 Good morning. It's Thursday and this is the general housing and military affairs committee and we are here today. With Commissioner Josh Hanford from the Department of Housing and Community Development and Sean Gilpin. Whose title, he'll have to remind us of exactly. I don't want to say everything else. But we are going to hear from them. The, to give an explanation of what was in the governor's budget proposal, which was just released on Tuesday, and how it relates to the work that we do in this committee specifically about housing, but perhaps not limited to that. I think that there's some pretty. It was a pretty different year for us in terms of the governor's proposal with housing and I'm quite interested in hearing the each, each appropriation and what the proposals are. I've heard of in our work so far this year, some of them are quite related to COVID responses and ongoing housing issues that we've been dealing with in our committee so without without we have them till about 1030. And so with that, I'll turn it over to you, Josh, and you and Sean can tag team as necessary. Great. Good morning, everyone. For the record, Josh Hanford commissioner of my department housing and community development. And Sean, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself now for the record or might as well do the record, record keeping Sean Gilpin housing program administrator is the title these days with the Department of Housing and Community Development. I'm glad we coordinated Sean and Chairman Stevens with our orange today. And so I guess I'll kick things off big picture and I can share my screen for with some of the documents that we shared with with Ron that's that's up on your committee page. If that works if I have share screen. Let's see I do. Okay. See that. Yes. Okay. So this is the big big picture. Our infographic for the agency and this is unheard of, as far as our agency having this much of a support for new funding, most of it being one time. But, you know, during the last during this existing fiscal year, our agency is already moved over $300 million of CARES funding. We know we can do it. And we think these are priorities that make a lot of sense address the need to recover from the pandemic first to help reemploy people and then to reinvest in community development in housing and the business. And I know, you know, this, this committee we're going to focus on mainly the community development investments in the housing for all investments, but just wanted to get folks the big picture of what's going on here. And commissioner commissioner if I may just quickly interrupt can you make that full screen somehow it's a little tiny. And then, and I know we can we can committee we can see this on our, on our webpage to if you want to follow along on, if you have another device that's not your phone. And yes. And yeah, that's great. Commissioner, can you give us a quick primer on the difference between one time monies and, and just sort of standard baked in budget, just so when we use that shorthand we know what it means I mean, when it comes to the money that comes to your agency, it it strikes me as it feels, it always feels like one time money because it's not. There's not a bottom line baked into to most of these things it's usually based on available funds. Right. So the first line there and recovery that business assistance grants that's in the budget adjustment right now. As well as the everyone eats additional funding to continue that and to reuse some of the FEMA reimbursement to try to carry this program through the end of fiscal year 21. And then the tourism and marketing in the by local stimulus, those are both one time funds, just FY 22. Much of this is one time I'll highlight the differences as we go through the also just to clarify that the item shaded in orange are programs that won't be run through our agency but it's in partnership with. So just wanted to make that comparison, the $500,000 for the Vermont relocated worker grant program, this is proposed to be base funding. You'll notice in this big investment there actually isn't a lot of direct support for businesses, most of its indirect, you know creating the ecosystem and infrastructure to help businesses thrive. You know we don't have the luxury of all that federal funding where we were doing direct direct grants to two businesses with state general fund dollars so we we've planned more for these investments in our communities that indirectly support the business climate as a better approach with general fund dollars. But that $500,000 there is sort of a combining of two popular programs that were really created out of centers Rockins committee over the last few years, where it was the remote worker, and where it was enticing folks to come here work remotely for a company anywhere in the country or the world for that matter. And then the second year the program recognize that we have Vermont employers that can't find workers and you know we ought to be helping folks move here to take jobs and Vermont companies, and this combines both of those programs and allows for the agency to reward folks moving here for both remote work and for Vermont companies, and it helps cover moving costs and very specific items like that to help folks make the move and make a job and help change our demographics, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the economic development stuff. The reinvestments in community. These many of these. Some of these do support our housing goals. You know the first one doesn't have a general fund cost is this place based increment financing so it's often referred to as a mini tiff. We don't like to use that term because some folks either hate or love tiff. The way it is funded and the results produced from tip financing, but this is to help very discrete small projects use this model. You know we have story after story of different small communities in Vermont that know they need more housing in their village. They know they have a few businesses that could expand. They need sewer and water infrastructure in place in their village to make that happen there is just not enough capacity for private septic and wells, and that expense spread out over few so few users is just impossible for the communities to bond against. This is meant to address that and we have a number of case studies where communities have worked on this issue for 20 30 years and they've gotten nowhere and they need the ability to use this tiff model where they can plan for future development and take the increase tax revenue off of that to help pay their debt that they're absorbing. Otherwise the users on those systems will never be able to afford that cost. And so that does speak to housing creation a lot in some of our rule communities but having dense core. I see a hand up I don't know if you want me to address as we go or go through wherever you you'd like. In this particular case, Josh with you, Commissioner with you, referring your taking pauses where you can. So if you see a hand up and you want to and address it that would be great. Because if I'm traffic copping I'm waiting for you to have a pause but yes if you see a hand up. Go right ahead. Commissioner looks like representative Toronto question. No that hand was left up when I was looking to get the screen a little bit larger sorry Josh. Sorry. The next one is modernization of act 250 you know we've been talking about this for a long time that we really feel that in our downtowns cores in our village centers. We should