 Good morning everybody witnesses committee members of the public. We're going to start on 226 this morning or omnibus housing bill, and we have two advocates, I would say, probably for tenants and homeowners is their primary focus or the people who don't have homes. So, Brenda why don't you start us off however you want to whatever order you want we have about 20 minutes allocated for the two of you. Okay, I just want to apologize I think Josh is not well and so he is not going to be here today and so I have now represented his story within my testimony for that 20 minutes. So, as part of that 20 minutes. So, first of all, I want to thank you all for having me and for the record I'm Brenda Siegel from New Fane, Vermont, and I'm speaking on behalf of myself, Josh listen be an Addy Lensner who we've all been working on housing. Well, what many of you know is that last fall, Josh listen be an I currently in Josh is currently experiencing homelessness spent 27 nights and 28 days sleeping on the State House steps and sometimes brutally cold weather to successfully ensure that the most vulnerable population had safe and consistent housing and shelter throughout the winter. What you may not know is that this effort was actually tied to an effort that Josh Addy and I have been involved in for about a year and beyond for some of us to come up with a long term permanent housing plan that seeks not only to address the systemic pandemic barriers to accessing or keeping permanent housing, but also to solve the long term housing crisis that Vermont is experiencing now, and was looming before the pandemic. Before I go any further though I want to share with you a little bit about what I know about Josh's listen be story and I'm hoping to do it justice. Since he could not be here today. Josh lives in virgins. He grew up around Middlebury, and he began experiencing homelessness about six years ago, but his housing and security has been longer than that. In the time that he has been homeless, he has tried unsuccessfully to use the GA program in times of cold weather, lived in a tent slept in gazebos and at local parks, parks. He has been dehumanized, stigmatized and all of this contributed to a deep struggle with depression, and even a challenge having any hope that he will ever find his way out of this experience. There were years when you tried unsuccessfully to access permanent housing without the offer to access or access to supportive services that are supposed to be available and offered at shelters and community centers that he was staying in, but did not exist. This led to the belief that there was just no way out. And frankly in my experience supporting people in this situation through our hotline. The way out is not even on the horizon at this point for much of the population, especially for those that are currently experiencing homelessness. He was bounced from shelter to the street and back again. He was made to stand outside for hours and below freezing and even below zero weather without a proper gear or assurance that he would end up inside. His friend of his gets stuck outside for not sure for showing up five minutes late to a shelter and that friend slept outside in the morning as Josh describes it. He watched his friends cold frozen and dead body be picked up by the ambulance. It was not until Josh access the pandemic era GA Motel program that he began to get the services he needed. He was in one place. He was supported in getting the documentation health insurance and even registered to vote. He was able to put his mind at ease, because he knew that the program that he would be in one place, and then he would not be outside. He was moved, but he was one of the lucky ones and handed up at the John Graham shelter, where he can close and lock his door, take personal space, when things get overwhelming, and have agency and independence over his own life. Also at John Graham he began to have good support and understanding and working through the process and access to permanent housing. He then denied permanent housing for reasons like not having landlord references by places that are specifically supposed to serve folks experiencing homelessness. Again, Josh is fortunate, one of the lucky ones because John Graham has an MOU that may hopefully will allow him to eventually access a single room occupancy. At 46 years old, all Josh wants is to move move on from this phase as the governor has set frequently said at his press conference people like him should. And maybe this time, he will be lucky, maybe he won't give up. Maybe he will make it through the process and land in a single room occupancy with the support he needs to eventually move on to an apartment. The story is yet to be determined, but I have never met someone more willing to fight for everyone else, or more deserving to leap this hurdle. I want to reiterate that even the sliver of opportunity that Josh has right now is not available to most and changing that requires you all to make meaningful change in how you address access to permanent housing. The rules and regulations make every step of this process of accessing permanent housing ruling, which I'm sure you've heard. Josh is lucky that he has support because it would be very easy for him to give up again. If you do all that you have outlined in this bill and don't better fund the housing authorities change charge with reviewing vouchers, so that they can hire staff and commissure it and commensurate with need. And it won't matter how much more housing there is because people in poverty will not be able to access it. If you don't address systemic barriers to being offered housing for low and moderate income folks, then it won't change the outcome for many. If you don't tie into some of these measures requirement that makes housing low income accessible have impacted individual individuals around their housing needs have them at the table. And then you won't touch the need because our state is made up of mostly low, moderate and middle income folks so without measures to protect them you then we miss the mark. I went through the bill and found a lot of places where I think small tweaks or slight language changes could be made in order to make each part each of the parts of this bill reaches intended out audience in a more meaningful way. I'm going to submit those in detail in the next few days because I know you have a very little time and we'll email you each a copy so that you have it over town meeting week to take a look. As I said in the beginning of the to this testimony, just a testimony, Josh, Addy and I embarked on an information gathering project in order to create a long term plan that would meet need in our state. I will submit the end the end result of that plan, along with my written testimony. In March, we talked with realtors lived experience experts meaning housing insecure those experiencing homelessness, moderate and middle income folks who utilize the rental market, or would like to purchase homes. We also spoke with town and city planners clerks select board and city council members, lots of building owners and more. Our goal was to find the most thorough sustainable and rapid way to address the current housing crisis in Vermont. It is my concern that we are in a huge crisis and this bill is kind of like a 10 year plan that starts at step 10, and misses some of the steps in between. We need to fill in those gaps and I actually don't think it would take anything more than small tweaks in most cases to make a meaningful, meaningful for the majority of the population who is right now unable to move here purchase here stay here rent here or be housed. That is not just people experiencing homelessness or low income people it's everyone except the most wealthy in our state right now. It's bleak and not tenable. In our time on the state house steps we actually met many upper middle income families who were living in their cars. Not because they could not afford housing but because their landlord had no cause evicted them or sold the house in a seller's market, and they simply could not break back into the housing market. It's not just more housing is that we need to solve the problem. We have to reach that market. I want to begin by really complimenting the section on mobile homes which actually I'll come back to in a few minutes as well. And I want to take a chunk of the time to discuss accessory dwelling units, which we discovered in our data gathering as one of the fastest ways to add more long term housing to the market and has a multitude of unsung benefits as well. But first I want to highlight a few places as examples of where I think small tweaks could make change. First in the section on municipal and regional land banks. This is less of a small tweak and I will provide a detailed explanation of written testimony, but the bill says how to form and how to dissolve a land bank but it misses some of the comprehensive outline in between that place. And I don't know if you'll be able to address that on the Senate side but it's something that would be able to be addressed perhaps on the House side. Page two line five of the establishment under establishment and authority. It says it reads the application of the agency shall describe the types of property to six be required I might have just, I might have the lines in here to be required the plan for its acquisition. The anticipation anticipated economic benefits the source of revenues for any loan bond or lease payments and plans to return for retention and disbursement of access revenues if any. It does not say that the application must include who the land acquisition is intended to benefit. And I think that would be a small tweak that could actually help ensure that we're meeting that mark. In the next session section on housing permit reform. I was excited about the idea of more city town centered housing, however concerned that it seems to codify some of the federal law into our state zoning restrictions and laws and might actually have make it harder for smaller builders to build is especially small business owners. You might end up favoring larger business owners. An example of how this is problematic is in Middlebury. There's a great need for more housing that will and a will to build it. But there is no buildable land that meets these requirements that are in the bill right now in village centers, which is why they have not been able to build that new affordable housing. It seems to add those some of those federal restrictions to state restriction, which seems what seems unclear is is their funding that is tied so that they could meet these requirements. And I think funding would actually help that to