 So it is 12 30 or so on September 2nd. Welcome to the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee for this afternoon. I'm Chip Toriano. I am Vice Chair and I am taking this meeting today in place of our Chair Stevens who is on the road. And so we have a schedule that started with David Hall who is not available right now. So second on the agenda was Michael Derochet. And Michael, if you would introduce yourself, I don't have the ability to mute everyone. So if you mute yourselves, that would help. I do have hands raised and I can monitor questions, request for questions. So you can mute yourselves, that'd be great. Michael, introduce yourself and take it away. Thank you. Good afternoon, sir. And thank you to the committee members for inviting me to testify today. For the record, I'm Mike Derochet I'm the Executive Director for the Division of Fire Safety. As you may not know, but I've been working pretty closely with the health department on this bill and with the Rental Housing Advisory Board. I think what I'll do is, if you don't mind, I'll start by giving a high level overview of what this bill looks like to us and what the landscape is and certainly take any questions from that point. So in short, this bill will turn over all rental housing health and safety over to the Division of Fire Safety. Currently, health officers and local municipalities conduct health inspections primarily in response to complaints. We have authority over these rental properties consistent with the health officers. So we have authority over these buildings. So there's actually two entities that actually get involved in or could be involved in a rental complaint local health officer or a fire marshal from the Division of Fire Safety. This bill professionalizes that process and gives the all the authority over to the Division of Fire Safety to respond to these complaint inspections. That is the overarching part of this and there's a lot of collateral challenges with this bill including the funding aspect of it and the in the registry, the health and rental registry that would be a major component of this bill that would actually provide an avenue for the funding. So that's the gif of the high level view of this would be that fire safety would take over rental housing safety. If a tenant complain, it would go to the Division of Fire Safety rather than through a local health officer. Okay. Now, Michael, tell us what is this complaint driven only or are there random inspections or how do we proceed that working? The health department did a comprehensive survey that went out to all the local health officers and through some data manipulation, this would be complaint based driven only. We would hire this bill proposes to allow fire safety to hire five new fire marshal positions in the very first year of start up if we were to hire five positions. I think the total cost of that would be about $1 million. And then after we have our initial start up costs, the second year it goes down and price in the third year goes down a little bit further. The where we sit right now is we have a hiring freeze. We would be very hard pressed with our initial start up costs. And then after we have our initial start up costs, the second year it goes down and price in the third year we would be very hard pressed right now to onboard folks and get them the necessary training. We cannot send people out of state right now to receive any kind of training. And budget wise we're into collapsing some of our office space and collapsing that space down into state owned property. And then after we have our initial start up costs in the third year we would be very hard pressed. These are small offices that fire safety currently pays least money for. And we're trying to downsize in the space where fire safety would not be paying any fee for space. Okay. Thank you. So I see two hands. Representative Hango has her hand up for the question. I do not know. What is the role of what the role of a local health officer would be, and I apologize for the phone ringing in the background. What would the role of a local health officer be if we went with the fire marshal. Model. Well, the local health officers right now, as you can imagine they, under statute, they have. So that includes a number of health related issues that right now fire safety may not currently have the authority to enforce examples of that might be rat infestation, lead poisoning, asbestos garbage removal. So they, it's more of a sanitation type issue right now that fire safety does not have the authority to enforce. So this bill here would give us the authority to enforce those health and sanitation type issues. And there is some overlap I don't have the specific details in front of me but there is some overlap in the plumbing electrical already so off the top of my head probably 75 or 80% of those items that are on that checklist that the health officers use today are under the authority of fire safety. And I would also add that I forgot what I was going to say here but there's quite a bit of duplication of authority over these particular rental housing units. So one of this bill is not to diminish the health officer position. It is simply to have one agency in charge of the rental housing safety aspects. So I'm, I'm still confused as to if this bill were to pass what the local health officers would be doing would they be simply fielding complaints from local landlords or tenants, and funneling them to the commission of fire safety or would they actually be going out and doing inspections when there's a complaint I'm just not sure what the local health officer would be doing if this were to be enacted. That's a good question. There's actually two parts to this one being, we certainly encourage work in relationships with the local communities and the local health officers. The complaints would be funneled through the local health officer and those complaints that they receive would go to us. And certainly we would, we would allow them to accompany us on the inspection, just like we do the local fire chiefs. We've always supported a collaborative work in relationship with the local communities. So we have a pretty easy transition there. A little bit of training would have to take place with the local health officers to iron nose protocols out but understanding that we do receive complaints now from tenants and local health officers not aware of them. So it's kind of a, we pass each other on these complaints. So I see. I'm sorry. Who's on. I see a question from Representative Kalaki representative. Thank you. I just want to make sure I understood at the beginning of what our conversation, you mentioned that this would professionalize. What, like, what does that mean? And is that an improvement on the current situation where you're crossing past? I just want to make sure I understand your perspective. The word professionalize and in our terminology would be recognizing that the local health officer program right now. I think Sarah and maybe Wendy could articulate it better than I can, but there's inherent issues within that system. And one part is you're dealing with volunteers. You're dealing with a high turnover of health officers. You're dealing with some health officers being very complacent with do they even write a report when they do a complaint inspection. But Wendy and Sarah through the rental housing advisory board can articulate this, but that's the gif of it is that we have administrative penalties, we