reform act 250. The fact that you can have a neighbor's appeal desperately needed affordable housing projects, those application fees are quite expensive. And we know that this act 250 stops housing projects affordable housing projects you know when we have the investments in place and the infrastructure and act 250 is triggered at eight or more units. It's not wise investment of our resources and we've been working on this for a long time so that's what that one's about the better places grant program. This was an initiative those sort of started during the pandemic it was called better places safer spaces. It sort of made it almost to the finish line with CRF money but it wasn't funded. And what happened was the philanthropic community in Vermont, said we really like this we think this is what our communities act desperately need. You had groups like the Vermont Arts Council preservation trust Vermont Community Foundation others that raised their own money, and they partnered with our team at the department and said, you do such good work with this we've raised our own private money We want you to select the communities and the projects because this is what you do. And so we've carried out this program with a simple $100,000, and we've received over like 40 applications requesting more than a couple million. So this was right for, you know, this, this budget that we have so much extra money in to sort of take this program on and really help communities revitalize their public spaces in their downtowns and villages think of you know empty parking lots and and parklets and bump outs on front of your restaurants and, you know, really we need to encourage people to get back to these places when, when this pandemic's over. I don't know about you but I've been in some of our, our communities and you know the activities just not there like it was you know the restaurants are dark most of the time and there's just a lack of a vibrancy and this is an attempt to bring that back with this money. The downtown transportation fund, you know this is an existing program. This is a, you know, 10 time increase to what's normally supported in one time funding, the better places is one time funding. And this is to really help sort of make communities more walkable biking transit, you know, parking rides this is our partnership with Department of Trans Agency transportation. The money actually comes out of their budget and they sort of funnel it to us through our downtown board to award projects. It's been a successful program so far. The next one is expand the downtown tax credit program by an ongoing increase of 1.75 million, bringing it up to 4.75 million and change the statute to allow this funding to be eligible in neighborhoods. Right now it's only eligible in the designated downtowns and village centers which are very small. If you look on our maps, you know, most people think oh that must mean the whole developed area, it's not, you know, you look at the downtown, it's not an outpillier or water barrier, Barry, and it is just a teeny ring around the commercial core Main Street it doesn't expand at all into the historic neighborhoods. This would allow an expansion into the neighborhoods. It's a very low barrier program, you know you as a private owner of the property, submit an application to do code improvements facade improvements sprinkler a da, all that sort of work is eligible. Do the work with your own money and then you get a reimbursement a partial reimbursement and it's proven to be very successful project big and small take advantage of this, you know, most of the affordable housing big affordable housing developments that are doing rehab work because they have to be and also, you know, all of the, you know, mom and pop store general stores and other sort of Main Street businesses take advantage of this program all across the state so it's a, it's a really successful program that we want to move into the historic neighborhoods and allow those rental property owners to take advantage of this. So that's that question from represented clackie. Thank you, Josh and this is a great presentation and better places. Thank you, thank you, thank you and I have a question on the one we're talking about right now the expanded downtown tax credit. Last term, this committee looked at a bill of encouraging more inclusionary housing and not it will that be embedded in this expansion of downtown tax credits. Excellent question. The, you know, part of that bill passed in s 237 last year, but some of the more, I guess I would say, mandatory changes were sort of stripped out of it. But what this does by virtue of allowing incentives in these areas, you have to go through a planning process to get a neighborhood designated area approved. In order to get that approved, you have to at least allow for units per per lot and it's an encouraging aspect here where communities choose to say hey we want this designation for our neighbor for our particular neighborhoods. It's a lie to the downtown board, it's a planning process with their planners with our planning staff, they get the designation and to get that designation they have to adopt some of these more inclusionary zoning requirements and some density. And once they have that the proposal here would then make those property owners eligible for these very valuable tax credits to improve their properties. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for my hand up from rep them to Walt's. Yeah, thank you commissioner on the same item I just want to make sure I'm understanding it. Is the total proposed allocation 4.75. The existing allocation is 3 million right now. So this would be a 1.75 million increase ongoing. This would be 4.75. Okay, yes, thank you. The next item is more money for brownfield cleanup and this would be split between the agency and natural resources and a CCD you know there's an existing program. This is a that leverages federal funds from the EPA and what the regional planning commissions receive. And we have a revolving loan fund for this and our agency. This would boost the funding substantially because the reality is we have, you know, way too many probably hundreds of brownfields in our communities across the state. And in our already built up urban core that are properties that can't be used and they should be redeveloped and but brownfield cleanup is very expensive it has lots of liability concerns. And this is an attempt to, you know, really free up those properties so we can redevelop them. And the difference between and ours, a share and ours is, you know, and our might support cleaning up some of these properties just because they should be cleaned up for reasons where our money is focused on the redevelopment aspect. It has to have a redevelopment plan and our funds is to help that plan. And much of these brownfield properties are turned into housing. And so it does relate to housing development. I see another question from some Toronto. Thank you. In Lindenville there's a really large shuttered motel that would really go a long way in helping with housing, especially in Lindenville St. Johnsbury area. However, when I suggested anything be done with it I was told it was in the floodplain. Are there any funds in this section of this piece that could help mitigate something like that? I don't think that would qualify as a brownfield. I think the challenge with the floodplain issues is there are exemptions for existing properties to still be redeveloped if they're in a floodplain. Most communities