean, a lot of the other stuff, you know, a lot of it can be done hopefully on the back end with money, but preventing the spreading of the disease can't wait to the back end. Exactly. So, I just... Well, I think that just anything that this committee can do is to put any pressure on other departments within the agency of human services to, you know, to have better communication to housing providers and working with housing providers to stop the spread of this would be very helpful. Would you be willing to rise a short letter not only assessing the potential for this problem, what you've seen thus far and some ideas, however far-fetched or expensive you think they may be or whatever problems, impediments there, if you could get us a sort of a one-page letter on that, I think that would be helpful for us to run with it a little bit. Okay, great. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, good idea. Yeah, I'm just gonna reach out to some of the other housing directors as well, public housing directors, because, you know, they, many of these like Rutland, for example, and in other areas of the state have very large early housing projects, so I will drop on there them as a resource as well. Michael, I'm thinking that, you know, testing may be ideal, but in short of testing, even just monitoring, you know, taking temperatures in places like this, I don't know how that would work, but that might be a way of at least keeping an eye on what's happening in those facilities. I was interested in one of the comments that Ken and made about, I think you asked him, the question about testing some of the homeless population, and they said they were relying on the homeless to contact your medical provider, and I'm thinking that most of these folks don't have access to that unless they go to an emergency room or, you know, walk in, but I would think that most of them don't have an actual medical provider, you know. Okay, thank you, Richard, very much. Thank you very much. Is Maura with us this morning? Yep, I'm here. Good morning, Maura, how are you? Good morning, I'm so cooped up that I'm so excited to be here with you all, and that should tell you something about how I'm doing. Is that your office? Or is that your house? This is my home. I am in a basement bunker all the time, this is my home, I am in a basement bunker office, praying God that you don't hear my three small children running around us. Good, yes, and now you've become a teacher too. Yes, no, I want to give full credit, I have a stay at home husband who has taken the lead on being a teacher, so that's how this is possible. That's fabulous. Can I jump in? Yes, absolutely, jump in. Okay, my name's Maura Collins, I'm the director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. I did testify on part of this bill when it was in the house, really in support, but also putting out a word of hoping everyone, the administration, the legislature, when you're talking with your constituents to be careful about your messaging of the moratorium, as we've been talking about, the moratorium on both foreclosures and evictions that we've seen from the federal government don't come with money directly. Now later, the CARES Act came with some money and we've been talking about where that money will work and where it may not, but it's really important when you're talking with your constituents to encourage especially homeowners to contact their mortgage servicer about what they're eligible for. It gets very complicated very quickly and there is no one pager that anyone is gonna be able to give to you or your constituents about what to do. So the rule of thumb is everyone with a mortgage who is wondering about what to do should contact their servicer. It's just like telling a renter to contact their landlord if they're having trouble paying their rent or need their income adjusted if they're in some kind of government program or something, but it can be hard to contact servicers right now. I know VHFA's main servicer, their call volume is up 300%. So I'm not saying people won't be frustrated by trying to get through, but if people are gonna be eligible for forbearance, deferrals, anything they have to start by contacting their servicer, they cannot just not pay their mortgage or their rent. They need to have a conversation. And I agree with Josh. He pointed out that there is gonna be a need for money to help people pay their rent and mortgage. These forbearance and deferrals really help for the people who are out of work temporarily and then will be able to jump back into work whenever the governor lifts this order and life may return to normal for them. But I think we all are expecting that life probably isn't gonna return to normal for quite some time and that the economy is not just going, is not a light switch you can flip on. And so 71% of Vermonters are homeowners and right now there are no programs identified to help them pay their mortgage. So again, if a deferral or forbearance so that they can skip a couple payments and those payments get lobbed on to the end of their loan may really make a difference for people. And so it's a good thing. But do know that unlike through the CARES Act for renters there is no money coming to help those 71% of Vermonters actually pay the three or four months of mortgage payments that get built up at some point. We are, VHFA is monitoring, we're wondering about economic impact. We're monitoring 16 construction sites across the state of affordable housing developments and all of the activities with the exception of a few essential activities have stopped. The monthly impact to those projects just in financing costs can be as high as $10,000 a month. So that's how much they're just paying on interest for one single project and there's 16 of those all at different sizes. So we don't know about the future cost and price increases because of this delay. There's bigger concerns about the construction industry's ability to simply reboot on the other side of this and the labor we talked about with subcontractors and the flow of construction material chains, these are all things we're concerned about. But VHFA alone is one of many construction lenders in the state has about $30.5 million in approved construction loans right now and only about 7.5 million of that money has been drawn on. So I say that because there's $23 million worth of economic activity waiting for the economy to open up again. And as has been talked about that affordable housing can be a real asset in this way to get the economy jump started. We saw it in the last recession. It was the affordable housing that kept the construction industry going and it can be again now. So that's why it was so important to VHFA to have our tax