 We are live. Welcome to our joint committees with housing under their jurisdiction to our esteemed guests, some of whom are here to testify in person as well as our guests on Zoom. I'm Senator Keisha Rom-Hinsdale. I chair the Senate Economic Development Housing and General Affairs Committee. I'd just like to take a moment before we go into the housekeeping and let our committees introduce themselves to say how important a time it is to focus on housing and really ground us in why we're having a hearing on housing today, which I would say in my experience we haven't done in a long time. And as we've been taking up our bill, which is not very splashy, but draft 7.2 of a committee bill, we've been hearing a lot of compelling testimony and stories and some facts and figures have really stood out to me. And first, I think it's important to say that where we call home, who we share our home with, what type of housing we live in can have such a profound impact on our lives. We sit here at a time when Vermont has the unfortunate recognition as the state with the highest rate of homelessness growth in the country over the last couple of years. And so now the second highest rate of homelessness per capita of any state in the nation. Another fact that stood out to me as we've taken testimony is that 69% of Vermonters live in households of two people or less. And we know we have a lot of large properties where people actually want to downsize or have other options. That would probably be better for their agency in life and our environment. We're also sitting here at a time where we're recognizing that we have a very large racial homeownership gap in Vermont, the fifth largest gap in the country. And one that unfortunately is getting worse in 1970, 38% of black Vermonters were homeowners and now it's 21%. So these are just some of the statistics and information that I'm dwelling on as we try to look to a very bold set of ideas to tackle our housing crisis. I think it's important to recognize that there is no one enemy here. There is no one cause of our housing crisis. The nation is in a housing crisis. But that means we should probably do a little bit of everything to solve it. And that's what we're going to attempt to do. I'm really honored to be sitting next to House Chair of House General and Housing, Tom Stevens. For those of you who don't know, we actually started together on the House General and Housing Committee 14 years ago. So there are probably not necessarily two people left in the building who spent a longer time on this issue than both of us. And I'll turn it over to him. Thank you, Keisha. I was in my 40s when I started this job and you haven't hit it yet. So thank you. Yes, we've been dealing with these issues for a very long time and it's much longer than our combined service to the people of Vermont through our positions here. I also want to make sure though with all of the negative stuff and all the very difficult stuff, all the stuff that constitutes a crisis that Senator Rom Hinsdale was mentioning. I'd also like to appreciate the fact that since the pandemic with the help of federal funding and with really a unified view of what the issues are and how important they are, whether it is the racial disparity, whether it is homelessness, whether it is the unaffordability of building new houses, whether it is rental housing, which is in different states of livability, that we've invested well over $500 million as a state and with federal funds to alleviate some of the issues, whether it's back rent, whether it's assistance to landlords to help keep tenants and to help keep their mortgages up to date, whether it's just really trying to invest across the state in new housing. And we've made quite a dent compared to where we were, but now we're at a point where we need to move forward and that dent needs to be a lot bigger than it is right now. And what the pandemic has shown to me is that there's a lot that we don't know, but we do know that we have to start with more housing, better rules for that housing. And we need to create tools to help people build it, whether it's private developers or whether it's our public nonprofit housing agencies. And so it is too easy to say that there's not enough money in the world to solve these problems, but I think Vermonters have shown again and again in the time that we've served that we rise to the crisis and we try to solve the problem. And one of the best ways to do this is to have a public hearing like this to hear. But we know from what we've heard, certain things, we want to be able to hear from Vermonters and hear what is going on in your lives. So thank you, Walter, for who are here. Are you going to go through the three minutes and the length of time? I think now would be a good time to have our committee members introduce themselves so that the kind of housekeeping items are fresh in people's minds. So you start and go that way. So I will start by allowing my vice chair to introduce myself in your district. Allison Clarkson, Windsor County District. Ready Barak, Franklin County. I'm Dennis LaBowney and I serve Lyndon, Sutton, Sheffield, Wheelock and Newark. Ashley Barley, Franklin One. Chip Toriano, Caledonia Two, Hardwick, Standard and Walden, the former vice chair of the House General Committee. I'm Joe Parsons. I represent the towns of Newbury, Topsam and Groton. In Cummings, I represent the Washington Senate District. Excuse me, I'm Elizabeth Burroughs