have an enforcement system, we have a tracking system in place on our database to track the inspections and it's just a higher level of control. Okay. And that's positive. Yes. Okay. But your other concerns are the cost of it and adding new staff and the training at this moment in time. But the professionalization actually would be a good thing. Correct. Okay, got it. Thank you. You're welcome, sir. I just realized that I should have announced that this testimony is pertaining to h739 an act relating to improving rental housing and health. So I just wanted to make that clarification. That's what Mr. de Roche has been speaking of to the last few minutes and we have another question representative side. Just following up to clarify representative Calackey's inquiry. You mentioned that the states in a hiring freeze and as part of the memo that they issued for that hiring freeze. They said that essentially people should only be filling positions that are truly critical in nature. And I'm curious, would you characterize this as truly critical in nature that it must be enacted today that there is such a crisis in the health and safety of housing in Vermont that it is critical that we fill a position. And even as you said, I'm just curious, we can't actually you mentioned professionalization, but we couldn't actually have those professionals in place because we can't send them for the proper training to make them professionals that correct. Correct. Right. In the midst of this pandemic that is correct. And I will I personally wouldn't characterize this as a critical essential hiring in the context of this of this discussion. So just to clarify then if my understanding is that were we to pass this we would be passing a bill for which we can't actually hire or train the people that the bill mandates so we'd be passing a bill in a vacuum essentially. That would be not not talking about the legal authority of the legislature and so forth. That's correct. There are new employees on currently and and I certainly can't train new employees in this particular environment as we speak right now. So that okay then this is just my last comment for now is this this just clearly sounds like this isn't the time to be passing this bill then I mean we can't do the agency can't do what we're asking it to do so I don't understand why we would be passing the bill at this time. I can't speak I can't speak to your decision that the committee makes I can only say you know are there are there aspects of it that can be beneficial as the bill is written not on testifying today. I can't bring positions on and I can't train the folks done to these circumstances out where that we're experiencing today. Okay. So I see a question from representative waltz representative waltz. It's not really a question. I testified before our Senate counterparts this morning on behalf of chair Stevens, because I'm a co-sponsor of this bill. And I didn't know I was going to be testifying till 730 this morning. So I had to do some real quick homework. And I listened to David Hall's walkthrough to their committee, which was very helpful. And I think part of what the Senate touched on addresses the issues. And there's clackie and zot have brought up. One is the funding and that is a question the Senate is going to look at. There is a request in there for 400,000 from the general fund, but this program is meant to be self funded from the registry fee. So I think we want to keep that in mind. We're not necessarily going to be tapping a huge amount out of the general fund, especially in the future as we go along. And I think we can juggle the timing of the various pieces of this so that the funding can be in place before we actually hire people. So I wanted to make that comment. I think the funding is pretty easy to fix. We can, we can work on that. But even if that were not the case, I don't see that as a reason for not forwarding this legislation. You know, if, if implementation has to be delayed because of the, of the pandemic, so be it. You know, if the state of emergency continues because of the pandemic, so be it. And when that situation ends, then we will have the legislation in place and be able to actually implement much quicker. So I encourage people. If you support this legislation to continue supporting it, and don't worry about the effects of the pandemic at the moment. Thank you. I think that what you learned in the Senate today, as far as the ability for a recommendation for spending some of this 675,000 for hiring, maybe possible, I guess, is that accurate to say, Well, you're muted, Tom. Tommy, you're muted. We can't hear you. You're muted. You're muted. Sorry, I thought I unmuted me and I muted me. I'm sorry. Yes, and the Senate also address that too. They really think coronavirus funds can be tapped into to help get this off the ground. And that's another piece they'll be looking at. So again, I think I don't think the funding is is something that should get in the way. Okay. Representative Zot, did you not take your hand down? Is that why it's up after your last question? Okay, and I see representative Hango, and I'd like to turn this over to David Hall who's here and could probably shed some more light on what we're talking about here. Representative Hango. Thank you. And thank you to representative Wells for letting us know what you learned in the Senate this morning. I'm finding it really difficult to grasp the concept of passing something that we don't have funding for Affirmatively, I've been listening to the budget appropriations hearings and hearing all the various organizations who are pleading for more money and I really do not see this as a critical need at this point in time when we're reeling from the effects of COVID-19. I'm very, very concerned about people even being able to get food to live their lives to pay for transportation. I know that there's there's there's a need for health and safety inspections, certainly, and I think there's a way to make this work at some point in the future. But my understanding of this special legislative session was that we were going to be discussing the items that are currently on the budget and that we need to deal with immediately. In terms of using our funding and coronavirus funding and to me this just is not worthy enough at this point in time, especially in my district, even though we do have very old housing stock. So thank you for your time and consideration on this, but I don't think anything anyone is going to say is going to persuade me to support this at this time. Okay, thank you representative pango. So what I'd like to do is now direct this toward David Hall who was apparently at the Senate meeting this morning and is with us presently. So, David, if you can give us some more information or possible run through whatever works best as to maybe what happened in the Senate this morning and where we're looking at on this bill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, David Hall legislative council afternoon now I guess. So the Senate just wanted to see what you've done on this bill. This is seven eight seven 39 I walked in through the most current draft the 17 page draft 3.1, which has, you know, multiple components in it. I've walked through it many times together I'm happy to do that again now if you'd like, but in a nutshell section one. You know, has the statutory language necessary to vest the authority to inspect and enforce central housing health and safety regulations with the