credit award meeting a few weeks ago and to make sure that we are doing whatever we can so that affordable housing keeps moving forward and helps the economy as well as the ultimate residents of that housing. Now our focus, VHFA's focus is on affordable housing properties but Josh spoke to the affordable housing needs overall and they're gonna go well beyond that. He talked about private landlords. We always refer to his mom and pop landlords. These RV people, I frankly hadn't even thought about that but he brought up a good point about that. Richard talked about the mobile home parks, tri park you've heard a lot about. There's tremendous need out there. Not to mention the massive motel usage that Commissioner Schatz was talking about and what we're gonna do when the hotels and motels housing AHS clients right now are not just the ones they're used to working with but to house 1400 people, they've needed to reach into hotels who don't traditionally house this population even on cold weather nights and therefore once they can start housing tourists again there's going to be a quick push to move people and I'll say from VHFA's perspective we would love to be a part of a solution that move those people into independent housing and not back into congregate settings like shelters because this public health emergency is not gonna be over when the governor lifts the stay at home order. We may be able to resume some level of normalcy but I do not, what I'm reading is that we'll not be safe for people to live in congregate settings for at least the next year, if not longer until there's more of a vaccine to address this. So do I support part of the $1.25 billion that the state's gonna get from the feds to go to housing? Absolutely. Housing is critical. It's how we got through the last recession. It is a great way to help individuals and but you're right, the people will be clamoring for it. I'm not naive and to think that it's gonna be easy to earmark a part of that but we are working hard to be a part of the solution. And so I'll tell you a few things we've done without needing you all to tell us to do it but just because we're good state partners and then I'm gonna finish by telling you Senator Sorok and your question you've asked everyone about what can the legislature do? I have a couple ideas for you. VHFA, you've heard me testify in the past about how we're a the administrator the tax credit program, the federal program that is the largest source of money that goes into the affordable housing creation. And so we've relaxed as many of the regulatory rules as possible with that because the governor requested and received the federal declaration, I'm blanking on the term emergency declaration and now we're a FEMA site and all that as of this week we can relax more tax credit rules. And so we are working to identify any vacant apartments and trying to pair that up with being a part of the housing solution for AHS. And it used to be or it would normally be that you have to abide by tax credit eligibility rules to live in tax credit housing but those rules are now going to be waived even more than they were before we had that emergency declaration. So we're working with our partners on that. VHFA owns some mortgages and so we are following the federal example of doing a foreclosure moratorium just like you've heard Freddie and Fannie doing there are some VHFA loans that don't fall under those Freddie and Fannie rules and we are doing the same kind of offering of forbearance and deferrals and absolutely an eviction or a moratorium on any new foreclosure actions but also on existing foreclosures. There are people who well before COVID we were in the foreclosure process with and we have suspended moving forward on that because we will not be a reason that a household becomes homeless during a public health emergency. We have Earhard referenced that we've surveyed affordable housing properties to find out the impact of April and we've asked them to project forward May and June's rent projections and what they expect to see as a loss of rent. We think we're a good partner to do this. We've done it in partnership with VHCB and the state and big housing providers like Housing Vermont but we're asking everyone what is happening in April and what they're gonna need in terms of potential loan forbearance or deferrals on our multifamily loans and we think we're a good partner to do that because we do have loans not only on all the nonprofit affordable housing but also for-profit affordable housing and so we're looking at that on a cost by cost basis and in I would think another week or two weeks we could give you some early estimates of what we're seeing across the board on the affordable housing properties and what they've gotten or not gotten in terms of rent collections. I know it might be frustrating for you to not have those numbers now but it is typical to give tenants a 10 day grace period and paying their rent and so it's important to us that we make sure that we're really telling you who didn't pay their rent and the impact on the properties while not, well and that's hard to do before we get past the 10th of the month. So our plan is to look at that on a case by case basis with projects. You know, affordable housing properties are financially structured to carry conservative operating and replacement reserves. So the affordable housing system is really strong in that way and we're asking properties to look to those reserves before anything happens. We will be looking at restructuring loans or seeing if any projects can take on any new loans to help them float through this time period. The problem is that it's not just people not paying their rent but as you know there's added expenses that we've been talking about that are unforeseen cleaning expenses higher than usual staffing expenses and other things that will really put pressure on these projects. And so at the end of the day if a deferral on a multifamily loan needs to happen we can do that but at some point more lending is not going to solve all our problems. VHFA is looking to move out of our typical way of doing things and we're creating a 0% loan pool that will be available for two years to project so that if deferred payments if after two years they still can't or I'm sorry not two years if a few deferred payments cannot be enough to get a property functioning financially then VHFA will be able to offer a small amount of 0% money for two years to projects. The problem is that we don't have a lot of money for that. Right now we're looking at $1.5 million which will be helpful but it's not a huge amount. And without going into the details of it all VHFA does not really have the ability to take big losses on that. We are that