some extent in the creation of the downtown development districts I'm really excited that allows for municipalities to apply for a downtown development district, where traditional downtown designation doesn't exist as someone who's in a rural community right now. And I appreciate that that supports the rural communities. I'm also excited about requiring the allowance of affordable housing in all municipalities. This has been a huge barrier. As the not in my backyard is often the response to affordable housing attempt attempt in in many of our communities. To make up the area development housing task force the makeup of the area development house house force housing task force is really good. If it didn't includes advocates, I would suggest that it also includes lived experience experts from both low and moderate income backgrounds, as well as someone who has experienced or is it currently experiencing homelessness. That would help address some of those barriers. When we're looking at the task force and come up that come up for these populations, because you often don't know unless you're experiencing it what's actually happening on that end. In 2018 and funding housing smart growth principles. I would suggest language that more firmly requires the funding to tie to these principles. When we use words like where possible a savvy developer with less intent with less good intent might be able to find ways to say this is not possible. And those without power or less resources and knowledge will likely be unable to combat that or even know that it's happening before the process begins. The list of what should be addressed for this funding is a really, really good list. I just think it needs more teeth to ensure that it gets met. I have some thoughts about the homelessness bill of rights but in the interest of time. I'm going to provide that in the written testimony and on the house side again, because also I know that's their, their brain child. I want to really comment on the mobile relocation incentives section of the spill. It really addresses the need to update and replace outdated housing stock in an extremely important sector. I also like that it combats stigma of this sector. And this is an inexpensive way to house a lot of people with dignity and autonomy, if we can address the stigma there. The commercial property conversion section is a good section. I think it would help to address some zoning issues with this, and also tie that funding to creating affordable housing, because this is going to be an excellent section to address access to how permanent housing for folks who are traditionally difficult to house. So, I think the affordable housing tie has to be there. What I'm not seeing yet, but I can't tell if I missed it. I reread the bill several times to try to find it is the accessory dwelling units is that in there somewhere that I'm missing it. You may not be seeing the latest version. It's in. It's on pages for it begins on in a sections. It begins on page 45 of draft 6.1. It got popped in it we've been working on it but it got popped in just a couple days ago. It begins on page 45 of 6.1 and it's section 20. Okay, it wasn't on the website. And so I didn't download it and looked at yet so forgive me if you've included these things already, but I'll tell you what I think should be included accessory dwelling units. And it, this was a big place where we put a lot of focus, because an homeowner as you probably know does not need additional zoning to build an accessory dwelling unit. That is one third of the square footage of their home. And this provides a really rapid source of increasing permanent housing. And the reason that I favor this, in a lot of ways is that it creates a pathway for both long term housing, and a way to keep people in their homes, who may be struggling financially, or who may have the opportunity to inherit a home, but cannot afford the expenses that go along with it. Now, this only works this way if we create a funding structure that is accessible to low income families and that means granting funds that neither are matching funds or rebates to families of certain income categories. So those income categories would perhaps have a different way to access the funding. Very low and moderate income Vermonters often lose their homes or have to sell an inherited home to lose it to foreclosure accessory dwelling units gives an option for families like this, the ad use need to be required to be long term not short term housing. I think that has to be in there, and it does not, or it doesn't solve the housing crisis in any way. And I would suggest that the bill overall address short term housing, if possible, perhaps that gets dealt with on this bill, because in many of our communities, including mine and new fame, short term housing is taking up most of the housing stock. And I don't see that this bill is addressing that anywhere. Brenda, we addressed it in S 210. Okay, I didn't see that. Thank you. Every year we noodle away at it. And we've, as you know, done quite a bit of work over the last three years. Okay, thank you for a lot. Thank you for that. Now, what is missing from this bill. There are many tenant protections and zoning changes that create geographic equity that should be included if we were looking at long term housing plan to meet need and I'll put those in writing. I don't actually think they'd be some of them might be tough cells for the governor, but some of them might not even be tough cells for the governor and so they might be things that we can include. I would also suggest adding to this bill a study that a study, even though we are study heavy state to assess the need what the need is and how to put in place a plan that ties development and rehab to the actual housing need and gets ahead of it so we don't end up in this situation again, where we are right now. I'd suggest that this study be made up of 35% lived experience experts, 35% housing advocates and service providers and service providers and 30% builders municipalities and other interest. So why this makeup, because what we are assessing in this study would be need and how to meet the need. And so we really must have that's the heavy heavily weighted on experts that that work on addressing the need every day. I appreciate the hard work that was done in creating this meaty bill. And I ask you all to go back and make these make some tweaks because I think this can be done with mostly tweaks, where you could do better to address need as it ties to funding construction and impact for tenants, homeowners and buyers. In other words, the human beings that the bill is intended to impact. Again, I am going to provide written testimony that addresses specifics in each section, as well as summit around accessibility, both physical accessibility and accessibility in terms of income accessibility. And I hope that to get that all to you by Monday, though I know you'll be on break, but I hope you'll have a chance to look it look it over. And I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about our research I definitely was fun and interesting to read through your 34 pages of that bill. So, Brenda thanks so much but I just want to make sure that you don't spend time on on on a draft that that you aren't that you know spend time on the right draft, and at the moment that is on our website and it's 6.1 so take that as your starting I think some of your things have been addressed. Okay. Okay, great. I will take that as my starting point. Michael you're muted. Thank you, thank you Brenda we will read what you send in, and we have time over the break will be busy during the break as well to looking at that stuff and see if those tweets make sense to our bill or whether to leave them to the house to work up. As Senator Clarkson said the bill has gone through several iterations, and you might want to, you know limit your comments to the sections that are in the bill, but if you see something that's missing and you're horrified that we took it out. You can mention that as well because we have added and taken out along the way so I will and I don't know if it's like my computer not updating or what I this latest draft was just posted this morning. Okay, okay walking through it so you may want to stay tuned. I, I, if you don't mind I will. But if there's any other questions happy to answer and, and I apologize for anything you've already addressed that I didn't know you had addressed yet. I appreciate you staying within the timeframe we suggested because we are really pressed for time so thank you Brenda. Thank you. Thank you very much to Josh and we will. We'll move on. We have with David Hall and Ellen I think who are going to tag team us through this bill for the next 70 minutes or so and then we'll take a break. I think it's really helpful that we can get through the entire bills such that we can present you with a, an almost final version when you, when we all come back on the following Tuesday and fingers crossed we can vote the bill out on that day. So, I'm going to leave it to. I think the best way to do this. If, if you haven't you should print out the latest version of the bill and the, the section by section summary that David and Ellen have so artfully prepared. So, wait, Michael where it is the section by section summary I guess I haven't seen that and are we operating David on 6.1. Yes, 6.1. Yes. David. If we didn't get that posted David, could you send that out to the committee. Now, I posted it. I posted it. It's the summary table. Correct. Oh, great. Okay, good. Sorry, I had not seen that till now. We'll, we'll go on. We'll put it on a shared screen but I think it's good if people want to. Oh, it's great. Yeah. To have it printed out in front of them as well. So, a lot of these sections are obviously very familiar to you and we've had discussions I think, to some degree on all of them, and we'll just stop as we go along if there's any concerns or discussion to be had. I may start out as we get to each section to tell you my thoughts on the section and then open it up for discussion. So why don't we start with whoever is primarily this bill is a mixture of David and Ellen's subject area expertise. I think the stuff that Becky Wasserman had in this bill is now deleted because it was mostly TIF stuff and we're going to move that into the economic development bill. I think it makes sense. Senator Sorak and my apologies for interrupting Ellen might be running late from natural resources this morning. She'll be here soon as she can just so you know. I have a feel that she may be real late. Okay, let's let's David probably has a working understanding of a lot of the stuff anyhow so we can