department of public safety and the division of fire safety. It will require create authorizes the creation of the rental housing registry for all housing in this rental housing in the state. It imposes the requirement that owners of rental units actually register on the registry with the state. Authorizes the creation of five positions within DPS for inspections and enforcement it authorizes the creation within DHCD of one position to manage the registry and another to enforce compliance with the registry. The registration fees $35 it's annually it's per unit. That's the money that would be used to fund the positions and the operation of the program. And the rules of the bill are that they're, you know, some housekeeping changes in the health title title 18, and then there's transition provisions, basically spelling out how we will get to the point where DPS is the primary state government for mental housing health and safety. It will have concurrent concurrent authority with local health boards and local health officials to administer the, you know, health and safety codes. Cities municipalities that already have systems in place can continue to have their own systems. The municipalities could originate their own new systems if they wish to, but by and large the problem this is trying to solve is the lack of capacity in the rural towns and areas of the state to have consistent personnel and enforcement capacity to ensure rental housing health and safety. The implementation of this you might remember is staggered so that the authority and duty to create the registry to get it going comes first. That was going to happen on July one, and then the requirement to register was going to come online January 1. So fees would start being collected in January. And then the authority to do the inspections and the hiring of the five positions was slated to come online in April. So all of that would necessarily be adjusted further down the line, given that July 1 was two months ago. So you would have now. I mean it'd be up to you but let's say it's October. So every all those dates would be pushed back three months for example, so start working on the registry October 1 start registrations and March. People at DPS and have the inspection authority in June or July of next year. That's just by way of example, relative to the way the bill is currently drafted, which was slated to take effect this year in July, not anymore. So let me just, I want to say a couple of things based on the conversation that you have it let me just settle the record for you. As far as the state of the law is concerned. Okay, so right now in statute. State Board of Health, the Commissioner of Health. And local boards of health all have the same authority to enforce rental housing health and safety laws and that's a large part at this point based on the rental housing safety code that was adopted by doh. And now there is concurrent authority, the state entity with the primary responsibility and authority for rental housing health and safety is the Department of Health. It does not have the personnel does not have the capacity to to do what this bill calls on DPS to do, which is to have five dedicated people. They are professionals in the sense that that is their job, they get paid for it on the annual basis to inspect and enforce the safety code for rental housing. There are large municipalities, a few across the state that have their own codes have their own enforcement offices, but that is the exception not the rule. In large part, this duty falls to local health officers who are volunteers, part time, and not all towns have or can maintain officers. If this bill passes that concurrent authority would continue. Let me let me take one step back before I say about post passage. The other part of the current state of the law is this, the Department of Public Safety has authority for a lot not all but a lot of rental housing, health and safety issues, building codes, energy standards, fire safety. You know structural issues. There's a lot of overlap but it's not complete with what the Department of Health can do. And the number I often hear is about 7075% overlap. So if this bill passes it would just make clear that DPS has full authority for rental housing health and safety would have the authority to implement rules, either the code in the whole cloth or new rules governing health and safety. The department already has the authority and local officials and the state Board of Health already have the authority to conduct inspections and proceed with enforcement. It does not have to be complaint driven. I have recently to say that if a local health official gets a report or is requested to conduct an investigation then they shall do so. But as best I can tell from the language that I've read and it's about 50 pages of statutes. There's nothing that precludes them from conducting inspections and enforcing a lot they're charged with enforcing title 18. If this law passes, it may be implemented as inspection driven complaint driven inspection program. But right now the statutory language does not say that. Right now the Department of Public Safety has the duty and the authority to enforce. The laws and regulations that are under its authority. So whether that's building code health and safety issues that are in its auspices, all of that. The statute is not does not say you can only do this in the event of an of a complaint. They have the authority and the duty to enforce the law. So they determine that as a matter of resources capacity, whatever that the way they're going to set that system up is to be a complaint driven system. That's within their purview, that's within their statutory authority, but it is not mandated or precluded from it being in complaint only. I want that to be clear. So there's, there's that sort of universe of what they can do, and then the universe of how they'll best decide to implement it. I also want to say that, and we walk through this language together it's been a while it was in March, or maybe even February but right now, at least under 20 vs a chapter 173 sub to fire safety has authority to investigate, you know, prosecute enforce, they have the authority to require that a building be rehabilitated. They have the authority to require that a building be torn down, if that's what it comes down to. Actually, the Department of Health has similar authority that if there's a public hazard that creates such a level of threat they can order a building and the issue of public health hazard either be remediated or even destroyed. So, I don't want there to be any illusions about the scope of the authority they have significant authority already. And this would bring into the fold this question of rental housing health and safety. It's very comprehensive. The registry itself would actually be housed in the Department of Housing and Community Development. And they would have to work in coordination with taxes, E 911 fire safety, local boards, etc to get all the information they need to have a registry of all the rental housing available in the state. The only way to register extends to all property that is offered on a rental basis overnight, and that's the same with the inspection authority, so it's short term rentals long term rentals. Whatever the only real exceptions are mobile home lots that are offered for rent and the owner of the lot doesn't have a home on that lot. Otherwise, if you're offering a mobile home for rent or a single family