have changed their zoning and their development bylaws to not allow any new development in a floodplain for very good reasons. But the fact is we have a lot of built environment infrastructure in floodplain so you can still do that. But extra mitigation is usually required. That would be covered with existing sort of housing development funds or other funds. Those would be eligible expenses, but I don't believe this brownfield funding would really be eligible for that. Okay, thank you. Representative Murphy. Thank you. I'm following on that, and I'm sorry it's a little bit off this topic, but with the floodplain piece, weren't there properties that after Irene, people were given monies, but you relinquish the ability to develop? Because the point is we keep redeveloping property that, you know, is in a floodplain and so in essence it's temporary expenditure. You're going to be spending the money again when it floods out. I mean, I was heavily involved in that. We managed about $40 million in disaster recovery funds from the CDBG program disaster recovery, and our biggest single program was buyouts property buyouts both commercial and home ownership. The reality is where there was many more homes that were bought out. I think about 146 all across the state, including one small mobile home park that were in the floodplain in the floodway in some cases and it's a much smarter investment to buy those properties out at full market value so that they can have enough resources to go and purchase a new home in a safer place. And then the property is cleaned up, turned over with a permanent easement for no more development. You can do recreational uses on the property and we developed a whole series of public parks. The River Valley was really epicenter of a lot of the flooding and there was about 14 parks created now that were homes along the river, you know, that you can, you can picnic add and you can, you know, pull over in your canoe and it's really created a tremendous resource out of what was a, you know, a disastrous situation and everyone agrees that we need to move away from those areas because we keep putting money in. You know, our roads, our bridges, our, our downtowns are in these areas and so those built environments we have to protect. We just don't want to build any more out in the rural, rural areas. Thank you. The next one, the broadband, if it's okay with you, I'm not going to go into the detail on this. I think there's so much to talk about with broadband and it's a little outside of my wheelhouse. I'm going to just say that this is in partnership with Department of Public Service to deploy this. The area really is the one that I hope we'll talk the most about. And this doesn't include all of the housing investments, we have a couple other pieces attached to your committee page that will go over Sean and I that are our sort of white papers on these proposals. Here, you know, the three big ones, we have our VHIP, our Vermont Housing Investment Program, coming back to you with lessons learned from the CRF funding that you helped us deploy. We can give you much more detail on that but feel it's been very successful and the numbers will prove that out. And this is an increase to that program with one million proposed as base funding ongoing, and then three million as one time funding since we have this, you know, influx of extra budget revenue for next year. So we'll put it up between rental upgrades, you know, existing vacant blighted code deficient rental properties as well as a home ownership rehab purchase rehab component that we'll get into more detail. The tax program is an increase of an existing successful program funded with tax credits to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. They sell those tax credits and award the proceeds to the Champlain Housing Trust, which runs the manufactured home replacement program. And so what you have here is you have in this really helps folks in much of the rural parts of Vermont that, you know, affordable housing often in rural settings is that someone's mobile home, you know, on own land or in a mobile home park. And those mobile homes, the older style mobile homes you know they depreciate value over time and their energy and efficient and they often don't work well for a rehab investment it's just not worth it. What this does is it allows those folks to purchase a new energy star mobile home or a zero energy manufactured home as a replacement and it provides a 0% deferred silent second that acts as a down payment loan and it ranges from about $25,000 to $35,000 depending if you're buying an energy star home or a ZEM modular the zero energy homes. And it is no payments no interest, but when you sell or transfer that property that loan is paid off and it recycles back to Champlain Housing Trust. And this program has become self the funding self sustaining after six or seven years that we've we've run it and we have some great statistics on it. You know it's helped over 219 homes be purchased every county in the state, and this is more than doubling the ongoing tax credit to that program, you know, increasing about 46 additional homes to that program with this infusion. And really hope this is something we can get through ways and means in particular, you know, we'll look at this closely, but we think it's a valuable program both from helping safe housing for folks and also you know addressing the climate change issue for folks so. Commissioner I can't raise my hand with I can't raise my little yellow hand. Any other questions related to this with a similar kind of self sustaining qualities was the first time home buyers program that VHFA ran and I know that we had to work hard to get some funding into it in order to make itself sustainable because just the way that it works the money goes out, and then it comes back and as you said keeps being recycled. Is there any proposal that you are aware of that may increase that program. I'm not that program was just increased last year or the year before I'm trying to remember it had a bump in the ongoing tax credits for that program and it once again it's very successful. It's a little smaller incentive you know it's about $5 or $6,000 and what it really covers is all of the closing costs and all of that as part of a purchase to help with the down payment expenses. And, you know, I totally agree it's a worthy effort. I think that what is different about this is that most of the other proposals in the housing realm are focused on more of those existing neighborhoods that developed areas and this is the one item that really helps some of the very rural parts of the state where we're living in mobile homes that are unhealthy and energy and efficient is really very common. And if we're going to meet our energy goals and help these folks continue to have that affordable housing, a program like this needs to be increased, or we're going to fall behind. And so committee we will be having some training if you will on mobile homes in Vermont they are essential parts of our affordable housing stock. And it's a complicated, it's a very complicated world that that that it that it operates and so we will we will hear more about that in due time. I wanted to and I also committee I also wanted to point out in the Vermont housing investment program. This is something that has passed in concept or discussed heartily in concept. It actually passed once through this committee on a bill that didn't make it further. And last year we were considering a bill