pass over stuff that you want to defer to Ellen on. Why don't you get us started David. Good morning David hall legislative council do you do you want me to put this up on the screen. I would, you know, I think I would, I think the summary would be better than you know the actual legislation. It's hard to decipher some of the stuff in the legislation, and people could read that over the break, but the concepts are all in the summary and that's what we need to discuss. And if wording needs to be tweaked along the way, we can do that over the break. Okay. But if you have a different idea let us know. I don't. I'm just scrolling through the document to kind of get a sense of what is mine at this point, since right as much more limited than Ellen's. I'll say that the like section one for instance it used to be the municipal and regional landbakes is is out so that was mine. So the two sections which relate to housing and permit reform are Ellen's three, which used to be mine is out as and then for the homeless bill of rights material is out so that's why you don't have those on your table. So that brings me to section five the first generation home buyer incentive program. And that is a $5 million program through DHCD working with VHFA and relevant stakeholders to design and implement a program to provide grants of not more than $10,000 for purchase and closing costs for first generation home buyers. I know you guys are still discussing this one so that's the first stop on my list. Okay, what section is it now. It's section five. Right section five got it. Okay. So my suggestion on this section is, it has a great deal of similarity with the down payment assistance program that's being run by the HFA. I don't necessarily have funding sources for any of this at this point. This one in particular some of the others could be taken out VHCB's big pot of money. But on this one, my preference would be to say to VHFA find a way to prioritize among your applications or give preferential treatment for down paying to first generation home buyers. I think in a lot of cases they will be the same people, but if we can give them a little leg up we can possibly accomplish the same thing. And we need to I think before anybody attacks me on that, you need we need to be thinking about the overall cost of this bill and the way the bill was originally drafted it had like five different pots of money of $5 million each that had no real source. I mean, it was all per money, but it wasn't clear whether it was outside always being proposed more or within the source of money that VHCB gets and VHCB gets what we talked to, if you recall on a lot of these things just as a preview, we talked to Gus and Jen and they said they would be okay with this is to make it clear that they were enabled to put up to a certain amount of money out of their proceeds in their discretion if they wanted to. So if they saw a possibility of, you know, starting a mini program on commercial conversion, or large employers that they can do it, we're giving them the opportunity to do it, but we have a really drilled down on the specifics of what that program would look like at this point so wouldn't be a mandate that they do it but it would give them that discretion and it would give them the signals the legislature is interested in what I call low hanging fruit is because it seems like the employer community and the development community have interest in converting commercial space to residential and they have interest in providing some employee housing so there could be requirements of significant matching funds and potentially perpetual affordability tied to any funds that VHCB gives. Senator Clarkson. So, I actually think I know you're jumping to the large employer. I'm not trying to just preview. Yeah, yeah, okay. When we get there I have an idea that I, I'd like to discuss about including in that because I also see it as a potential for some workforce housing within a employment center. So, I have some other additional ideas. I think we could work on during the break on identifying where the $5 million on each of these the source for those because I think we have options there's and I would I agree I'd love to charge VHFA with adding this I don't given the demand on the first time home buyer program. I'm not sure I'd invade that I think I really want to add to it and make it very specifically for first generation purchasing but not rating it. I'd love to add to it because I think the need is so substantial. Okay, I just, we could certainly talk about it at the break but we need to talk about funding period. Yeah, we keep in mind and all your comments that at least my preference was to be to get this bill out in the next legislative day. And we haven't heard testimony in any detail on a lot of these issues. And we haven't heard from what the administration's position would be on raising more money in the budget. So, just keep that in mind, because I know we could spend a lot of money on a lot of good causes here. Okay, let's go to section six. Section six started off in the bill as introduced, and it was one of the $5 million pots. And it has, it's in this draft it is replaced with the language based on Josh Hanford's handout. That has, it's the same amount of money, but it is sort of different allocations so right now again it's couches, ARPA funds. And we would need to just make sure we get the right source if that's indeed what you want. This is sort of just generic language in line six, or you're not looking at the draft year. That's not on the screen I forgot. So what we want to focus on is we want to get rid of section six and substitute section six a, which in this case, there's a detailed plan that the advocates and the administration have worked on and found this for sort of a funding for. And so, I don't know how many people have actually looked at that plan it was posted and, but it's pretty comprehensive in approaching the mobile home problem from a lot of different fronts, and I think it puts close to $6 million into affordable benefits and grant money. So, unless you have problems with that I'd like to move on. Michael just remind, I need a reminder, maybe from Scott about whose testimony that detail is under, because I'm not remembering off the top of my head. I think it's under Josh Hanford is under Josh or Jim. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, right. No I remember it I just can't remember how we find because it all has to be by witness. Okay. Okay so section seven. Go ahead David. Seven and eight are both $5 million DHCD appropriations. Seven is for large employer housing partnership. And that is a program to provide matching funds not more than 5000 per employee for the cost, an employer with 25 or more employees encouraged to provide housing for its workforce. That's the limit on that so it doesn't have details like whether this means to purchase or build or rent or move. It's just a grant per employee on a matching basis for large employers. So on these two, and the next one is similar. We could add that into the discussion commercial property conversion incentive program. What I'm suggesting here is that we produce enabling legislation to allow VHCB to use to target some of its funds to to these ideas and require matching funds, significant matching funds to and afford a bit petrol affordability requirements. I think they already have that power as we witnessed with a learning about a new program that I was unaware of called the innovation grant that was given a VHF a reserve fund for V for by VHF a to construction for construction loans. I wasn't aware of that program but you know I think that there's some broad authority or how they can use the money and this would give a legislative stamp of encouragement that they look into these areas and perhaps fund some sort of examples of how this can work and I think we recognize that in both of these instances there's an opportunity here to fill in the gaps to make these things a reality where we're hearing that they don't pencil out right now so we have commercial units that are standing vacant or hospitals or other people are not being able to buy that. Workforce housing workforce. Yeah. Mr. Mr. chair. I see in section eight the opportunity for us to address an entrepreneurial hub not unlike the Black River Innovation Campus which is, and I think we have a couple others in mind also maybe in the, in the center centers we're planning around the state where housing where entrepreneurs come work and live and in this renovation of this historic downtown school it is being developed as a it is being developed as a commercial property. It also has spaces that could be used as apartments. If it falls through the cracks, I would love to be able to send David this proposal and see if we could work, pull out threads of this that could expand this and create opportunities again for some square peg housing ideas that are that are kind of challenging young people to our downtown particularly challenge downtowns that need that kind of energy that would have caps on rental. And I think that we could make this work for some of our innovation hubs in a way as well. And it's got the same sort of intent of reusing properties that in our downtowns and getting them occupied with residential with residents, rather than space that is now empty. Thank you for that to David. Again, the question is given that we've taken not much testimony on these errors. We've voiced support for it but we certainly haven't taken any testimony on the specifics of the size of the grants and but we can look in language in the enabling legislation that you know highlights those kinds of programs as examples. It would be great if we could maybe add it. Anyway, I'll send it to David and David and I can chat about it but to see what we could pull out of it to help broaden and expand this a tiny bit. Okay. So on the chart. Section 10 was the three year extension of the tiffs. I'll save David from talking about this but I asked that to be deleted as late as this morning I didn't realize it was still in there. But I don't think I think it's much more appropriate for the economic development bill and in fact the economic development bill has the many tips in it. And I know why the tiff extension would travel on a different vehicle so we're. No, it makes sense. Good. Section 13 yours. So that skips 11 and 1213 municipal bylaw grants is Ellen. So is the Ellen show now. Yeah. We've done. We're in pretty good shape on this aren't we I mean at the moment. I think so. Let's see if anybody has any comments. This is essentially what we passed in S 33. No, that's 101. It's 101 I think. Last year. Which is as