house or an apartment or whatever. So for rent, it should be registered. That's a $35 fee, unless you're already paying a fee to some municipality for its inspection program. You still have to register with the state, but your fee payment would go to the municipality. So David, do you know if we have a fiscal motive what that fee might generate over the course of a year. I don't, but the number is what 70 or 75,000 units times $35 less the amounts paid to cities. I do not know what that number is. Okay. I see a chip. Sarah Carpenter's raised in her hand. She may have man. I see that. So, do you have a figure on that, Sarah? I do. And I can send it along right now to Ron. I actually given you a budget. It's not a, it's not a true fiscal note, but you, you can look at our projections where there's about 55,000 units, not participating municipally. We estimate in the first year of operation of the registry that we should have a minimum of 40% participation. So we built our budget on, on that. And I think as David talked about the intent is other than the first startup year, there would be more than adequate income to support that, but I'll send that budget on to Ron. That would be great. And if you could identify yourself for the record. I'm sorry, Sarah Carpenter, chair of the rental housing advisory board. Great. Thank you. So we do have a few questions representative angle. Thank you. I'm not sure who I should direct this question to David or Mr. DeRosha, but originally we had talked about the need to upgrade a computer system and this was way back in January that we spoke of this. And then of course the pandemic hit and we saw what happened with the antiquated unemployment insurance software. So where do we stand with that now I seem to remember that there was a cost of around $500,000 but I could be wrong with that number of what we would need to stand up a computer system that could really work this effectively. So, Michael, would you carry a comment on that is that would be your department. Well, I don't have any information on what it would cost to update this system. Maybe Sarah or Wendy can chime in but I think the registry as it was going to be set up was going to be over to a CCD so I'm not. I'm not sure I have no firsthand knowledge of what this system would cost or what they have for an existing database now. Okay, I'm going to jump back in. It was the gentleman who came to testify from the department that deals with all of our information technology systems, and I can't remember the acronym. It wasn't a CCD it was actually our State Department of. Thank you so much. You can see a digital services thank you. And he did come and testify and there was a dollar figure that was attached to this but I'm not seeing that anywhere nor hearing anybody speak of that and that is another one of my concerns at this time. In terms of if we're going to put money somewhere for a computer system, I would advocate it go to the unemployment system rather than this one. Thank you. And I see Sarah Carpenter has her hand up. Is that something you'd like to comment on Sarah. Yes, and I'll send along a budget again. The conversation has been the, we're well aware ADS has lots of things on their plate. This would take the existing databases that exist today with intact E 911 and the Department of Health. And we're going to combine them into a registry the proposal is that this be done through some contractual basis already that Department of Community Affairs has a registry for mobile home lots. So we think this can be addressed fairly directly right now in the budget is about $100,000 to make that all happen. To be clear on that the, I believe the conversation that ADS had was talking more globally, and there is an additional provision within the Department of Taxes for the tax, the rental rebate form to renovate that the proposal to push that away for a year. That had a much higher number on it, but our proposal would not necessarily be affected by that. Thank you. I see a question from representative saw. Yeah, I have a few questions or comments I, I do seem to recall the same reticence from the actually two separate things I remember hearing great reticence from the Department of Tax and wanting to share any of that information and they seem to have significant objections to providing that information beyond what's already publicly available. And I do remember ADS saying they didn't have the capacity. I think it was ADS. They didn't have the capacity to implement this program but again this is part of the problem of coming back to this after so many months of having heard the testimony and trying to recall it. And in that spirit, I was going to ask David a question. I think I've asked this question before I just wanted a refresher there's nothing in statute now that prevents any municipality from implementing an inspection program if they feel that they are under some crisis of inadequate housing or unsafe housing nothing stops them under current laws you just you know, from in having an inspection program and and enforcing the law. Is that correct. That's correct. There's statutory authority vested right now. And again, the Commissioner of Health at the state level and then also the towns themselves to have inspection programs and I mean technically every town is supposed to have a local health officer. And so in that regard, they already have the authority to do this. If they the argument is being made to us absent of any evidence that I've seen that they're, they're lacking the capacity to do so but they could. They could institute say a regional approach like Barnard several neighboring towns tried to hire a regional energy coordinator so that each town didn't have to pay for a full time person they could have this professionalization as we've heard in testimony today, we could have these kind of professionalized inspectors and so sure Barnard on its own couldn't couldn't afford it but they could band together with its neighbors and Pomfret and Sharon, that Ferd Woodstock, etc. And they could all chip in to hire someone that's what we propose to do for an agent or a regional energy coordinator. And so Pomfret ended up going against it so we are back to the drawing board on it, but any any group of municipalities who lack the resources on their own to do this could just band together with their neighbors and get it done. We don't necessarily, you know, we don't need the state to step in and do this, anybody that has a concern could band together with their neighbors and get this done. Yeah, and it's apparently completely statutorily authorized as well so I again I feel like we have a solution in search of a problem that can be solved in other ways. I recall as part of that conversation that sometimes that most all health officers are volunteers that some towns do not even have officers, and that there is a reticence amongst neighbors to kind of rat out their neighbors on situations like this so, you know, my, my recollection is there were some, there was some discussion surrounding health officers from specific towns or certain towns were not capable of enforcing this type of registry or complaints. Maybe I wasn't clear and what I just said, I, I wasn't suggesting that we rely these towns that have inadequate health inspectors that are operating on a voluntary basis. What I just said, what I just suggested was another path that could be pursued is that towns could all together chip into hire a professional who would not