that that we may refer to as age 739 until there's a replacement that has to do with enforcement and using the Department of Public Safety we had lengthy conversations about that last year. And it was one of the sections of that and it, the legislation itself was kind of halted a little bit by COVID but the idea of the VHIP program was implemented through the CRF funds, in a slightly different, in a slightly different way than what's being proposed, but the commissioner also proposed has some language that we will consider as part of the new age 739 as well. And we'll get more details on the success of that program and some of the, some of the issues that may have arisen with that but very, again very, very nice to see the difference between saying well this is could be a great program funded at a million dollars base to saying, well we can actually get the base and have you know because of because of the budget surplus right now so. So we'll, we'll be discussing that program again. Excellent. And then the last one on this line item is, you know, very, very exciting to the increase of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, a substantial increase, more than $20 million. The property transfer tax is up, and this fully allocates all that is, is in legislation for VHCB, as well as some general fund on top of that, you know, bringing up to almost $31 million. You know, this right now is proposed as one time dish funding. And, you know, I suspect you'll you'll chat with with Gus and Jen about more of that we've chatted about, you know, a goal of this funding this one time large increase to mainly go towards housing, considering the, the, you know, need we've all seen with you for more neat units right now you know we have folks still living in motels and hotels and the homeless situation, and we have tremendous resources to pay for rental assistance and support services we just need units and so that's really the emphasis behind this and we have some ongoing conversations with VHCB and trying to partner on the VHIP program and some of the home ownership elements of that with VHCB. And so I think there's a lot of really exciting work that can happen. I think this budget comes to pass and these resources are available to all of us, and our, you know, very coordinated housing network what we can really accomplish with this sort of resource in the private sector and with our nonprofit partners. It's really a once in a certainly my, my lifetime so far career, you know opportunity to see these sort of resources realized. Thank you, Josh and this is tremendous. Thank you for this proposal. Where does this, I'm just wondering for this housing band that we're looking at. Does the 200 million in this next round of code to really funds. Is that in here at all in this, or where does that live. No that doesn't live in here, because it's it's 200 million already has a program it's a federal program called the emergency rental assistance program with very clear parameters eligibility and requirements. And, you know, we need to submit a a one a receipt of federal grant award and the governor has to approve that and it has to go to the joint fiscal office for acceptance. There are work across a couple other committees to maybe dole out smaller portions of that 200 million to get to get things started. But the reality is it's not in our view, a part of the big budget bill, it can't wait until that passes it has time limits we have to spend 65% of it by the end of September. And it's a defined federal program much like the CDBG or the home program or others that say, here's the rules, do you want this money or not. And so it's we, we did not include it for a number of reasons in the governor's proposal, least of which is to confuse folks that that money was flexible for other ineligible uses. And so I think there could be a lot more talk about that. As we move forward. I think I just wonder about is, you know, the, the renovation of the apartments in that it's incredible that success of that it's been great and I think we've seen the success in our current relief fund money that housing but I guess I worry a little bit about. So we have that money for rental and utility arrearages which is very important, but I'm not sure we have any additional money to protect for closures on mortgages, and I just think that that's also an issue that we spent not significant money but we spent some money. And right now that doesn't fit anywhere. Is that because the Vermont Housing Conservation Board would not support to helping with mortgages. Is that correct. I won't speak for them on that, but I will say that you're right that 200 million does not include mortgage assistance or for closure prevention. However, it does allow 10% for other housing supports and services that we're trying to seek maximum flexibility and what that means it could support some of our housing partners, the homeownership that we provide some counseling that can help. You know, perhaps lower income homeowners at least have a voice, you know, pushing back against their, their mortgage servicer to delay things or take advantage of any forbearance agreements or anything out there perhaps the other the good news though is that in the new proposal coming from the Biden administration, which is going to have Congress acting fast on it there's a whole nother slug of housing resources proposed in there and in that proposal there is homeownership mortgage support. So we're hopeful that that'll come soon. What we don't want to do is delay this emergency rental assistance and it goes forward that rental assistance is both for arrearages. I'm not I'm not. I'm actually talking about the the 38 million. Now, I understand totally the to the 200 million, because could mortgage mortgage foreclosure support help. Could that be embedded in that $38 million. The VH to be the VH to be funding. The VH to be helps homeownership. You know, usually it's about unit creation, you know, supporting you know they they support a lot of the homeland grants the shared equity housing development. They have the authority to help homeowners up to 120%, but I'm not sure that they would they would propose using the funding in that way. You know, and I don't want to speak speak for them I think I understand. I think you raise a good point if we have a foreclosure crisis that pops up and we don't have resources coming for months down the road. I think we best prevent that because once someone loses their home. It's a lot more expensive to find a new situation than dealing with covering a few months of missed mortgage payments. Absolutely. So good, good, good thinking for sure. All right, thank you, Josh. Yeah, good morning. Thank you. I also share concerns about the mortgage issue foreclosure issue but that's another story for another time. My question is, if you could just briefly tell us the administration's priorities for homeownership for the BIPOC community. Can you tell me where in this overview that lies. Yes, I will. You are seeing the screen change as I flip. Are you seeing a different view right now. Yes. I think it was about time to transition anyways that that larger agency wide view, the rest was not was was not housing related so I think this is what Sean and I want to talk with you most about today is our vhip program proposal and what is different about what we discussed over the last few years. The next step to this is lessons learned from the CRF money. You know, right now with that CRF money. About 200 units are already