past the Senate, I think it had strong support. I don't think there was any problem the program it's another one of these. Programs that even though. That's one on one didn't pass the money was in the budget anticipating its passage and the agency has spent the money has stood up a program. We have over subscribed and some of the people who are have gotten $20,000 grants will likely need continuation grants. So the idea here is to continue the program for one more year and put in the same amount of appropriation that was in for FY 22. But the substantively we've already dealt with it. If we're going to continue this, then I would suggest striking the section because the program, all the money's gone from the program. I don't know why we need statutory language to back it up at this point. But certainly if we're going to continue it for another year and apparently it's very popular and the agency really thinks it's going to produce yield results. This is just the continuation of the program for one more year. Mr. Chair, I thought the governor had. And maybe I just missed you. Yeah, here it's 600 and 13 C has 650,000 for it. Right. Right. And that may be high but but also may we heard from the planners that this was, you know, we heard from Peter Gregory that it might not need quite so much. But I think it would be good to keep this as a placeholder for because it's so key to so much of the work we want to have accomplished. They go hand in glove. Is it. Okay. We will keep it in for now. I think we just need a running tab on our money. Section 14 is downtown tax credits. I'm going to skip over that I assume that's Ellen too. We're not. Yeah. And we can David and I could fill in the blanks as best we can if Ellen doesn't arrive but we'll postpone discussion on those in the hopes that she does. Section 15 I think we can deal with this is in one on one. It was strongly support supported by this committee it's the same language as past and one on one that gets rid of the duplication of permitting between towns and the state. Unless there's no objection or have that in. Section 16 through. 19 is the bill that Senator Brock put in that's in natural resources now. That's to 70. I have real concerns with actually all the sections but the one of changing the dynamic or the structure of what is affordable housing in the state to go from 80% of median income to 120% of median income. I think that really changes who were focused on in trying to help and I don't think we're ready to make that change with a lot more discussion I've even been told that at 120% of median you might be helping people who could already afford market rate housing. So, that's my position on that will deal with them one by one. I don't know how the rest of the committee feels. And I think that's the testimony we heard. Okay. Section 16 be. That's taken care of elsewhere in this bill will double check with Ellen, but we're trying to avoid having to come back on amendments that might trigger active 50 and have amendments. Not have to go through active 50. So that section may be okay. Section 16 C. This is the high demand county one I think we heard that it would focus on just two counties and I think it could be in essence you're even in those counties we may be pitting affordable housing against smart growth. Because it would avoid active 50 even in rural areas of those counties. But even though I think parochial Lee, it would be good for the county I represent I don't think it's appropriate use of the resources. Well, I guess, you know, and I know where the committee stands on these issues but I would just caution that our goal is to increase the amount of housing stock that is available to deal with a crisis. And these things do some of that, which is why they're being proposed. I think what it comes down to those center Brock is, you could say that, and maybe you would say it about any housing construction, they shouldn't have to go through active 50 permit. This is a tranche of that. And we are making head rows in exemptions for active 50. I think this is too big and it's really targeted at just certain areas of the state. Well, it's targeted areas that have a demonstrated need, which is why they're they're targeted in that fashion and it doesn't throw out active 50 it provides simply an alternative way without changing any of the goals or objectives of active 50. Again, you know I understand your position and and respect it. But I'm saying that there is an alternative view. Right. But they're the sad truth is that affordable housing housing period is needed in every corner of the state there there isn't any one. I mean in the upper valley, it's, you know, and I know that includes some of New Hampshire it's been estimated by our housing group here that we need 7500 new units. You know, ASAP. I mean that that doesn't probably qualify in the same way that you're imagining it, but the need is huge. Okay, okay. I'm not sure. Anyway, so section 16D goes along with section 16C. Let's move on to section 17. We heard from joint fiscal that it's going to cost like a million to five. First year and then a million seven I think in the next year. The you know one of the things that I think I said about this I mean I think if we wanted to pursue this we'd have to have the tax commissioner in to make sure that there's no administrative difficulties but I think the way we're likely to go on missing middle that is basically your for those, at least for the missing middle housing, you're you're just diluting the amount of the grant that the construct the contractor would get because their value gap would be less as a result of this and this. I think this applies to well it just applies to priority housing projects. So priority housing projects would theoretically have some units in it that are afford perpetually affordable but it could also have a lot of market rate housing in it and we're reluctant to go down this road, but I think we can discuss this a little further if you want. Yeah, and one thought I've had Mr chair is that I wonder if we can make it if we, you know, given our concern about priority housing projects and only them only having 20% of their units at the moment, available for affordable housing, and it's only affordable for 15 years, this is a big stickler for me. And a compromise I'm sad happened that if they use if a priority housing project uses ARPA money for the duration of ARPA. And maybe this would be an added incentive for priority housing projects. So they don't get much actually they get a permit, a shortening of the permit period they don't actually you know I think we've heard testimony that the priority housing projects, the value to that project for what we give them is pretty modest. But maybe another sweetener for them to build during the ARPA duration, maybe a sweetener would be if they take ARPA money to develop a priority housing project that we would ask them to include 30%. And we might have a sales tax exemption just for that short period of time for the, you know, while they build through 26. I would ask to keep in mind the timeframe we're working under here. Right. So that's, that's it is to 2026. Now I'm talking about timeframe for this committee to get the bill out. Oh, oh, oh that. I think that that that is an interesting idea, Senator Clarkson. I guess that the one thing that that I think about in this and similar kinds of amendments is that we find that there isn't any quote affordable unquote housing and one of the maze to make things affordable is to make them less expensive. It's pretty fundamental. Yeah, I think, I mean I think we would have to know more about the ramifications of, you know, whether this is proportional to what is being given out already to entice private developers to build this house, this housing, this may be very, this might be a very large item compared to what they're getting now in terms of assistance relative to that and the whole perpetual affordability thing. I mean, I would be willing to look at this further in finance when the bill comes to finance which it will. I would give you my word that we could talk about that there and suggest it but I just think that we need to get this bill moving and I don't think we know all the ramifications yet of this this is I mean, whatever we do 1.7 million of benefits to these priority housing projects. And I don't know how many there really are out there quite frankly that are not nonprofits already that don't have to pay the sales and use tax that, you know, you know what we're getting for it. So I just think that this will slow down the bill I'd be willing to work with Senator Brock, even before the bill gets to finance to try and find all these answers and if it makes sense, it's, you know, I don't see much difference with this and with funding through VHCB for priority housing project. That may be more valuable. As Senator Brock and I both know this is a tax expenditure. It's similar to an appropriation. So it's just another complication at Lowe's and every other place discerning who is qualify whether it's going to the priority housing project or other units or whatever. Do we, do we have a notion of how we would replace this 1.7 1.25 to 1.7 because that's the question with a tax expenditure. That's I think. Whether or not you can make a case in an effective projecting that the value of having increased housing, if you take say roughly 3% of the amount of money that you're talking about, which is probably what you would do if you figure that about half of construction expenditure is going to represent taxable materials, you could, you can come up with a projection but the one thing that we, we absolutely have to recognize is you can't expect JFO to do it because that's not what they do. You'll never get from JFO projection on the benefit that you're going to get from something like that. Right. I think it is a very fundamental logical thing to say that if you want to make something affordable you make it less costly. It's not rocket science. Yes. And I think in all fairness, we're trying to do that in this bill. That's one of the, the guiding principles. However, I think that what we have. I mean, I have a lot of questions about it. I mean, these priority housing projects are frequently significantly about market rate housing. You know, there may be 40 units of market rate housing and 10 units of affordable units in it. Or we we've already given them the exemption from Act 250. Do we want to give them cost reduction that may benefit the market rate housing as well as the affordable housing and Senator Clarkson's right. Probably inevitably we're going to have to cut the amount of subsidies we can give to the affordable