have those problems who would then be adequately funded and resourced. If a particular town or group of towns felt that they had this urgent need and problem, they could band together and do it outside of the state authority or outside of a state system. So that solves the problem that you're addressing, which is that we're relying on these volunteers and their friends, etc, etc, you know, your town chip standard and Hardwick, all of those towns could band together and say we're going to all raise taxes, we're going to chip in, or we're going to institute a system similar to what's being proposed here, a registry or fee based system, and we're going to hire a professional to do this. If you felt like it was truly a crisis in Hardwick or standard or your towns, you could do that, instead of asking everybody all throughout the state to chip in when they're not having this problem. Okay, Sarah, you had a comment. Well, just I want to remind you all that we last year we sent you a pretty comprehensive report. The rehab committee spent a lot of time looking at different options, including implementation of a regional option. And what we opted for was the recommendation for the state option, because collectively, you're just not going to get in a lot of regions, enough units to hire somebody. If you look at the proposal, this is five FTEs for the entire state of Vermont, so you'd be divide the towns by five you couldn't even do it in most places on a county line basis, because you wouldn't have an aggregation of enough activity to warrant it, you know, whether or a 10 town thing. And having said that, though, the one time you get a complaint in your town, the town is legally obligated to respond to it. And it's the liability of the select board is if they don't so we spent a lot of time on the regional aspect, and really felt that it was just not going to be workable we talked to the regional planning commissions about it. And this at the end of the day was the most efficient proposal that we thought was implementable. I see representative hang out question. Thank you. Maybe more of a comment to representative thoughts points I went back through my notes and it was back around February 21 that we last heard about this and we heard from Sarah carpenter, as well as Craig bolio from the tax commission and Doug Farnham. So, at that time, Sarah, I believe that you spoke about the need to upgrade the computer systems and I just wondered what exactly has changed in that timeframe, and I do want to echo what representative Zot said that the problem with coming back to this after three months is that we really don't remember all of the finer details of what we discussed at that time. Fortunately, I keep pretty good notes and I do have documentation that Craig bolio spoke with us and said that they, they really were would need to upgrade and they were very reluctant to share any information regarding tax information addresses whatever with other agencies or departments. When Sarah spoke to us on that day, we talked about needing a computer upgrade and how the data would get to other state agencies if the Department of Taxes was not willing to do this. Yes, my my question for Sarah then is what has changed between February and now, and also a comment for the chair that I would like to hear again from the agency of digital services as to how this could be implemented and what it would cost. Yeah, if you'd like to respond Sarah. From my perspective. The conversation we had had earlier was in the context that the Department of Taxes is proposing to implement a much more robust landlord. If they had done that and they're proposing to delay it, it would be much easier to set up a system. However, they have one today that is publicly available week. Every October 1, we get the number of units we can find out the owners of those units. It's simply integrating that with the Department of Health. Current, led law database, which is terribly out of date, and then enhance 911 so it would be taking existing databases and essentially getting them to feed in to each other. I'm not a computer expert by any means but the proposal and the amount of money that we've proposed would be more of a freestanding portal using the existing databases, not ideal but eminently doable for the amount of information. We just need to know the location of the unit and the owner of the unit, and we believe that can be done now with existing databases, and a program that would be wrapped around that. I'm sorry, Representative Hank, we get a second question around. My second question was a point that a request that we hear from the agency of digital services and the tax department again, and I do want to remind my colleagues that the lead paint registry is very non compliant know hardly anyone registers for that so you're going to be able to mine a whole lot of information off from that registry. So I guess I just do not see how the pieces are going to fall together without a significant financial investment in this system. Thank you. Okay, very good. Now, David, do you have any comments to wrap this section up regarding. Oh, excuse me, I've seen representative Byron. Did you have a question or comment. More of a commentary. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. I think at the given moment I'm just going to be very forthcoming with everybody. I do not feel comfortable raising fees on anybody, unless it's absolutely necessary, given the current economic climate. This is a special session. I think we should be focused on budgets, things that are extremely teed up to move quit and do not cost money. It's just an overarching belief that I personally have going into this multi week special session that we have the cost of the unknowns on the it. I've made it clear before with other conversations that it infrastructure really really gives me the ebgs when it comes to state government right now. So I'm just going to leave it with that I'm not comfortable moving forward with this during the special session. Okay, thank you. And back to you David. I don't see any. I don't see any hands up so I was just wondering if you had any final comments. So, oh, I see actually chip representative clacky has his hand up. He does. Yes, he does. I'm sorry representative clacky. Thank you vice chair. I don't think we're at the point that we're moving towards making a motion and voting on this bill but I would like to say that I'm actually in favor. In hindsight, if with COVID we actually could have used this rental housing registry tremendously to really monitor and move people into safe spaces. And so in hindsight I think this would have been really really beneficial for us and all the work we did with our $85 million of COVID funding to rehouse people and keep people safe. And this could have been done more efficiently and effectively to serve all Vermonters so that part of the bill. I really think it's strong and I so I understand all the issues we're talking about in this truncated session but I just want to put in my photo. Let's look at the positive aspects of this bill as well. Thank you. Well, thank you. Representative Waltz was that a flash of your hand there. No, okay. So once again, Dave will try and get back to you for wrap up any comments or advice as to what you've just been hearing. Nobody has any additional questions about the framework or the current law or the proposed law I'm happy to answer them but otherwise that's all I had. All right. So, seeing no other hands. I