complete, and most of them have families moved in. You know that was work done in six months. What we have by the time I say late February gets here early March will be up to about 250 units up from that program. You know completed and families moved in. Many of them being folks referred from the continuum of care folks moved out of the motels and hotels department of corrections folks that are being released into the community need a safe home. There's a whole host of great things, not to mention a new found collaboration between the home ownership centers that continues cares and a whole bunch of new private landlords that had not been coordinated in this system for ongoing work here. So what we found is we have very willing partners out there that have vacant apartments that they are losing money on by having them vacant but they have very expensive repairs you know asbestos knob and tube wiring, you know, furnaces that are 30 years old. I don't know if anyone got a chance to view any of the video from neighborhoods of Western Vermont with some of the landlords, but you can see the condition of some of these properties. You know and then you you you talk about you know insulation and weatherization and you know safe egress windows and lead paint and it is no wonder that there are properties that aren't serving the community and aren't serving folks in need. And they're in this condition, and it's so expensive to upgrade them. So, those lessons are are applied to this new form of VHIP super VHIP as chair Stevens referred to it once. The rental rehab component brings that new found lessons learned by upping the amount available, putting additional conditions on but your specific question represent hongo is about the the homeowner purchase rehab component, which is the million dollars, which is base in our budget. And it has a 25% minority ownership set aside, I might like to refer to it more as a target, because I don't think to comply with fair housing, you know we'll be able to simply sit on money and not let anyone apply if there's a balance but what we'll do is aggressively target outreach to community members. So that we have applications from this group that are such that they will be able to use that full target. That's our plan, and you know some folks have mentioned that the housing opportunities that are targeted for this funding, because we're really trying to do here is two things increase home ownership. Allow folks that are paying rent to move into their own home, build wealth and equity, and really pay the same amount that they were paying for rent. In order to do that you need to find homes that are relatively affordable and those exist. I, there are a number of homes and you know Barry and Springfield and St. Johnsbury and you know Rockingham and Bennington and Rutland I mean, the list goes on these are our old these are our older industrial communities in Vermont that really built the Vermont we know and those historic neighborhoods are full of these homes. And they can be purchased for $80 90,000. But the fact is they have serious deferred maintenance, they need a real rehabilitation and weatherization. And so this is targeted for those homes. Those opportunities where there'd be a small amount of this up to $50,000 grant that would be available to help with the down payment assistance and closing costs, but that's also captain here. We want the majority of this funding to go to the rehab, because there are other sources for down payment assistance and silent second loans, but there isn't a source for this immediate rehab grant. You know you don't have banks that are willing to lend to a home in this condition that can't pass code and home inspections, and on top of the mortgage give them a another loan to fix it up. That's just too risky so that's what we're after. And, you know, we've been, it's been brought to our attention, you know that if you're talking about the smaller in Vermont, you know, there's many that live in Chittenden County, and that that might be hard to find a home in Chittenden County that fits this, this sort of model. That that very well may be true but I think there are opportunities out there, and then we can't forget that indigenous communities in Vermont the Abinac community, which do live in many of the rural areas across the state, and have for centuries the same wealth home ownership. And we've heard I've spoken with Chief Stevens and others in this community that also, you know, really value this this effort here. So we think this is about time we start to do something like this and focus on this housing stock and help folks build wealth and help reinvest in these communities that really built the Vermont that we know and have kind of been left behind the last 20 years. So I'll stop there. And, Josh, if I could just again cut in before john just the When we look at the historical the references that you make here about how difficult it has been to get equity to the BIPOC community. Do we do we still have any remnants in our financial laws that you're that you're aware of in the in the, you know, the deeper sometimes sometimes legislation sometimes statute is still there, even though we don't practice it but it's still there. Are you aware of any barriers that is still exist in the in our banks lending processes. You know, so I have talked with the Susanna Davis and their subcommittee recommendations on housing. I would say from from their research, there isn't specific direct sort of a racial barriers called out but what there is is traditional sort of banking and credit laws that work against folks that haven't been able to build wealth and equity. You know that, and we can't change we can't tell mortgage lenders to ignore credit scores. We can't rely on these long standing, you know, sort of to protect their interest and you know they they they're not going to stop checking credit scores they're not going to stop checking some of those. That's why we need a program like this to set the to sort of balance. And so the possibility, you know, things being equal aren't the same if you've never had a chance to earn a good credit score but yet that's what your mortgage is going to be based on, and you know, some folks have brought up, you know, arrest records criminal backgrounds and you know that might be a higher proportion and, you know, there's there's things that are being worked on in that front, especially in you know marijuana, sort of expungement of records and so forth but It's a great question. I feel that I'm not as equipped to dive in and give you the most educated response, but we do know that some of the existing ways you evaluate risk as a financial institution do work against this community. It's not specifically racist at this point, like it certainly was, and we have federal history of this, but it still works against this community that hasn't been able to take advantage of the systems to this point. Thank you. Representative Kalaki. Thank you, Jerk. Josh, could you help me understand what opportunity neighborhoods throughout, because I worked a lot with the Reverend Refugee Resettlement Program, and certainly a lot of first generation new Americans actually wanted to live in clusters of people from their home countries as well as family. And so Winooski and Burlington certainly have a proportion of people, but are there opportunity neighborhoods? Does that factor into this as well, or how is that defined? Opportunity neighborhoods is not a defined term. It was my way of explaining what