housing units because we're going to have to replace this 1.7 million and the logical place to do it is to say, okay, if you're going to give them this credit and the governor has a budget out there and was trying to potentially stay within it, then we're going to have to find it somewhere that might just be in terms of the appropriation for the same goal of making housing more affordable. I think this one just doesn't target the money as well as the grants program. So that's where I am on it. Senator Rom, do you have a opinion so No, I'm okay. Okay. I think that's the question though that we're asking because I think we're all I think Randy's right we're trying to make it with lots of these efforts trying to make housing less expensive reduced barriers to building housing in our, in our downtown and village and I guess the question is what's of greater value to the developer and only VHCB only does about a third of the priority housing projects. And the more we look at prior priority housing projects, yes, it gets housing built there's no question they're valuable in that regard, but they're in terms of affordability and I know we keep building them so we keep replacing the 20 units that go off affordability after 15 years. It for me, priority housing projects are increasingly becoming projects I'm a little frustrated with in the first place because tooth I don't even know what the universe of priority housing projects is the total units I know Graham did this calculation for us but I'm impressed he got a sense of what that total universe was, which I, it's unclear to me what the full universe of PHP's is. Anyway, so you are you wanting to move on for the moment. We'll continue this conversation. We can. I mean I'd like to you'd like to pull it from this now is that what you're suggesting I just don't think in terms of the necessary work up that we can with a straight face. Pass this out and willing to get in touch with the tax department and others over the break and try to get some more meat on it, but my inclination is just because I think the way we give the tax exemption that active 50 exemption for priority housing projects because it's hard to develop a whole project of mixed use housing, but not mixed use mixed income housing. You know I'd be more comfortable if I knew this was all of this exemption from sales and use tax was going to build affordable housing and not just 10% affordable housing. I think this is this probably given the numbers we heard, totally subsumes and changes the value of a priority housing project as we've heard, the value is a shortened timeframe for the permit and also $30,000 on average and fees. This is going to be worth probably a lot more than that. So it's a, it's a huge change, I think. Anyhow, we'll move on. We have Ellen with us. That's great. We'll come back to some of the stuff let's just keep going forward. On the next two environmental court court. I know Senator Brock is probably is trying to touch base with but what we heard from the judge I think it's going to be hard for you to convince him to support these changes. So I would say we strike. If you want to come back with something I got a conference call with him scheduled for Monday which was he always said he was available. That's fine. If you want to come back with some alternative. Okay, or if he come if somehow you can convince him that it doesn't violate separation of powers or there's a real problem with the environmental court right now. I think it was pretty strong and diplomatic but strong that this was not the direction to go on ad use. Who's section is that 20. Two out of three belong to Ellen. Two out of three in section 20 or two out of three period generally. 20 20 20 a are Ellen and then I added a 20 be not certain if that's what you guys wanted or not so. Okay, so why don't you. This is. I'm trying to remember who offered this proposal to us. So go ahead and section 20 amends zoning language in title 24 to prevent a town from requiring more than one parking space per bedroom for an accessory dwelling unit. Okay, that's okay I was jumping ahead to. We're working off this chart. And section 20 is what you just said. This is, I think this is relatively important. In terms of zoning to promote ad use. And I think it's not excessive regulation so I think it makes logical sense to, we don't want towns to be able to. We've made which we've made, and I'm trying to make more. To facilitate more development of ad use. We just heard Brenda talk. You know that ad use maybe a significant bullet here silver bullet and doing these things we heard, you know the White House conference and stuff so it would be unfortunate if a town went ahead and said, oh we have all these provisions to allow ad use but we don't have two parking spaces for every, and you don't have the ability to provide that. So, I feel that this is a good section and welcome here otherwise. I think I spoke about this the other day is it's just to me it doesn't. It's not a good practice to make the legislature, the zoning board for every municipality in the state. And this is is micro management when we get to this point. If we were to adopt a provision that says that in general terms that clearly indicates that states desire to see an increase in accessory dwelling units without undue regulation that is designed to limit or prevent them to an excessive extent. If we were to create general language that allows municipalities to come up with their own solution based on the peculiarities of their location. What is appropriate in Berkshire is not appropriate in Burlington and to apply these one size fits all to the state as a whole makes us the zoning board for the state and I don't think that should be our role. Yeah, I could, I can live with that. I mean, keep in mind that we have already done that to a far greater degree than the parking situation. Yeah, we've mandated a lot of things on the town to promote accessory dwelling units, 900 square feet. You know, all of that stuff that's already in place. This is just another. The nail on the coffin. Yeah, right. But, you know, I don't know exactly how we would phrase that but if we limited that to the parking issue and say that they shall, you know, their requirements shall, you know, be reasonable and not excessive and I think you'd wind up with the same result if that makes you feel more comfortable. We have very talented legislative council and perhaps we can trust them to come up with wording solutions that make make more sense rather than being as prescriptive as this. I would encourage Ellen if you could work on some language I think you've heard the debate we could take a look at that. I mean I think the result is going to be the same the other way to do it would be, you know, to have this in there but to allow waivers or exceptions to the usual circumstances that the town could defend. I mean I think that's what you're looking for in this one area, you're looking for a little bit of flexibility to the extent that this makes sense if there is a town like Versure that, you know, no harm's done and they need to ask for some reason for an ADU they should be allowed to do that. I could be reasonable. I can do something like that. Mr. Chair. Yeah, I think part of our objective here is to reduce barriers for the development of ADUs. And if this is a barrier in a town, it, that's a problem, you know, and I, Ellen correct me if I'm wrong but this is not a statewide statutory requirement at the time that there be a one parking place per bedroom, right? I mean that's a town by town requirement, isn't that right? Right. Currently under the statute, towns have the ability to set parking minimums. Not all towns do that. Some towns do. Right. And so I think we could have strong language in here because I do think that for the towns that do have that requirement. I think we should be asking them to review it and because it is an impediment to people given the space they may or may not have to building, to having more, to being able to make more parking. They may be able to do the ADU but not more parking. It may be one thing or another, given the size of their lot. I mean, I'm reluctant. I mean, I'm happy to work on language that's more enabling but I also know that this is a barrier for people to developing an ADU. Do we know of any town that requires more than one parking spot per bedroom? I mean, practically I'm wondering whether this really is an issue out there. The other way we dealt with ADUs in the past, when this first starting out and we're trying to get the nose under the tent on allowing this and the league was opposed for similar reasons that Senator Brock is articulated as we said that at least anybody who is looking for a permit, a building permit to do an ADU by right had the ability to make an appeal under conditional use so they could be heard as to why it wasn't unreasonable for them to get a variance, so to speak, from if a town did have two parking units per bedroom, that was going to disallow the development of ADU. At least they could be heard to say, look, you know, so there's a lot of ways to do this to give some more variable or more flexibility, but I just don't want, you know, I'm not sure we're saying a lot different is just whether the methodology of once size fits all is too heavy handed and too inflexible. I think it's going to happen in a very rare case, but let's see if Ellen can work on some language and give us some alternatives. I think one of the things that you pointed to is our ignorance of what the extent of the effect of this narrow reading is to begin with, and that oven itself says this is not a wise thing to put in in such an inflexible way. Well, I'm not saying that we can't accommodate your concern that wouldn't cause any problems. So, I actually will admit, but maybe Ellen knows, was this in 511. No, so this was one of the proposals. After you started exploring the ADU definition and or issue in depth in the last few weeks, there were a number of proposals, I think from the Department of things that could potentially further assist ADU development. They provided a list. You asked me to, this was the only statutory change on that list, I think, possibly, or one of the only ones. So this was one of the things that you recommended be included. So this is from maybe that same memo on ADUs from the department in their experience that this could be a problem. Okay, I'm going to track that down and talk to, I guess it would be Chris Cochran. And, you know, it would answer Senator Brock's last question is, you know, is there a problem in this area. So I assume there might be if he suggested the language. I think they did and we've talked about