think we can wrap up this section of our committee meeting right now. And the next on the agenda would be Wendy Morgan, staff attorney from legal aid and then we'll hear from Angela Zarkowski, director of landlords association so we're going to hear from new folks in relation to what's been happening as far as evictions and foreclosures, some of the negotiations that may have been taking place that would be of interest, how people are being made whole, how the hold on the courts may be working. And we just, we've spoken and I think Ron sent out an email that we chain that has that we got this morning from a new communication from the CDC, I believe, as to eviction qualifications for protections under from the federal government on evictions. So, Wendy, would you like to start us off here. Thank you, I'm very happy to but I wondered if Robert's sponible was going to testify on the previous section or not. Well, I just noticed that he's on and he's on the agenda. Okay, well I, I don't know Robert. So I wasn't sure why he may be here. Robert, is there something that you have to add to our discussion surrounding 739. No, but thank you. I'm the deputy director for the division of fire safety so I'm here more as a, as a learning experience as anything else. Okay. Thank you. Well very good. Welcome Robert. So, Wendy. Thank you. I'm Wendy Morgan from Vermont legal aid I'm a staff attorney and you've seen me around the legislature when you've been there and I've been there. Most recently I've been appointed director of the part of Vermont legal aid that is putting into effect the money that you appropriated for us to help with the rental housing stabilization program and also the financial assistance program so I think you wanted me initially to talk a little bit about how that's been going and then I'd like to circle back to 739 if, if that's permissible. The first thing I want to say about the, the work that we've all been doing, particularly on rental housing back rent and moving on money money to move on for people is that it's been incredibly cooperative, and we've had a lot of work to do to try to set up the program that Richard Williams described to you, maybe last week, and that Josh Hanford has talked to you about and more has talked to you about. In particular, a lot of what I've been working on has been the rental housing aspect of it as opposed to the mortgage assistance part of it, but it's, it's been a huge amount of work. It's been, but incredibly cooperative and we have weekly meetings and we identify problems that we've seen in our different programs Angela Zakowski from the Landlord's Association is also part of those meetings I apologize for not mentioning earlier. So, you have a summary from me of what the work that we've been doing since we first started having people and the programs were set up which was July 13. We've contacted over 450 people requesting help with rent or, or mortgages and we've worked with 35 persons along with legal services Vermont for people who are experiencing or threatened with homelessness. They're 50 who've needed help retaining or obtaining habitable housing, and, and we've reached out to 250 to resolve existing eviction cases so the staff that works under me is primarily doing callbacks to people who are calling people who tenants who might need assistance in paying rent and to help their landlords get rent, as well as the second part is to try to resolve all of the 600 or so court cases eviction court cases and they're also additional foreclosures that are in the courts and so that's where most of our work has been. Any questions about that. Those cases that you just referred to Wendy cases that were in progress when the emergency order was put in place. Many of them were, but there have been some filing since the moratorium so the moratorium went into place in May, but it did not prohibit landlords from filing evictions, but simply from serving them and, and proceeding with rent hearings and court hearings and that kind of thing. So we at the end of at the beginning of August we got a list from the courts of all of the cases that were pending as of July 31 some had been had disappeared, you know, since we got an earlier version of the list but those were all the pending cases and so we our staff went through them. identified those where there were tenants who are not represented as the courts looked up the court documents that are online and frankly this is different in every county almost I mean there are several different systems working at the same time now and in fact, four counties are going to change their system. Actually this week. So it's, it's a sort of a difficult system to work with them because there are so many variations. But we have searched the court records to try to find contact information for defendants because a court case normally doesn't have a defendant's phone number or email address and that's obviously going to be the most effective way to reach people. We've reached out to the courts to get the defendants contact information if we can and if we can we call them or email them, or both. And if we can't get that information then we send a letter to them to basically say, we're here to help you you have a court action. If you and your landlord can work together to solve it, then we can help you dismiss the action and that's really our goal is to dismiss as many of those cases as possible. And that illustrates one area where we have spent quite a bit of time with BSHA, which is implementing the background program to sort of sort out how do we handle the court cases differently from just any old landlord or tenant who wants to apply for money to help pay for the grant. So, we are working on those we hope to have many greater numbers to you by October when your next report is due of those actually being dismissed. So, Wendy when you when you say dismissed the explain that a little bit more for us. These are cases that were resolved as a result of negotiations between legal aid and the landlords association and were satisfied. Prior to the dismissal. Is that what you're suggesting. Yes, so in the normal course in the non court cases, both the landlord and the tenant apply for back rent. Right. I'm not talking about the moving money but the back rent money, both of them apply if there is agreement, then the money gets deposited directly into a landlord's account. The landlord agrees not to evict for the number of months that have just been paid up to six months. In the court case situation. Obviously the landlord has incurred additional costs in filing and service and that kind of thing, and may have a incurred attorney's fees. What BSHA has agreed to do now is rather than have the normal process of two applications. They will take a stipulation of dismissal that's signed by both the landlord and the tenant, and usually by the attorney for both the landlord and the tenant which, in many cases I think will be the landlords association and Vermont legal services for mind and submit that to the housing authority, and they will pay those expenses so that the case is actually dismissed and then we file it with court, and then it's dismissed, which will help alleviate the pressure that's going to be on the courts whenever the moratorium is over because there will be many more filings at that point in time. Frankly, you know, I wish everybody would contact us in advance if they're thinking about filing. And we could try to resolve it, but that's sort of where