and I represent Windsor One, which is Heartland, West Windsor and Windsor. I'm Mary Howard and I represent Rutland District Six. Kathleen James, Bennington Four, which is Arlington, Manchester, Sandgate and part of Sunderland. Kayla Belder, Addison Four, Bristol, Lincoln, Moncton and Stokesburg. Emily Prosnow, South Burlington, Chittenden Nine. Wendy Harrison, Wyndham Senate District. Saudia Lamont and I represent Moorstown, Elmore, Worcester, Woodbury and the northern part of Stowe and I'm on Gereland Housing. Robin Chestnut, Tangerman, representing Rutland, Bennington District, Middletown Springs, Pallet, Rupert, Tynmouth and Half of Wells. And again, I'm Tom Stevens. I represent Waterbury, Bolton, Huntington and Gullscore. And I don't see any seats, so I don't know how to help you right now. So that's the witness chair. But the first item of housekeeping, that's the witness chair for the disorder here in person. And I think it's certainly a good problem to have that work. Here at capacity. Yes, if you wanted to move forward, you can. And among the esteemed guests, I know we have other senators and other house members here and the next generation to be part of this hearing. So this is an important topic to those beyond our committees as well. So now on to some of the housekeeping items. Everyone at least here present on the committees has the list of witnesses. It may go a little bit out of order. Scott's keeping me informed about who might be late or canceled last minute. That is the witness chair there and we'll try to let people know if they're on deck, either the next to speak or the person after that. We're here at a public hearing related to housing in general. We've allowed people to sign up by generalized topics and we won't make too big of a deal about that. Most people signed up under affordable and fair housing. And but we'll let people know that we've jumped to a new set of topics. We have draft seven point two of our committee bill in Senate economic development and housing. Many people are commenting as well on things like age 68, which is a house bill that has some zoning and regulatory provisions. H111 coming from the rural caucus on rural housing needs and general topics related to housing since it's a major priority in the legislature this session. So we've just done introductions and we're here in room 267 of the pavilion. We have some people joining by zoom. This is being live streamed on the Senate economic development YouTube channel. Those who are joining remotely will hopefully notice. You can see and hear everything going on in the room, but you yourself cannot control your video or audio for now. We are really appreciative of our staff. We're making this run smoothly and trying to offer full transparency and ease to those who want to testify. And at least those who are here by zoom will be able to see the list of speakers as well in your chat box. So you can perhaps do other things while listening and knowing where you are generally in the order. I'll call out the names of the person up next and on deck. And when I call your name our committee assistant will promote you from being an attendee to a panelist. You may need to adjust your video and audio as you become a panelist from an attendee. And once you are oriented and begin to speak, that's when the three minute timer will start. We appreciate people sticking with the allotted time so that everyone has an opportunity to speak. And the timer will turn yellow when you have 30 seconds remaining. It turns red when your time is up. And I will politely ask that we move on to the next person at that time. And once your time is complete, you'll be moved back to the attendee area where you can continue watching if you would like or you can exit all together. We just ask you speak clearly and respectfully. Any inappropriate banners, background images, vulgar or inappropriate language will be caused for immediate dismissal from the hearing. If you have any technical trouble, please use the chat function. And our support staff will be there to help you. The chat is disabled in terms of using it for promoting your position or other talking points. And is therefore logistical help. And if you have logistical issues or you somehow lose your spot, we will try our best to return to you toward the end of the program. When your time is up, we'll give you a moment to finish your sentence. And we hope that you'll keep in mind respectfully that others need to testify as well. And we have all had a long day in the legislature and want to finish as promptly as we can. We hope this public hearing serves as a useful platform for Vermonters and everyone present today to voice their opinions to us in a respectful and effective way. And with that, let's please get started. The first witness on our list is here in person, Emily Rosenbaum of Stowe. And while she's coming forward, next is Michael Messier of Rutland and Elise Schanbacker of Regents, who are both on Zoom. Emily. Thank you. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak this evening. I full disclosure, I am the president of the Rural Community Transportation Board. I am not speaking on behalf of RCT. I am also the initiative director for the LaMoyle Working Communities Challenge. And I am here in that capacity tonight. I'm here to say that we cannot talk about housing without talking about transportation and we cannot talk about transportation without talking about housing. We have transportation deserts in our rural communities. And I'm going to give you an example from LaMoyle, although I'm sure all of those of you who serve in our rural communities can think of examples in your own communities. My example is that we have fantastic public transportation for commuting purposes in Stowe and Morrisville. We also have that in Cambridge, although it is facing outside of our county and facing towards Chittenden. Meanwhile, the other parts of our county don't have that kind of transportation. I'm thinking of a specific transportation desert, which is Johnson. Well, Johnson is on a floodplain. It does have a lot of places that could be developed into housing and they want more housing that people can afford. Morrisville has been building tremendously and can only take so much more. Stowe has very expensive housing. Johnson wants to be part of our housing solution. However, we do not have transportation for commuting purposes in Johnson. So why I'm here today is to say, do you please think holistically about developing housing and transportation together? A very wise member of one of your committees continually tells me that it is all connected until we commit as a state to bringing reliable public transportation for commuting purposes. To our rural communities, we will be unable to develop the town centers that have so much potential for housing. And I'm talking town centers. We need to embrace innovative solutions statewide like microtransit and e-bikes. So again, I urge you to take a holistic approach. I thank you for listening today because we cannot talk about housing without talking about transportation and we cannot talk about transportation without talking about housing. Thank you. Thank you, Emily. So I may have mispronounced our next guest's name. It might be Michelle Messier. Michelle. From Rutland, hopefully is on Zoom then Elise Schanbecker and back in person to Colby Lynch from Barrie. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Well, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this evening's hearing. I'm a 16th generation Vermonner. I attended the University of Ron St. Michael's College. I've been a property owner in and around Rutland for 35 plus years. I've been frustrated by the state of Vermont and the VHSA rental assistance program. I had a tenant that his rent was paid through November, actually tenants plural through November of 2020 and have not received anything yet for two years. It's created substantial issues. The reason being is that the tenant that occupied the dwelling would not complete the software application and or the hard copy applications that were provided to us. It's resulted in credit rating issues for us. We know that approximately 15,000 other landlords have been satisfied through this process. I just heard that there's $500 million that is available. For some reason, we're having issues at getting this through the system. So I look forward to resolution of these issues before I have to take action. And that action would be filing a lawsuit in regard to a temporary takings of our property and non-equal protection under the law. While I'm here, when you turn on the benefits, if you build it, they will come. So I believe that a lot of people are coming to the state of Vermont for the benefits, but we don't have the infrastructure to support the benefits that are there. In other words, the housing, the infrastructure and other things. FYI, I also ran for mayor of Rutland. Our property tax rate in the city of Rutland is 3.6%, one of the highest in the country. As a landlord that does most of his own work, I cannot afford to make a two-family work in Rutland anymore, and I've owned it for one of them for 33 years. It's disappointing to me. I look forward to working with the state of Vermont to find some resolutions. I appreciate the panel listening to our comments and concerns. And in regard to the tenant, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it. If they don't complete the software application, they don't do the hard copy. What are your rights under a non-inviction moratorium that was implemented by the United States government under the COVID CARES Act that the state of Vermont received? I've been in contact with a lawyer. I've been in contact the state of Vermont's lawyer. I've been in contact with, I believe it's Ms. Kathleen Burke, the director. And so once again, I look forward to your committee's participation in understanding that it's becoming increasingly frustrated for small landlords to basically economically be able to provide housing to those that are less fortunate. I've been a participant in the Section 8 program for a number of years. The housing has met the Section 8 standards. So we're just looking to be compensated. And the total amount that we're due by way of back rents is $30,000. And we have a couple of children that are in college and we have other financial obligations. And it does make it difficult. Thanks again. We should have the cowbell as the state instrument. That's my part. I'll remember that for next time. Thank you, Mr. Messier. Next is Elise Shanbacker followed in person by Colby Lynch. For those of you following along, Jessica LaPorte is running late. So we'll put her later in the program. And so Buster Caswell is on deck. She is here. Okay, great. So first we'll go to Elise Shanbacker. Hi there. I'm sorry, I'm a little bit backlit. My name is Elise Shanbacker. I'm the executive director of the