these neighborhoods are like, and it was loosely based off of the opportunity zones that the state went through a pretty extensive process to designate for that federal program. And Vermont, it was looking at demographics, income, poverty rate, and there are opportunity zones, but they cover whole communities, and this is really focused on the neighborhood level. And I'm pretty sure I can check, because we have it on our website, all these 23 opportunity zone communities. I'm pretty sure Winooski is one of them, and I'm pretty sure part of Burlington is. But it would also include the very same communities I'm talking about, like Springfield, Bells Falls, Bennington, Rutland, St. Johnsbury, that have demonstrated sort of decline in home values in some of the neighborhoods, higher poverty rates that we want to invest and provide more opportunity there for folks. It's really hard to compete and help someone that's lower income buy a new home in Shelburne. It just is. You're going to need twice as, three times as much subsidy to make that happen. But yeah, we have- It's great. Thank you. I just was, I did want us to be encouraging dispersion of communities. No, no, you have to move out. It's great. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I don't see any other questions. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Sorry representative. That's all right. No problem. I'm just, I just, this is a really practical question. So there's $4 million in VHIP or slated to be in VHIP and you said split between rental and purchase rehabilitation. So is that two and two or is it one and three? And I'm wondering what portion, what is 25% actually represent in terms of money and what does that actually translate into in terms of individual families or households that could take advantage of this? Sure. Yeah, you're diving into this, some of the specifics that we hope to maybe work through with you with our draft bill. And some of this is up for a little bit of input from you folks, certainly. So there's a million designated for this new homeowner purchase and rehab program, but it's ongoing. And it's the smaller amount because it's a pilot. It's new. It's not an existing program. We have to stand it up. We have to prove that it works. And so from just a risk perspective, you know, it has a small, it has a smaller allocation, you know, that the VHIP rental side, we've already got a system in place. We already have partners. We're ready to go. And so we know we can move more money quicker and more beneficiaries, whereas this has to be created really from the ground up. There's a few small test pilots in this realm across the state that we've looked at their proposals and sort of developed some of the basics for this. But it has to start from the ground up. So we didn't want to throw too much into it. But the good news is this is proposed in the governor's budget as the ongoing funding. So it would be ongoing a million. And we would, you know, build up momentum. And also this would be, you know, developing an ongoing source in itself, as we've designed this program, the $50,000 benefit to help folks purchase and rehab these homes would act as a zero percent deferred silent second. And so when the home was sold, that money would return back to the program and be, you know, ongoing source for this funding. It'll take, you know, several years before that's a meaningful amount that helps this revolve. But that's the hope. And so, you know, at $50,000 a piece, you know, with a million dollars, you can kind of do the math. There's going to be some overhead that we're, you know, we're going to have to work with our non-profit partners, the home ownership centers, possibly VHFA and others to run this. You know, we're a housing staff of two in our department three. So we work with partners. And, you know, they'll need some operating to carry this out. So I hope that answers the question, you know, because we don't have, we didn't put specifics in of exact beneficiaries or such in our draft legislation. It's outlining that the concept that we hope to, you know, work with you on and help refine based on, you know, your own input and thoughts. But it's more the concept that we want to get support for. Thank you. Nope. There's other questions. Yeah. Just being mindful of your time, Josh, it's almost 10 after 10. So we are just, you know, let us know where you need to be. Yeah, maybe what I would do is maybe ask Sean to pop on and give you a little bit more detail on what we've done with VHIP so far on the rental assistance, the rental rehab side, and give you a little bit more detail on the tweaks we've made in our proposal here based on what we did with CRF funding if that works for the committee. Sure. And just before you do that, I just want to put a bookmark on a question that I want to follow up with you on that is related to the use of the property transfer tax for the municipal, for the RPCs for the municipal planning grants. I certainly am heartened and floored by the ability, as you've mentioned earlier, to have a full complement of PTT going to the Housing Conservation Trust Fund. I'm just curious to know whether or not this other small chunk, it's not small really, but this other chunk, which has been traditionally underfunded as well, is that also getting any improvement in their funding or are there other funds that might be available to the RPCs to, I mean, the testimony we took last year was capacity is also a huge issue for them. So when we ask them to change their zoning, we need to be able to provide the funds to help them hire people to help them. So did that happen this year or are there going to be funds available that we can let RPCs know that are going to be available? Great question. In this proposal, the governor's budget, it does not propose a base increase to those two funds from the property transfer tax, but I will say that if you look on that, the larger proposal from just the agency, our agency, many of those programs will be done in coordination with those groups and that they will benefit from those funds by administering the grants, running those programs, doing the work they do, and receiving pass-through funds as I envision. So if there's one thing that that infographic that our agency proposed in programs here with one-time money is it's direct programs that are going to benefit. It's not investments in organizational infrastructure because it's one-time money and the governor was really clear about a concern of increasing that overall permanent capacity and not having the resources down the road to keep it up. And so it's all about these programs creating immediate benefits for Vermont communities now and that the RPCs will be partners in that work and will, as I anticipate, be receiving grants to actually implement these programs and therefore be receiving administrative dollars to implement these programs during this same timeframe. So it's kind of an indirect answer, but I think it works. No, we'll follow up on that too. Thank you. So Sean, do you want to give an overview on VHIP results under the CRF and how we incorporated those lessons learned into this proposal and I can maybe stop sharing my screen so we can all see each other again? Or gladly. So yeah, as folks know and at risk of, you know, confusing everything because we love to make new names for stuff, the VHIP proposal is one that has been largely introduced or has been introduced in the past as Chairman Stevens mentioned. And then using coronavirus relief funds, we