we are there. And I think you already heard mentioned maybe from David or others today that the feds the CDC has just issued a moratorium until the end of December as well. So even though the Vermont moratorium goes until the governor declares the end of state of emergency, plus in most instances 30 days, that's now going to be December for evictions not for for closures. So is that federal protection granted only to federal guaranteed mortgages or such. No, it is not so it's broader than what was in place prior to and that expired on July 24 as I recall. It's broader than that and it's really a reflection I think of, I mean, I frankly was shocked to see that come from the feds right now but it's really a reflection of their concern about the pandemic. I think and and the, you know, the growth of cases and deaths. And the use of first last and security for monies for people who are who were had to move during this pandemic. Has that been utilized to any extent plenty. So that is that part of the program has just recently been sort of developed and solidified really at a meeting yesterday that we had, as I mentioned we have weekly meetings with BSHA and ACS DHCD and the landlords Association legal aid. And so that was all put, you know, sort of concretized at that point in time and it's not posted yet I don't believe if you look at the rental housing. If you look at VSHA's website it's not posted yet but it will be soon but in the meantime we have been encouraging people to let us know so that we can work directly with the BSHA to get those monies out the door because one of the big problems is and frankly, the biggest problem I would say is the lack of units, the lack of affordable units. So whenever anybody has a place to move, they need to move really quickly because otherwise somebody else is going to take it and when I asked my colleagues for stories of problems people were having during this time period. But the lack of places to go and being shut out because couldn't move fast enough was really a significant factor for people and so we will have with the BSHA a that people won't go through the regular takes up to 10 days program to get the money. We're going to have a fast track way to do it so that people who can move and have a place can do so very quickly. So the other question I had was the idea or the requirement that both tenant and landlord apply for this. Has that been, and your comment that email addresses and phone numbers are not readily available for tenants often. Has that been a barrier to widening this program Wendy. Yes, let me just pick up the last point you mentioned about email and phone numbers that the application now online for landlords does require that information but that wasn't true originally so we have a lot of backlog of those but in answer to your question of whether or not there are landlords who won't agree to group one which group one is they both agree that money is going to go for whatever back rent there is and that can by the way go prior to March 1 so it can be significant amounts of money that a landlord can get. And to get that the landlord has to agree not to evict for the same number of months going forward up to a maximum of six. And there are definitely landlords who do not want to do that. My guess is an Angela can can talk further about this but my guess is that some landlords are going to shift on that now because they're, they're going to be in a four month moratorium anyway with the feds so why not take the money it's a maximum of six. It's a couple of months to get into court anyway so you're better off getting all of your past due and being able to move forward so I and I certainly hope that that happens because we do want to get as much of this money out the door as possible or have the SHA get it out the door as possible so So I see we have about 20 minutes and I also see that from moving into our days schedule that we kind of although you had some opportunities Sarah to speak that you were here to present so Representative Kalaki has a question that I would like to move on to Angela to to have her input from this and then save a little time for you Sarah to wrap things up today. Okay, so Representative Kalaki. Thank you, Vice Chair. I'm read Wendy I'm reading the your memo that you sent us which is posted on our committee website and thank you. The timing of this is interesting because if the city has now extended the moratorium till December 31 and the CRF funds have to be expended by December 31. How is this all going to work and will we will be able to then extend these programs for both rental arrears and mortgages beyond December 31. Well, there is certainly huge desire for that to happen, particularly because at this point in time I think Richard Williams would tell you that he does not anticipate all the money going out the door if it's has to be out the door by December 30, which is the date that they have for some obscure reason. But, so everybody would like it to but we're not assuming that it will be extended and so you're absolutely right there is going to be a need for money beyond December 30 or 31, but it's not available at this point in time. And I appreciate you raising the memo that I sent to you all just because I'd like to touch on it and and if you would permit me representative triano just very very quickly to say the first part of it is giving. We would recommend that DHCD be given more flexibility if they are going to be adjusting any of the monies that you have awarded in age 966, which are basically in a couple of different big pots, but there may be some other things that they think are useful so we would recommend that kind of flexibility. I also talk about creating the rental housing registry. I really think that it is such a simple thing to do the basic registry that we just should do it, and use it for the remainder of the time that we have the four months that we have. The third item is transferring habitability to fire safety and I would echo what representative Colackey said earlier that I think, or maybe it was representative Walsh that really this transfer should happen because we don't have a good system in place where we have volunteer health officers that are not going into homes or if they are, they're not doing it in a professional way they're not necessarily masked, we've got that kind of complaint from tenants. And the fourth item there is picking up on a notion that Senator Sorok can put forth on how to improve the situation going forward what have we learned and what can we take from it and I would suggest that you charge the rental housing advisory board to to take a look at that. Okay, thank you very much Wendy. So, I would like to move right on to Angela, are you on the beach today is that what you say. I, I'm not on the beach. But I am away. So if you would give us some input save a little bit of time for Sarah, who was on the agenda and I passed her over. So, Absolutely, I will be brief for the record. My name is Angela Zajkowski. I'm the director of the Vermont landlords Association. And since the committee has recessed in June. My primary focus of my organization has been working on this rental housing stabilization program, helping design it get it up off the ground and now is in sort of the outreach and information phase from the landlords perspective. So when the program first launched in the middle of July. My organization was primarily just answering questions providing information to landlords about