Addison County Community Trust. First, I want to thank you for holding this hearing and recognizing the paramount importance of addressing the housing crisis to the future of Vermont. I'm mainly here to ask that the legislature support the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board at the full statutory amount of $27.8 million in fiscal year 24. This funding is critical to ensuring that ACCT and organizations like us can continue to deliver on our mission of providing safe, decent, and affordable housing, along with the supports and services residents need to be successful. ACCT has been putting BHCB dollars to work since 1989 and 14 of the 23 towns in Addison County. We provide affordable housing for over a thousand residents who live in our soon-to-be 354 apartments, 340 mobile home lots, and 75 permanently affordable single-family homes. With the support of BHCB, ACCT has brought over 100 new homes and tens of millions of dollars in investment into Addison County since 2005. Even so, the vacancy rate in our area is still below 1%, and nearly half the renters who live here pay more than a third of their incomes in rent. We have more work to do. Some of our recent successes include developments like McKnight Lane and Walfam, a net-zero community helping us meet our dual climate and housing goals. ACCT worked closely with the town of Walfam, population 446, to redevelop a blighted mobile home park and provide affordable and workforce housing for their community. BHCB is also a critical funder of firehouse apartments, which, to my knowledge, is the only new rental housing under development in Addison County. BHCB provided an initial investment of $1.6 million, and when cost skyrocketed heading into construction, BHCB was there with a $1.3 million supplemental op-art but award to get the project done. When it's complete later this year, it'll be home to 20 families, individuals, and seniors, including at least four formerly homeless households through a coordinated entry partnership with local service providers. These households won't have to worry about their rent skyrocketing, where they're heating bills being unaffordable and they will have access to ongoing services to help keep them stably and successfully housed, avoiding the cycle of eviction and poverty experienced by too many Vermonters. Finally, I want to mention manufactured housing communities or many MHCs, which are also at the forefront of the Environmental Justice Movement in Vermont. MHCs were historically constructed on poor and marginal land, often with significant flood risk, and serve some of our most remote vulnerable communities. ACCT has three parks in Starksboro, for example, that comprise one in five housing units in that community. We've not traditionally had access to the same funding opportunities as rental housing, but in the last two years, BHCB and other funders have made funding MHC improvements a top priority. Thanks to these efforts, we've leveraged millions of dollars, including ARPA and USDA Rural Development funding to reinvest in the infrastructure of these parks to make sure that they can be successful for years to come. Now is not the time to back off the throttle on BHCB funding so we can continue doing these important projects. Thank you. Thanks so much, Ms. Shanback-Griff. Perfect time. Yes. Next is Colby Lynch of Barrie here in person, and next after that is Jessica Laporte and Buster Caswell. Hi, my name is Colby Lynch, and I currently live at the Quality Inn in Barrie. First, I'd like to give a bit of background information on how exactly my partner and I found ourselves living in a hotel room. When the pandemic began, we were both home care providers. Tyler had been working with an agency at a more town for over a decade. He was great at the job of caregiving, and I was relatively new, though my background as a single parent prepared me well. I was going smoothly with work, however our living situation became a precarious one. The owner of the house we were renting to the tune of 1600 per month had plans to sell the property and needed to fix it up. I was hoping that we could stay here, stay there during this transition, but that was not the case. We had to be given a notice to vacate within three months. At the time, we didn't really think it was that big of a deal other than the arduous task of moving our belongings during mud season. We secured a room through front porch form and moved in at the beginning of May 2021. Despite our desire to make the living situation work, we recognized that we had to leave what had become an unhealthy living situation. By that time, it was a height of the housing crisis and there were no options available no matter how much money you made. So we found ourselves living in our van. When you are living in a vehicle and the temperatures are getting down to 28 degrees, it is a life-changing experience one I still have not fully recovered from. We moved into a hotel room on November 4th, 2020, 2021. We were just glad to be somewhere warm and not living in our vehicles. But I want to stress the reality that motel rooms are for vacations or weekend excursions, not everyday life. I could go on, but my main message is this. If there were housing units available, then we would be in one right now. Vermont has no housing safety net. We had to switch careers because if we make even $60 more than we currently make at low-wage jobs, we would not be able to stay at the hotel. But