actually created the rehousing recovery program, which was essentially a sort of super VHIP. And that was, you know, as I think the last time I was in front of all you fine folks was talking about our partnership with the homeownership centers to bring vacant and blighted units back online to address code enforcement or code violations in those and in occupied units address those issues. And we have successfully to date brought nearly 218 units online and are just now redoing the grant amendments now that we have the extended deadlines for use of CRF funds with the homeownership centers and releasing the final amounts of CRF funds that was allocated to them. So in the end, it'll end up being about a $7.6 million public investment that will bring close to between 240 and 250 units online in a manner of about 10 months to a year. So pretty impressive for a scattered site project like this. One of the requirements as you folks know was that anybody, any benefiting property owner had to commit to at least a five-year affordability covenant whereby they couldn't rent the units for more than the HUD fair market rent or in other words basically what somebody with a housing choice or Section 8 voucher would be able to afford. So it kind of locked in for five years. Those units would be available in theory at least for folks who were utilizing a housing choice voucher. We also required that the property owners coordinate with the continuum of care, which is sort of our blanket term for the network of organizations that deal with Vermonters who are experiencing homelessness and try to assist them. We the way that we had originally set it up was that the property owners needed to were required to at least consider three referrals but then could ultimately make their own choice about who to rent the unit out to at that affordable rental rate. What we set that up because we thought that sort of mandating who was supposed to go into these units would lead to very little buy-in sort of concerns about property owner feeling like they were being told who had to go into their privately owned units. We actually found out through the homeownership centers that one of the and one of the intentional goals that we had was to create a line of communication between property owners and this network of homeless service providers and we found out that one of the one of the sort of soft results of this on top of the you know sticks and bricks type stuff is that we did actually see a lot more communication happening between what we call the COCs, the continuum of care organizations and the property owners who benefited from this program and the result is that the homeownership centers actually said that they were getting landlords knocking at their door even after we kind of temporarily halted the the program while we figured out whether or not we're going to get the extension on on the use of CRF funds. And so in conjunction with the homeownership centers we actually in this sort of final rollout of the last remaining CRF funds we're going to be requiring that all property owners that go through this program actually choose a referral from the COC as opposed to just needing to to sort of review them. So this is going to help us get you know a number of units probably anywhere from from 25 to 35 units going specifically to folks who are either in the coordinated entry system or using you know general assistance motel vouchers or those sort of support services into permanent housing. And that was actually a bit of a pleasant surprise for us that there was that much interest at the homeownership centers were confident that they could actually find property owners who were willing to commit to that. So we've built that in as one of the lessons learned to this new VHIP program and one of the benefits of the the VHIP proposal that came out in the governor's budget address is that using general funds we don't have the same limitations that some of the coronavirus relief funds came with obviously not the the time frame is is a broader horizon and also we we have the opportunity to create more of a revolving loan fund. So one of the things that we're going to do with the new VHIP is which is in the in the actual statutory language that that's being proposed and being reviewed in very various places right now is to set up sort of a tiered tiered option for property owners. So the afford of the same affordability covenants will be in place. However for those property owners who agree to taking referrals from the COCs for at least five years and that would be either five years with one tenant or you know five years with however many turnovers there are during that during that amount of time the funds would be seen as a grant. For those who are not willing to commit to that five-year covenant or five-year referral requirements it would be a deferred interest loan whereby 10% of the loan is forgiven for every year that they adhere to the affordability covenant. So what that would do is basically say if if you want it as a grant you either have five-year commitment to affordability and referral from the coordinated or for the continuum of care or 10 years of affordability covenant and if at any point the property owner decides to switch from you know the the higher standard of referral of homeless folks to just the affordability covenant then the the the grant would be or the the loan would be adjusted accordingly. That sounds a little perhaps a little complicated hopefully I did a decent enough job of simplifying that but in short what this does is basically locks in either five years of referral from the continuum of care so five-year serving people who are exiting homelessness and or 10 years of affordability covenant and should the property be transferred at any time during that then the money would be referred back to back to the program that could be re-administered. So with that I will I'll take Representative Waltz I think you were the first hand raised. Well thank you yeah I'm really interested in the VHIP program because in Berry City we definitely have properties that qualify for this I think that's very important. You answered a couple of my questions already but I still have two more. All right first of all the definition of online does that mean occupied? So online is in we have how many units we've brought? Right Jay you've got you know 200 some odd 218 units online does that mean that they're occupied or they're available? They are occupied. Fantastic. Yeah they've been they've been they have have tenants in them yes. Right okay and thank you my second question is I would love to see I don't know if you have on your website you have a distribution map of this activity I would love to see how how that's playing out around the state. Yeah it's interesting we um so I do not yet have a distribution map it's certainly something we've considered and actually neighborhoods of western Vermont on top of producing that video also managed to create a distribution map of there so I might be talking with Melanie Peskovich and and the rest of Ludi Biddle's team to see if they might help me out and expanding that to the other four home ownership centers. Well thank you I think that would be helpful for all of us to see what kind of impact we're having around the state. Thanks Sean. Absolutely representative Murphy. Yes thank you Sean I'm just curious when you spoke about the referrals in the first reference it it you said that people could choose from three so they didn't feel that they're