the program helping people with forms providing them with forms. And since that time those calls have tended to drop off a little bit but we've moved on into directly reaching out to landlords. We have approximately 450 to 500 landlord applications that do not have a corresponding tenant application. So these are landlords who have applied into the program for what we're referring to as group one funds. These are landlords who have said we want to fully participate in this program, but did not have a tenant application that came in for that so my organization has been direct to reaching out to those landlords to let them know to try to get contact the tenants so legal aid can reach out to them. What we have been finding is that a substantial majority of those landlords have just taken it upon themselves to go collect those applications from the tenant. So, the complete package of forms can be submitted to the program for payment of rent and full for tenants. So we've had or made about 438 direct calls to landlords for that portion of the program. I know there had been some concern at one point about members versus non members participating in outreach from my organization and I'm sort of happy to report that only about 15% of the calls I've been getting are from my own members of the association. So substantial majority of the folks that we're contacting and having communications with are not members of the association. So that is not been an impediment at all for landlords to reach out or feel comfortable reaching out to the organization. As Wendy mentioned, we have been holding weekly meetings to sort of deal with issues or confer passing information amongst all of the folks that are involved in this program that has been incredibly helpful I think to everyone. My organization did create a informational video. It was an animated video I provided a link to it to representative Stevens I don't know if he circulated it to the rest of the committee. If not I can make sure that you all have it. We are also currently having that video translated into seven different languages. So it's a video that just provides basic details. It's appropriate for both landlords and tenants about this background program. So have you started to have you started to see some results from the landlords that you have reached out to in order to get information from their tenants in order to complete these applications. Yes, we have been seeing a very high level of resubmissions by landlords with the complete package complete information. The other thing that we have seen that I think none of us particularly anticipated was the landlords have the ability to apply in to the program for what we call group to is the landlord will take half of the background that's owed but still retains their eviction rights under the program. And one of the things that we've seen is that when landlords have received that group to payment almost immediately they've become more interested and more willing to discuss applying in for group one. So with that payment of half rent, I think some of the angst or aggravation of not having received rent gets alleviated and they're much more willing to consider applying in to stop an eviction or to receive full payment. That's great. That's that's good to hear. So, are you is it your opinion at this point that we are making good progress on this on these negotiations and protecting both landlords and tenants. Just from a from a monetary standpoint, I think we are making very good progress. A few, you know, press releases might be helpful to share some of the successes of the program. I think we can find match some landlords and tenants who are willing to talk to the press about the benefits of the program. I think that would also go a long way for outreach to some, some landlords who maybe are on the fence about participating in the program. So what Wendy says, said with the new CDC restrictions, we may see some more landlords come to the table. Since no matter what happens in Vermont, they are not going to be able to evict for nonpayment or rent through the end of the year under the federal, the federal law. So I think that's just issued. I would like to hear about the progress as it goes on, if it's possible, Angela, you know, especially getting landlords and tenants to advertise the benefits of this program. Yes, and I think that's now that we've maybe come out from under the sort of the big push of launching the program and the first sort of flurry of applications and activities. We can focus a little bit more on looking at who's been participating and direct reach out to some of those folks to four press releases or other promotion of the program. Great. Great. I appreciate it and it's really good to hear that things are working in this in this order so thanks both to you and Wendy for your hard work and for encouraging reports. Thank you. Thank you. So I guess we could wrap it up. Well, we're on the four or two o'clock so it's 10 of right now, Sarah, if you'd like to take a few minutes where we're swinging back to 759 and the registry and if you have some more comments to make Sarah, the floor is yours. Thank you. A lot of the questions I think have been answered but I just want to reiterate how important I think this is now more than ever. This is about health and safety inspections. You are sick. You're running a fever. You're at risk. And you have no running water. You have no working toilet. You have trash in your yard. All of those things. Who's going to make that inspection. Right now, it's the town volunteer and at the time volunteers not around. It's actually legally the select board chair. Not working many towns just cannot recruit health officers. And so I think now more than ever we need this. The bill is proposed the fire safety transition would not start till April one that could be moved a couple of months but it's not going to start this minute. The training aspects could be, you know, addressed by online training that's how everyone else doing training, and we need to get this up and running residential rental housing is a $900 million business in the state of Vermont. There are 76,000 units that people earn business revenue from, you know, we inspect ins we inspect childcare centers. We inspect tattoo parlors beauty shops. What other business aspect are we using volunteers to inspect. You know, these are places people live, you know, 15, 18 hours a day. And I just think it's, we've got to make the move to transition the system to protect people's and now again with the virus now more than ever. So I just encourage you the timeline can be a little bit adjusted. The ask on the money side is not big it's very rare you get a program that can support itself. After the first year. In fact, we've done very conservative projections I think you know it could do better than what we're projecting right now 21,000 landlords in the state already pay a fee, some as high as over $100 a month. So the $35 we're asking I don't think will break anybody's business model. And I think the, what we'll receive in return will weigh way up that. Great. Thank you. So I think that's a wrap for today. We're on the floor to a clock. And Ron is there anything that I can say in place different link tomorrow. Okay, fair enough, we'll try and get the right link. The right day I should say. Okay, so everyone thanks very much thanks for everyone who came to testify and Robert who came to listen. And we'll see you at the four at two o'clock.