this is a chicken and egg situation. Even if we find housing, we have to show that we can afford it. But we can't secure more lucrative income sources because if we do, we are kicked out of our current situation and would be homeless again. We see signs that everywhere is hiring, but having no homes available to rent is impacting folks' ability to apply for these jobs. If this great need for unavailable housing persists, Vermont will lose a lot of good workers. It is comforting to know that there are those who hold public office that do truly care. That being said, I shouldn't have to feel like I'm violating community standards just by simply existing. These days, the weariness of this situation has my spirits draining rapidly. I know that I'm a physically and mentally strong individual capable of a lot of good. I'm a mother to a grown boy, a visionary artist, and a worthy confidant. I enjoy a good laugh even at the expense of myself, but having no place to live is no laughing matter. The debasing stereotypes towards a homeless need to be eradicated from public dissent. Perhaps the day will come when I can look back and chuckle at the desperation behind emptying my middle-aged bladder into a fire yogurt container in the dead of the early morning, freezing my behind off in the car because a water pump in the van went out again. Or waiting in anticipation for the dreaded cop knock on the van window assaulting my precious sleep just to make sure everything is okay. A day will come when I'm able to stretch out on my own couch again and have access to a table to do my art in my own space or cook in my own kitchen so I can entertain friends and family at my dinner table. A situation like this can be debasing and destabilizing. I'm thankful that I can choose for it not to be demoralizing. I have made a few friends at the motel. Grit and candor and I like to think wisdom has pulled me through this experience thus far. I only wish to use my testimony as a way of addressing the issues acting and moving forward. The words of Eleanor Roosevelt have become clear to me in these chaotic times. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. I will end on this note. Thanks so much, Ms. Lynch. Next we have Jessica Laporte of Ducksberry on Zoom and on deck is Buster Caswell and then Nancy Snyder. You're muted, Jess. There you go. Hi. My vehicle stopped but I was unable to make it home and I heard you were going to call my name so I pulled over. I do just want to take a moment to appreciate both the gravity and unfortunately how common situations like the person before me are. I know that that brought emotion up in me in understanding the humanity of the people that we share this state with. I'm calling in as a member of the public but also as a member of the land access and opportunity board. A board created in the last biennium to address housing equity issues and land access issues for protected classes in Vermont. As I think about my aft of legislators, I feel continually confused of how to collaborate with you all as an active member of the public, as somebody who has testified on behalf of a number of issues and as somebody who is experiencing the intersections of marginalization in our state. But as a member of the land access and opportunity board, I want to choose to put energy into that space because I believe it's a powerful piece of legislation that is creating an opportunity for collaboration across departments and with legislators and most importantly with the public to solve housing crisis issues to engage in housing and land access from an equity framework. The land access and opportunity board was created in Act 182 Infection 22 if you're not familiar with it and we just released our sunrise report yesterday. We are housed under the BHCB and we I'm calling in today to ask and to advocate for a minimum appropriation of around 1.2 million annually. And we would really like to ask the legislature and the relevant committees and the appropriations board. I don't even know how all this functions for multi-year funding for about 4.8 million. I'm asking for that number as a member of the board understanding that our annual 1.2 million if we have to come back and advocate for it every single year will not allow us to both recruit and retain the talented staff that we need to make this work effective. One of our main charges is not just to potentially have our own programming and granting but to actually have advisory powers over a number of state and institution. And we believe that by empowering the LAOB to do its work you all will actually be empowering greater efficiency across departments that will allow for more effective equity strategies because right now from where I stand in the experience of community organizers trying to create access to these programs there are many many folks falling through the gaps and that these programs are not right size for and even when we band together to try to access low interest loans or other other forms of services we often are still denied so we would really like to have a concentrated strategic effort to make these more effective programs through the LAOB. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks. Thank you. Next is Buster Caswell on Zoom followed by Nancy Snyder and Hawa Adhan. Buster Caswell of Milton. Oh in person. Oh he is okay. He's coming through. Okay. It's a digital switch. Yes. Yeah no I didn't think that was... They can see that like another person. I like him. Okay. It's very fancy. Hello. Hi. Okay. All right. Thank you. Leaders for your valuable time listening to the public. I applaud the speaker before me. A very valuable testimony there. Fireworkers symbol setting on top of the capital is agriculture. It sits on a dome that dome sits on a home and we need to address the home of fireworker housing. There are 2.6 million fireworkers in the United States. Agriculture in the United States and Vermont is a thriving industry that provides 1.3 trillion in economic impact and provides food for 336 million citizens in beyond. Fireworkers provide all Americans with access to self-safe, healthy, affordable food. Fireworkers are the critical first step in our food supply chain. Fireworkers are always essential and their contributions to the food we purchase often go unseen. Fireworkers provide highly skilled and often physically and mentally challenged labor that is often taken for granted and fireworkers contribute their work to meet and exceed the challenges of mother nature to perform under extreme pressures through the epidemic that we all face and other global challenges. Fireworkers need a home and agriculture is thriving in our rural economies in our rural economies and our fireworkers need housing because our agriculture depends on it and we must build homes off the farms for our fireworkers. We must build and continue to build homes on the farms, give our farmers the support and technical support and funding necessary to do so and we also need to continue the ongoing work of the fireworker repair program that had begun last year. We must commit funds fully to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. We also must support the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition's goals and the Vermont Housing Coalition's Coalition's goals in meeting all the needs of the housing in agriculture. Yes, thank you for your value. Thank you, Mike. Next in person, we have Nancy Snyder of Burlington and Hawa Adon. If they come, otherwise we'll move to Cindy Reed and then Michelle Kersey. It's difficult to talk with all of you because you're talking with all of us. Thank you for having me and thank you for all the good work you are doing in these committees for the people of Vermont. I really appreciate your efforts and I've already learned a great deal just with the first few speakers. My name is Nancy Snyder. I live in downtown Burlington in a Cathedral Square community called Juniper House. I want to talk to you about affordable housing in Vermont, but specifically senior housing and my experience with the nonprofit Cathedral Square. When I retired five years ago, this is a good story by the way, when I retired five years ago, it was clear that I wanted to live in Burlington. My two married children and five wonderful grandchildren live near and around Burlington. It is a vibrant city with accessible healthcare and public transportation. And so I began an intensive search for an apartment that suited the needs of a single senior woman. Even five years ago, rents were very high and inventory was very low. I almost gave up. Then a friend told me about Cathedral Square. I immediately sent in an application. I waited two and one half years, two and one half years for an opening and was finally offered an apartment just two years ago today. It was during COVID and I signed the lease site unseen. I couldn't have a tour of the facility. I am very fortunate today to live in a modern building with amenities like an in-house gym, recreation activities, an in-house property manager, and all kinds of activities planned for our recreation in a prime location near all the services I need. I am so grateful Cathedral Square. I feel safe and comfortable and I live a good life. I also serve on the board of directors of Cathedral Square. So I want to share some numbers with you. Today there are about 1,300 applicants waiting for a senior apartment. They are all qualified and all deserving. They also will wait two to five years to get an apartment. Meanwhile, Cathedral Square has 27 housing opportunities in and around Burlington. They're very successful at building and managing senior housing. We're working on it to get more housing. Please fully fund the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and please be generous. We all know there's a housing crisis in our state. If we can house those 13 people waiting for an apartment, it would free up their homes and provide housing for young families a win for everyone. Thank you. Thank you. So it looks like we don't have howl right now. We'll hopefully return to them. But Cindy Reed of South Burlington, you are up and then we have Michelle Cursey and Jackie Wagner. Great. Thank you. Hello. I'm Cindy Reed. Nice set up for me. Nancy, thank you. I'm the director of housing development at Cathedral Square. Cathedral Square is a non-profit, affordable senior housing and services provider and thank you for this opportunity tonight. I've been developing housing for 10 years at Cathedral Square during this time I've witnessed the need for affordable housing increased exponentially and I've also witnessed the transformative nature of affordable housing with on-site services in the lives of lower income older adults. It's imperative that we continue to invest in affordable housing for our increasingly older population. Cathedral Square has about 1200 people on its wait list for independent living and assisted