it before. I mean, because parking is a big issue. So, do we want to see if Chris could be available. So, yeah, we can right now. Okay, we can talk to him over the break and bring him in if need be. So I would add one thing related to this. And I don't know the number of towns, I do know one of the issues of that some town zoning states when a new dwelling unit is created. There is a parking minimum. So not all towns actually use number of bedrooms as the, the number that they look to for parking spaces, sometimes do that but when because the creation of an ADU is essentially an entirely new dwelling unit itself, that sometimes lines up with what is required for a house, for example. So, that's very revealing. I mean, that's, you could have a new dwelling unit that is two or three bedrooms for that matter. Could you not write 900 square feet can be a pretty big unit. And that would be that would be fine. If they want to put three bedrooms in there. They, the town could say you have to have three parking spaces. This is one unit per one parking space per bedroom so let's let's let's move on we'll we'll we'll talk to Chris. I have more information on this, but I think it's very revealing what Ellen said, because that, what she said is towns do it not by bedrooms and that could have an adverse effect on a news that you, that you otherwise would allow. Okay, so can we go to section 28 in the chart. Yes, Mr. Chair may I just say a global thing about this. The all of section 20 a. Sure. I would describe it to us real quick first but oh okay sorry. This is, this is from Jacob. We asked Jacob at this does not have necessarily the administration support but I asked him to put together a laundry list of what a center might do. If we decided to go the center route. I know we probably moved on from this language to this language will need to be modified somewhat but that's where these ideas came from anyhow. This, yeah, this language is a little rough but it would, and it would need a lot more detail I think if you were interesting and fully pursuing the creation of a navigation center. Right. My one. You love her finish. So, section 20 a appropriate 5.7 million dollars to create an accessory dwelling unit navigation center within the Department of Housing and Community Development or within a CCD. And then it just, yeah within the department. And then here's just a list of the things that the center could do would do. A pilot program to develop a statewide guidebook for floor potential floor plans and designs for ad us that can easily be adapted in Vermont. A pilot program to hire local ADU ambassadors to work in towns to provide local assistance on development of ad us have a central resource database to support pilot communities. A statewide interested in building an ad you so providing materials and training on planning design and development. Working with the HFA to develop a loan loss reserve fund for ad us create an ad you down payment grant program for home homeowners, and then a social enterprise pilot program for weatherization and internal conversion to identify a workforce. So, you know, the contractors who do this work and could be, you know, listed as the available contractors that do this work. Okay, so before I call on Allison. My thinking on this section. As you know, the V here program which is traveling in a bunch of different places I guess. And for that, that we passed in a 79 that got vetoed had ad us as one of the development of ad us as one of the grantees, a homeowner could get money from the be here program to renovate a house in addition to the majority of the program being on blighted compliant housing rented by a landlord. This was all we threw in ad us in there as well. My thinking is we should. And they have not. They said, with the $5 million or $7 million they put out on the street. They've only built one ad you so far. And this committee feel strongly that ad us are as good of or perhaps better in some respects than the money put towards renovating the lapidated units, let's say they're on a par so why shouldn't we say that some of the V hit money, and that was where the intent, the statutory language was, was to go to ad us but we should, in my mind we should say a certain percentage up, you know a certain percentage should go to ad us, going forward with the following strings attached, as opposed to a commission center. We would just change the language in 210. That's going out there now, and say it in this bill notwithstanding any other provision that may be enacted in law on the V hit program, the ad you shall receive. We have 25% of the appropriation, and it should be and set some general program guidelines for them to develop we could use the same guidelines that exist for blighted property like there has to be at least a 20% buying from the owner. The grant could be up to 30,000 the administration I think for ad us would like to see it go up to 50,000. And then there's a thorny question of, should there be any element of affordability, going forward on these ad us or in this context, is enough to say that we appreciate the fact that you're taking oversized housing and creating another unit of housing for the state of Vermont. As you know, the dilapidated subcode housing that's being renovated requires a five or 10 year affordability concept to it. If you rent to someone coming out of homelessness and 10 years, if you rent to low income people who are who are not homeless. So we could just piggyback on that affordability. But in my mind, the key thing is to get a certain amount of this money dedicated to essentially a navigation system that will help people develop ad us. We know that. On your tombstone, you know, it's going to say Michael ad us or rocket. Mr chair. Yes, go ahead. I would support that and the house could maybe be adding that at the moment. I think it. I would not suggest we attach an affordability aspect to ad us generally to the VHIP ones. Yes. Because we already have that in the VHIP program that's a key piece of the VHIP program and it is already as will recall 251 units most of them have been used once they've been renovated by they have been rented to people who are exiting homelessness. So this is a terrific and at this crisis moment in Vermont housing history. It's been very helpful. I wouldn't do that with the general ad us partly because it's a public private partnership here. It's within your own home. I think it's a bigger challenge. I think we could consider it once we see. I just, I wouldn't go there for the ad us in people's homes, but it's a little different from VHIP VHIP is landlords. These are external units. These are not necessarily owner occupied. I think there are a couple issues that we I would love to use the word Ellen as we draft this. I get rid of the word ambassador. I'd really keep it consistent that it's a navigation. People get the navigation after the exchange navigators Vermonters are now clear on what navigators do to help them. So I have a very bad name though. Navigator. Yeah, I think so. Hey, I want people to help me navigate through everything. I know, but I think the, when I hear navigator here, I think of the health. I know, but our navigator was fabulous. Health care. I had a great. My second thought is, I really want to see us say that if you're going to access a grant from with public money that it has to have to commit to a long term. And it cannot be used as a short term rental. And, and I think that is for me, increasingly, a challenge here that I want to make sure that we don't have a bunch of people developing ad use in their homes that they use a short term rental we this we are enabling a good we are enabling more housing in our downtown and village centers we hope and elsewhere. But I really wanted to see it used for long term rental, and it could be three or months, six months. It doesn't necessarily need to be your long but it needs to be longer term rentals for it just it sticks in the craw to I think that's an excellent compromise. I would agree that it's a different animal. I think in your home you're not a landlord compared to the renovated dilapidated home. You're going to get less take up if people have to administer, you know, somehow I don't know who would check the income eligibility like they're doing now for the rest of the hip but in our caucus we had someone raise the exactly what Allison is talking about is what's the stop these additional units being put on just going becoming short term rentals and the answer that I gave was well, in one instance. There is each town we passed a law has the right to impose guidelines around short term rentals in their town. But that might not be enough but then I said this I'm envisioning this being part of continue to be part of the v hip program, and they have not perpetual they have affordability provisions that don't talk about short term rentals coming in. But now that Senator Clarkson is recommending. We don't piggyback on to those affordability things. I think we can come up with something that says, as a condition of the permit that to construct this that there should be the housing should be used for certain period of duration. I would just say annual leases or six month leases or something like that. Yeah. We've heard from the chamber we've heard from, I've heard from him and we just heard from Brenda Segal. Yeah, it is a it's a low. It's our housing need is for full time residents. That's really our housing need is that's what this bill is about. And if we're trying to do is we don't want them to not contribute even though they're an extra unit. Yeah. Okay. I think we have a discussion on that to people want to is 25 is 25% a good starting point that could change as we go through the process for via. Yeah, yeah. Well 25% of the via money which is, yeah, if it goes through as the governor wants it's going to be totaling $20 million and maybe more if it includes some more money for this year but at least $20 million. So I'm saying $5 million should at least go to this goes this money goes to nonprofits and then they work. Our five housing partners. Is that a good starting point I mean we can change it along the way but I thought that was a good. Good place as any. Yeah, I think that's great. So I brought your mood. I assume the administration made no target number regarding percentage of funding for ad use. No, is that correct. But we haven't really discussed it. I will, I will ask them if that's a reasonable number what I don't what I don't want them to come back and say we want total discretion and then just have one ad you built with this money. I think it'd be worthwhile asking and looking for some feedback. Absolutely. Yeah, I