being told who they had to rent to does that continue to even if they do make that deeper commitment that it will definitely be a tenant from the the organization the I'm sorry I'm missing out on continue of care thank you the continue which it's a it's a it's a HUD term so uh don't don't blame us for the uh the the poor naming of it um but the um so the the commitment that we're talking about in this final um final slug tranche if you will um it would would require a um some some sort of uh referral for the the acceptance of somebody who has been referred by the continue of care um with some exceptions so there's there's some time frame limitations just so that we we make sure um units aren't being held open but yes and that is that is also the intention of the VHIP proposal um to to have a five-year commitment to the same same uh entry process. Yeah I I understood that I was just curious if the the landlord would be given a up to three names rather than just be told this is who you will rent to? They would they would actually be able to choose from probably more than three it would it would be up to a communication between the COCs to determine uh and the and the property owner to determine you know who and recognizing that there's there's a broad spectrum of individuals um that interact with a continue of care from folks who have particularly checkered rent rental histories to you know folks who have who have just recently um experienced their first bout of homelessness it's it's a big spectrum and there might be choices that need to be made based on various different neighborhood characteristics property characteristics and the like. Thank you. Sure um representative Kalaki I think. Thank you John I I'm wondering uh we have in this committee been asked to look at rental registries across the state and it's not really moved through the committee at all but I wonder if something like that would actually benefit this program to really get the word out more broadly throughout the state and maybe then I mean it's a great success but even more successful or even if we want to then target different parts of the state you'd have a better map of the opportunities. Yeah I I think there are certainly a lot of potential benefits of of having better information on the location of our rental units and and some of their characteristics. I suspect this committee will be hearing from the rental housing advisory board um which which we staff although are not um technically we don't have a seat on that board but I work closely with those folks and um we're actually meeting next week um to talk about their uh their ongoing intention for this legislative session and uh I suspect you folks will be seeing a a proposal for a rental registry. I would say that yes it would have it would be helpful for this program and would have been particularly helpful for the rental housing stabilization program for the rent assistance. Sadly I can look at a relatively short but not insignificant for those folks list of landlords who reached out to me after that program had closed having just heard about it for the first time despite all of our best efforts doing um outreach everything from radio spots to um you know working through Angela Zaikowski's Vermont Landlords Association group and the like and it would have been uh if if we could have um you know for instance we did reach out directly to all the um owners of mobile home parks to let them know about about that program and and allow them to assist their tenants with with applications for those who aren't able to pay lot rent um because we have a registry of those but we do not have of regular um apartment units or other rental units. Okay thank you. Uh representative Treano. Thank you uh John um I guess I'm still a little curious as to how these referrals to the five-year covenant apartments are made uh who are they made by how does the word get out is there some sort of underwriting or a guarantee when you when you're trying to play someone with a checkered as you call checkered rental history which we all know about um and you know how does that all come about that we can convince landlords to uh to take this on? Sure so um the the way we left it up largely to the homeownership centers to kind of negotiate that communication um channel uh with the um many many of the homeownership centers already had a relationship with you know groups in the area that that addressed just because of the shared mission of many of these groups um and uh the fact that uh most of the homeownership centers send a representative to um the council on homelessness the Vermont coalition and homelessness the Vermont affordable housing coalition so there's there's a broad sort of um grassroots I guess you could say communication network between a lot of these different different groups um so it depended on um on the existing relationships and then and then some additional outreach um I ended up doing a number of presentations about this program um in front of you know these these various groups that have you know uh mostly monthly meetings um to to let them know that they should reach out to a particular point of contact at the homeownership center to sort of establish those lines of communication so um and and from there it it's it's essentially between the private um property owner and um their point of contact at whatever appropriate uh homeless service provider group is to um sort of negotiate how those referrals come in and the like um it's very very organic in that way I suppose yeah that's really good to hear I wasn't aware of that thank you Sean I've got 1028 are you all set for now or did we catch you up I am I think that's um I think that's all that I I had to share and and um actually quite poignant that I will be jumping on to at 1038 call with the the council on homelessness to present the same information to them so uh just to uh to representative Triana's point there's uh quite a lot of communication going on now will I appreciate um you coming in I appreciate you coming in commissioner uh many miles to go um we recognize that that what you presented is the governor's proposal it's it's um there's a lot of really good points in it and look forward to using it as a starting point in our work as well so um I appreciate your advocacy for these programs I know you've worked hard I know you've both worked hard to make sure that these programs um one of the things with the v-hip program is that it's always a concern is using state money and what's the what's the payback and you know to try to arrange these um periods of time where the where the apartments remain available is it's an important piece of the puzzle without going into the perpetual affordability which happens with our with our other um money that goes to the non usually to the non-profit uh build developers so so trying to walk a fine line on being able to help the private side what with public money in a way that has a public return and certainly 218 apartments right now is is is a really good start so thank you um thank you and we'll yeah we'll have you in again I'm sure as as this um as this continues thank you so much for coming in thank you have a good rest of your day thank you take care yeah committee we are about to start uh changing gears here to age 63 and age 81 we're turning a corner on on this on these pieces of legislation and we're going to start heading in in a in a straighter direction with them but let's take a break first I think we earned a seven minute break today