living. In October, we opened a 30 unit housing community in rural South Hero called Bayview Crossing, which quickly leased up and already has 89 people on the wait list. Some residents came from housing insecurity. Some residents sold their homes to move to Bayview, opening up housing for working families. All of these seniors moved into Bayview Crossing because they needed safe, appropriate housing with SASH, support and services at home on site. What has happened for residents of Bayview Crossing since they moved in? Through SASH, we have provided individualized care coordination and one-on-one wellness assessments with our wellness nurse. We've offered programs like Tai Chi exercise, wellness nurse presentations, blood pressure checks, TED Talks, access to transportation, access to food security programs like group and congregate meals, commodity boxes, local food shelf, those have all taken off. Our partnership with the local nonprofit CIDR has enhanced what we can accomplish through SASH, in particular with transportation, meals and wellness programs. The combination of affordable housing and onsite SASH services to help older adults not just help older adults not just thrive, not just exist but thrive. We need to do more for the people on our wait list and for older adults all over the state. Funding for Vermont Housing and Conservation Board at the statutory level of 27.8 million approximately is a critical step in making it possible to develop more housing like Bayview Crossing in South Hero and Juniper House in Burlington. We could not have developed those communities without BHCB funding. Thank you so much for this opportunity to meet with you tonight to underscore the critical need for more affordable housing and for your incredible service to Vermont communities all over the state. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. So next we have Michelle Kersey of Plainfield in person and if we don't get Jackie Wagner on then Catherine Malosik. It's after that. Hi, thank you all for holding this hearing tonight. I'm a resident of Plainfield and I'm chair of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. Vermont's housing crisis has been decades in the making. Even before the pandemic we were hearing from our members of the coalition about long wait lists for their apartments and from my own personal experience searching for an apartment in Central Vermont a few months ago I can tell you that it is a race to be the first person to reach out to a landlord when an apartment becomes available a game of hitting the refresh button on your web browser every 15 minutes as you search Craigslist. The ongoing negative impacts of well-intentioned legislation and local zoning regulations with unintended consequences paired with consistent underinvestment of public dollars have contributed to our housing shortage and people with low incomes black indigenous and people of color older community members and people with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by the current shortage. Just as it has taken decades to get to this point it will take us years to make things right but there's a good place to start and that's by fully funding Vermont Housing and Conservation Board at the full statutory level of 50% of the property transfer tax revenue. It's estimated that if BHCB had been funded fully over the last decade it would have resulted in creation of another 1,000 units of affordable housing. Fully funding BHCB won't be enough we must continue to invest at accelerated rates to create the housing necessary to fix what the market will not correct on its own. Substantial capital investments in emergency shelters new affordable housing and the preservation of existing affordable housing is essential. VAHC calls for a combined level of capital investment totaling $215 million between the Budget Adjustment Act and the fiscal year 24 budget. We also support increasing funding for mental assistance programs including the Vermont Mental Subsidy Program and the Home Voucher Program as well as funding to expand both the SASH for all program and the Family Supported Housing Program. At the same time we must remove barriers that developers face when creating the housing that our community so desperately need. We applaud the work currently being done in the Legislature to address these issues. We also need to protect community members who are most adversely affected by the shortage of housing in Vermont. Renter protections are necessary but we need to be sure that any safeguards we put in place do not result in unintended negative consequences for those renters. We can learn from the protections put in place in other areas of the country and we call on the Legislature to commission a study performed by an independent group to explore renter protection such as just cause eviction and rent increase caps. Thank you all so much for your hard work and your dedication to the people of Vermont and to solving the housing crisis. So if we don't have Jackie Wagner, we don't. We'll move on to Catherine Milosec of Wilder on Zoom and then after that is John Hafner of Hartford here. Hi, my name. I'm trying to get my video to show. Let's see. My name is Kathy. There I am. My name is Kathy. I live in Wilder, Vermont, which is one of the five villages of Hartford, Vermont. I grew up in Rutland town and I went to school with messiers back in the day. So I instantly recognized that name earlier in this meeting. Wilder