will do that. I assume they're listening in so at the last, well, maybe the last section, the missing middle income home ownership development program. This is something the governor wanted $5 million in budget adjustment, or either the House or the Senate felt I wanted to do that without the committees of jurisdiction weighing in on what this looks like. I think the intent is good. I mean it does shift some attention to higher income people, and it can create housing. For sure, the question, as you know from yesterday's discussion which I really apologize with my computer I don't know why it's not giving me problems today but I was just getting to the end of someone's testimony to understand what they say I cut out. So, but I did have a conversation further with CHT I think I understand that we have a, we have an issue. There's tension as to what degree of affordability for future homeowners should we invest money. Right. And I think I think what the administration is proposing is that any subsidy given to the homeowner above and beyond the value gap. That would travel with the house. And the concern from some advocates is that that gets quickly diluted over time so if a house stole 20 years later, there would be virtually no reduction in the cost of the house and it wouldn't be affordable. The other differences in, I think the vast majority of homes that have been supported by federal or state subsidy dollars to get people into home ownership is that that money has not only 75% of the appropriation of the appropriation has continued with the house, but it also goes to a low income person, or middle income person, and there's no nothing in the administration's proposal about that element as well. So, I know that a lot of the stakeholders in this area including the administration are involved in discussing this, and they're committed to meeting over the break. So, I think we're close to spending a lot of time now I would just like to say this area is undecided, and let's see what people come up with over the break if anything but we will have to decide this issue. Next Tuesday, if the stakeholders can't come up to it with a solution to our liking. Right. Mr Chairman. Yes, add something. I just I really appreciate Chris Donnelly getting back to us because with with some ideas about where we might build in this permanent affordability, and I'm hoping that I don't know who the stakeholders are working on this together I assume. I just want to say that I appreciate Chris getting back to us, because he's identified the areas that that we need to to to embed this. Okay, so let's see if we can wrap this up in 10 moments on the chart, it says section 23 down payment assistance wasn't that, and then it says section 10 increases, isn't this part of the mobile home package. That's in an earlier section. Well, no, they're there. The, the manufactured home piece is earlier in the bill. That's for the affordable housing tax credit and that increases the amount of that, and then specifies that 250 of the increase every year should be used for manufactured housing. Section 23 is actually the down payment assistance program, and it is doubling the amount available to VHF a through that program in future years. Okay. I suggest we strike section 23, because I think that may have been a vestige of a previous year's bill and my understanding is VHF a feels that they're at capacity in the sense of the because interest rates are rising. And that's not as good a tool anymore to address that problem and they don't want any more money to the down payment assistance program at this point. So I don't want to. I don't want to force it upon them if the people who who are running it are saying that's not the best way to help people get housing. And I think if we're adding the first generation to this bigger umbrella you know we're creating a bigger umbrella I think that that's where our energy should be this year. Okay, but if we go back to the mobile home piece. And this is this $1 million to the affordable housing credit was the administration's original proposal. They're now backing off and saying, they only want a $250,000 increase, and they want the rest of it to come as outlined in the section on mobile homes. Thankfully, a real good sign off by all the players on the package on mobile home and it does doesn't do the down payment assistance program it does increase the tax credit. Right, that was in that the house of one on one, which Senator Brock and I are very familiar with where they had asked for $250,000 increase in that so that's part of that section on mobile homes. So if we can go back to the sections that Ellen, we passed over. David, could you just help me just highlight which sections we passed over that were Ellen's go back to the beginning to section two. Yeah, right at the beginning to the number twos. Yeah, I, you know, before Ellen goes through this to save time. I have never heard any objections to any of these changes to the permitting process. I guess there is like, there's a handful or more of small tweaks that will just make it easier to permit the bigger biggest ones are the, I guess the one from going to 25 to 50. So I would ask Ellen to do 2D on priority housing. I would ask Ellen to explain that one again, and then I don't know if there's others that people have concerns with but there, there really are sort of tweaks I wouldn't necessarily label it technical but I wouldn't label them as major and they just help move along in the permitting process. So having said that, Ellen, could you just do 2D explain what is going on there. So currently, housing projects that qualify as priority housing projects are exempt from active 50. There are a number of elements that a project needs to meet in order to get that designation and therefore exemption. I think there is a cap on the number of units that can be built as a priority housing project in the smallest towns. So in towns, currently with less than 3000 people there's a cap on the number of units at 25 units. So Bill removes that cap, so that towns up to 6000 people can build priority housing projects up to 50 units. So it's removing the smallest cap in the program. I thought it's 3000 people. Right, so it's a tiered system. Currently, towns with less than 3000 people have a cap of 25 units. Towns between 3000 and 6000 people have a cap of 50 units. Towns with 6000 to 10,000 have a cap of 75 units. And so it's removing the smallest cap. So saying all towns with less than 6000 people, including the smallest towns can build up to 50 units of housing. Okay, and what I neglected to say is that all of these changes in terms of active 50 permitting were worked on by a wide range of stakeholders from the state environmental community, League of Cities and towns. And this was the package of changes that they came up with. So, I think this is some of the stuff that's reflected in 511 right. Yes, this has come out of 511. And VNRC. I think we have Katie's letter posted somewhere. Yeah. David, where, where else did we pass over that would have been an Ellen's jurisdiction. Possibly section 13 is mine. Yeah. Yeah. This, there are some minor changes here I think from what the Senate passed. I don't want to just say this is just a total repeat of what we passed that the governor that isn't one or one that never got enacted. If you could just highlight the differences in this version versus what's in one or one that the Senate passed. So, the, so your committee and the House did work on the specific language for the municipal bylaw modernization grant program. However, as you mentioned that program didn't pass and get enacted into law and so the money did get passed and so the department did start issuing these grants. So, the, the most recent draft of this bill incorporates some language from the department, as well as some language from VHCB. VHCB's language incorporates references to affordability in the bylaw requirements and the, there was proposed language changes from the department to reflect what they're actually doing in the program. Some of the elements of the program have changed. Could you highlight what those might be from what we passed in the Senate. Sure, they are in the draft that is posted today draft 6.1 so. So, so first, I don't think we've actually done a walkthrough of this language. Do you. Okay. So, I'm having a hard time summarizing it but I can. So, there are some changes. They're, they're in draft 6.1, but so, so to receive the grant, I mean I think there's a variety of changes that are proposed by the department here. Some, I don't think any of them are huge changes but they are changes. I don't think we need to revisit the stuff that we strongly supported in the Senate, but if we could identify the however you want to help us identify the changes that were made from the Senate version. That would be helpful. So at least we understand. I don't want to necessarily revisit what we passed already but. Right. Do you want me to put them up on the screen or do you just want me to. I think we all have it in front of us whatever's easier. So like if you, if you turn to page 22 in draft 6.1. So, there are some changes. Subsection E. Oh, so first in subsection D, the funds may be used for the cost of regional planning staff or consultant time and any other approved purpose by the department. This is a much shorter sentence than the version you passed. The other one was a little more slightly more detailed. It allowed funds to be used for mapping as well as the, the bylaw amendment process itself. So, I think potentially both of those two things could fall under any other purpose approved by the department. But that is a change they shortened the list of uses. And then also in subdivision E. They've changed this. So I'm just going to start by looking at how on what the municipality needs to commit to in the, the bylaw adoption process. So, it now reads a municipality grantee shall use the funds to prepare amendments to buy laws that increase housing choice affordability and and then support a neighborhood development pattern that is pedestrian oriented in smart growth areas that reflect the smart growth principles established in 2791 and prioritize projects in designated areas and according to a chapter 76 a So the previous version of the language that you passed or and then the house worked on did require that there be the town sort of verify that there were not encouraging development in constrained water and sewer areas and that development was going to be located outside of important natural resources and flood hazard areas. Mr chair. Yes, Senator Clarkson. That brings to mind Katie's letter which she one of her concerns is that we