was money VHFA had for other reasons that we are able to free up for two years and not earn any money on it. But we will need that money let's say in year three so we can't take losses there. And so for the state to consider potentially backfilling any losses that we have on that $1.5 million should that come to be. And if there was a way the state could help us grow from a $1.5 million pool to something larger I would love to see that. That's how much money VHFA has identified at this point to do that. Another, I have three things that's one. So a loan loss provision you've done it with Vita. I'll say economic development loans in general are riskier types of loans. And so you have created loan loss reserves for economic development loans in the past. We don't typically ask for that because like I said the affordable housing system is strong and we aren't used to having loan losses in this area but this may be the time that that changes. We'd also like some flexibility with the state tax credits. You've heard me talk about state tax credits in the past. Right now in statute it says that there's $400,000 for rental credits and $425,000 for home ownership credits and I'm ignoring the down payment assistance credits because don't worry about them. I'm asking if the legislature would consider for I'm gonna say the next two years it would be FY 21 and 22. Could we just pool that total of $825,000 of state credits and allow VHFA with our board to make the decision about if it's better used in a rental or home ownership capacity? And we are not asking for an increase in state tax credits just the flexibility that I don't know what if the rental housing developments are able to come out of this lockdown quicker and easier and maybe there's more demand on the rental side than the home ownership side. Allow us to look at the applications and be flexible there and not have there be a resource that potentially could go underutilized if there wasn't demand on either the rental or the home ownership side. So that would be again, not new money but would be a flexibility of existing money. And the last thing is just a plug as much as I know there's gonna be a lot of pressure on that 1.25 billion for how available the state. Some of it does need to go to housing. It would be unconscionable for this state to maybe not 100% empty its homeless shelters but get pretty darn close to reducing the number of people living in congregate settings only to move them back there while there's still as a public health emergency going on for the next year and we're gonna re-do this cycle. It is important that we keep these people as safe as the rest of us who it looks like most of us are safe in our homes right now. These vulnerable Vermonters deserve the same. And so I know I've been talking with Gus and with Josh and Sarah Phillips at AHS and Richard Williams and we've all been talking about how can we all work together to make sure that not only are we don't move people from these hotels back into shelters but also some folks in affordable housing who are living in congregate settings with shared bathrooms how can we protect them and move people into independent housing that is going to keep them safe for the duration of this event. Michael, thank you, Maura. Michael, are you there? Yes, he's just muted. I'm here. Hi, Michael. I apologize, but it's 10 of 12 and I have a 12 o'clock meeting I'm chairing which I am gonna have to go to in about four or five minutes. Okay. So let me, I was going to... I apologize. Thank you, Maura. Can you put those three ideas in writing and one of the things I wanted to encourage all the witnesses to do is we're caught in between a rock and a hard place here and trying to come up with a comprehensive help assistance long range plan. There's a lot of parts that are unknown to us and funding that's still not known but we're also very concerned of knowing is there anything we can do immediately that needs attention right now that waiting two months may lose us time. So when I hear about the checking in on people in congregate settings who may contract the disease or more likely to contract the disease, that jumps out at me. Some of the steps we might be able to take to avoid putting people back in shelters. I don't know whether there's things we could start putting in place now as opposed to waiting till the end of May to start dealing. So think along those ideas as well because I assume there's some things that may be more timely than others. As far as your schedule and concern, be right with you, Randy. I was hoping that we could go on till 12.30 or maybe even a little longer if the members can do that. If we can't, then I can see one head shaking. Yeah, no, I have a 12 o'clock meeting. I know you, I know you can, but I have a 12 as well, Michael. Okay. I am sorry that these things take longer. So we're going to have to reschedule and it may be as early as tomorrow or maybe next week sometime, but we'll get back with everybody. I don't want to lose anybody from the committee because I have one issue that I just need to deal with. I apologize to all the other people who have been waiting. I really do. So on the bill tomorrow on the eviction moratorium bill, there was a section you recall on notarization that we noted, we narrowed. I think I sent an email. The House, the Senate has a, has the larger version and the Judiciary Committee has the larger version on that that covers all notarizations. And I'm proposing, I would like to put in a amendment to strike our section because this could be taken care of by judiciary and to the extent the judiciary bill somehow stalls in the house. They can always put our version back on as 333. I'll put it in under my name, but unless there's any, I just wanted to make sure people are aware of that. If there's any objection to that. Let me know now. Does everybody understand what the issue is? Yeah. Any problem. We're taking that section out of our bill. No, I just want to make sure that Judiciary's goes ahead. And if not, we can, the house. I've written to Senator Sears and Senator White. Yeah. Yeah. And so I assume I'll hear from them. If not. So I'll put it in the calendar. And if we need to revisit it tomorrow morning, we can before we go on the floor. Does anybody know what time we're going on the floor tomorrow? 930. 930. Okay. Okay. Again, my sincere apologies. This is a, it's a lot of stuff to digest here. And I should have realized that other people have meetings at noon. So we couldn't extend this. And I'll be back in touch with folks this afternoon. I'll see two of you in finance at 1 30. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you, everybody. That was great. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.