don't define the term smart growth area. It just triggered it because Ellen used the term again. I think we might be wise to make sure that we do that and or refer it to the area where it is defined. So, you're so smart growth area isn't currently defined in statute but this bill did, or this this section of the bill did strongly allude to what a smart growth area is although I think perhaps that language has been taken out. It was in the big wasn't it in the intent section. Or, but I think we'd be wise to define it. And if it isn't defined in statute somewhere, we could take a stab at it and it can be refined in the house but I think it might make some sense given how much we're relying on it to define it. I think that we took out and maybe it was at my request because it was so gray and vague was the smart growth principles. I can see that we might want to take that out. That may have would have given you more comfort cross referencing back to it but we could do it. We either put that in or we could try and find some definition of smart growth areas but I agree that an applicant for these funds, you know, may have some dispute with the agency granting the funds as to what smart growth areas are. So, maybe we can work on a definition. Do you think that's possible alone. I would need a little more information I think that there is it is implicit in this program what is meant by smart growth area because the town is supposed to update their bylaws to increase density in smart growth areas. Smart growth areas is not an official designation, but you are suggesting to the town's the need to pick areas where they're going to update their bylaws to support walkable neighborhood development. And so you're this what this allows the towns to say which are which areas are their smart growth areas, particularly if they don't have a state designated area in the town. So, I get that I think there may be examples, I think there may be example language in a prior draft. Let me suggest that you work with Senator Clarkson on this issue, and maybe you could bring Chris Copper into the conversation. Yeah, and Katie maybe, maybe VNRC that could the working group. Whoever you want, Senator Clarkson. Oh, well that's a broad palette. Right. I, you know. Okay, let's move on. Anything else in that section. Yeah, so one of the other changes is, they have sort of loosened. I'm hesitant to characterize how they did this but the requirements now for what the municipality have to do are a little more vague. So, a town has to identify municipal water and wastewater disposal infrastructure. They don't need to identify the constrained areas anymore under this language. There was a requirement in the draft that you passed to allow duplexes in smart growth areas to the same extent as single family houses. So that has been replaced to allow increased housing types and uses, which may include duplexes. Again, that on page three, it, instead of require parking waivers in smart growth areas it says include parking waivers in smart growth areas so again a little bit less strict. Right. And then section five section. Yeah, section five is the is also a bigger change. So this was the section requiring density, which was, this was the flexibility aspect of the density requirement back into 37 you had some mandates about density. This version then made it a lot more flexible on how a town could meet density. And now it's even more flexible. So a town shall reduce non conformities by making the allowed standards principally conformed to the existing settlement within any designated area and increase allowed lot building dwelling unit density by adopting dimensional use parking or other standards that allow compact neighborhood form and support walkable law and unit density, which may be achieved with a standard allowing at least four units per acre, or allowing the receipt of a state or municipal water wastewater permit to determine allowable density, or by other means established by the department. So this is not mandating a density. This is saying a town could use four acres per unit, or it could allow density to be determined by the waste waste water permit in the area. So this is a lot more flexible language. Have in this program, the requirement that they have to be held accountable for what they're, what they've done with this money to meet the statutory requirements before they get the full amount of the money. I remember we had some, I think, I think I'm not mixing apples and oranges here but I think there was some provision that they would get their last chunk of money upon demonstrating that they've actually accomplished something. No. So that, well, it's on the bottom of each 21 subsection C. It's again sort of lighter language than that it does say funds may be dispersed in installments to ensure the municipalities meeting the goals of the section. So, I think it largely accomplishes what you just said but it isn't the, you can't have the money until you show you you've shown you've finished the work. You've allowed installments of the money so that there are check-ins with the town. So the previous one sort of allowed total withholding this may not. This, this may still have an obligation by the state to give the money even if they didn't update their bylaws. Yes. Okay. Okay. I think I would like to delve into this section a little bit more. I think the, you know, this is part of the problem with the money going out without the program requirements to legislature want. And I think the department is taking the opportunity to loosen this to their liking. Okay. So I'm told they pretty much followed the Senate version and giving out the money, but it sounds like I need to double check on that. Okay. Any other sections tax credits I guess is yours too. Yes. Yes. Okay. Why don't we just quickly go through that. Okay. So the county of Caledonia 14 does raise the cap on the downtown tax credit program to $5 million. Okay. This language also includes the new type of tax credit, the flood mitigation project tax credit, which can be up to $75,000. And then the other change is extending this tax credit program to include neighborhood development areas. because there are sections that are in conflict here because I presented sort of a choice. You can either add it to the statute, this extension to NDAs, or you can do it in session law as a pilot program. If you use the pilot program for a set number of years, you can dictate, the language currently does dictate how much money can actually go to the NDAs from the downtown program. That's currently set at $1 million per year. Okay, just by way of background for the committee in case people have forgotten in, I think it was also an S-101, we passed not only expansion of the breadth of the downtown credits to be eligible to NDAs as well, but we also increased the program, I think it was to 3,750,000. My understanding is, could be wrong. I think the governor's budget has it expanded to $5 million as is here, and expanding it to NDAs. We, because of what happened with this in the house, trying to get ahead of the curve here of what we're likely to see, I'm suggesting it'd be a pilot program like the house. Hadn't really, they hadn't really passed this, but in ways of means they discussed a pilot program on the expansion to I think two years. I've heard some feedback that that's not long enough for the pilot to really work. They have to get a designation, that takes a while. So I would suggest we do this pilot for NDAs for five years and we limit the amount that they can take from the tax credits to 1 million of the 5 million so we don't dilute the downtowns getting their funding. I think that's important. Okay. Agreed. And Ellen, I confess, I just don't fully understand and I think I don't fully appreciate the challenge or the choice that is made as how you set it up statutorily, but session or otherwise, but I'll leave that to your judgment how you think it's best to do. So I think they probably will accomplish the same goal, however you structure it. So that would be my suggestion. I don't think we have to go over wastewater because that's pretty much exactly as we passed it in 101. Is there anything else? Any other sections of yours in the bill? So when I got here, did you discuss all the section 16 Yes. Okay. Okay. Wow, I thank you all very much. I will, committee, I will work this up in a new draft, a new chart and get it to you, not at the last minute. You know, probably hopefully get it done by Wednesday or Thursday and so we should be prepared to go through that new draft when we get back. I'd like to switch, take a break and switch over to economic development, but if people have questions or comments before we do that, we would take a 10 minute break and start on the economic development bill. Good chair. Senator Ron Hinsdale. Yes. Just wanted to note that I think there's a lot of interest in the land bank language and concept, but a lot of people recognizing that it's probably not ready to be a piece of the bill. Do you mind if I work with David or who, I don't know if David's the right person, but whoever makes sense to draft a study, there have been people recommending different stakeholders that should probably be part of that. No, I mean, you can do that. I mean, my idea was to, well, we, no, we struck that out entirely. I'm not adverse to that or the 529 savings account type for first-time home buyers, but I quickly learned that they're more complicated than what the realtors presented to us and it would take a good deal of time, but certainly a study looking at something like that, maybe even the 529 program as well. We could put it in this bill or we can certainly send a message to the house. They have a lot more time that they could, that we would be receptive to hearing more about those projects. We just ran out of time. So yes, go ahead and do however you'd like to propose an amendment. That's fine. Yeah, people have lots of opinions about land banks and experiences looking across the country. I can't speak to the 529 piece as much. Like I wouldn't want to put the same group together to look at both because I don't know that they both have the same expertise, but I agree with you. It would be nice to send a message to the Senate to look more into that piece, but if I just keep it to the land banks, if that makes sense. There's some piece of feedback that's kind of wicked here. Are you hearing that kind of very high-pitched? That was me. That was my Roomba for the dog. So I'm trying to stay on mute. Okay. All right. So let's, can we come back at 10 after 11? Just get started and time is precious. So even 20 minutes would be helpful. Thank you for all your patience.