is one of five villages in the town of Hartford. You might know our town's other villages better, White River Junction and Quiche. I'm using Wilder as an example of what I hope we can address along with affordable housing in something we've always promoted in this work for the housing problems in the state right now. We're reportedly the first planned worker community in the state having been gridded and designed for workers at the mill near the Wilder dam on the Connecticut River. We have a quote, remarkably intact historic center. We are a compact neighborhood of humble homes, a way of saying many, including minor historic fixer-uppers on small lots. We have for more than 100 years been the kind of neighborhood that developers and town planners are trying to recreate now. I will follow up with my testimony with a written piece to the committee, but I wanted to put a voice to what we've experienced in Wilder and Hartford overall. And having been a renter for many years, I understand the powerlessness that often goes along with that when it comes to landlords. We're surrounded by gold towns, including Norwich, Woodstock, Hanover, New Hampshire. Lebanon, New Hampshire just across the street from us and Hartford have by far borne the brunt of development since I moved here 23 years ago. We've also borne the brunt of working to shelter the unhoused or those at risk of homelessness, something that we promote at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, but often at the risk of slander, fights by developers, board members, many of whose people, directors and staff, do not live in Hartford. From a lay person's point of view, and having participated in town planning, I can tell you what I've seen happen around here. We've all heard of people recently given sudden notice of eviction. This has happened because of Northern Stage and White River Junction by MG2 in Quiche in Heartland by growth cap management, what a name, just across the bridge in Lebanon. That particular eviction included a veteran who was given notice of eviction on Veterans Day. We're under incredible pressure from developers, non-profit and otherwise, and we're seeing neighborhoods disappear. We have tried to get help from the Division of Historic Preservation to work with us and developers that has not necessarily been successful. As with the woman from Stowe, I agree that we need a holistic consideration of the housing issue addressing the increasingly large income gap between the haves and the have-nots and all that goes along with that, such as broadband and transportation. I read a quote from private equity investor ones that affordable housing is considered a relatively safe investment because the demand is only expected to go up. And I think that's wrong. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Kathy. Next is John Hafner from Hartford here in person. And after that, Angela Harbin and Cindy Zook on Zoom. Good evening. Thank you, Chair Ron Hensdale and the committee here as well. I'm John Hafner. I'm from White River Junction. I'm also a housing and transportation program manager at Vital Communities. Vital Communities cultivates the civic, environmental and economic fatality of the Upper Valley region that we call 69 Towns, spanning the Connecticut River. Our housing program stewards a network of business, municipal, non-profit and community leaders focused on meeting the Upper Valley's workforce housing needs. As part of that over the past few months, our organization has conducted extensive community engagement to try and understand what issues are most acute for the people in our region. And repeatedly, our communities are saying that the number one issue is housing. Comments have ranged from the personal, like lifelong residents not being able to age in place as we've often heard today because of the lack of appropriate housing to the institutional like our major healthcare provider in our region not being able to hire medical staff because there is no housing for their workforce. And whether these issues are personal or institutional, they are existential and they threaten the vitality of our communities in the Upper Valley. So I applaud you all for doing the legislative work to try and address this issue. The draft bills that are currently working their way through both the Senate and House, I think are immensely needed and just wanted to point to a few things that I have drawn out as I think important and should be commented on. So the attention to comprehensive land use reform and the focus on density is critical. So that is a huge step forward. I think specifically emphasizing housing over parking lots is immensely important. And I would say you could even go even further and just abolish minimum parking standards. Modernizing Act 250 to support incremental development that actually preserves our natural resources instead of encouraging sprawl is absolutely necessary, focusing on our our downtown cores and our village centers. Moreover, I want to applaud you for continuing appropriations to establish programs and agencies like the Vermont Rental Housing Improvement Program and the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. And I echo recommendations that this board should be fully funded to its $27.8 million statutory level. And these are all holding the ground against this housing, this mounting crisis. So additionally, I want to applaud the experimenting with innovative programs that support manufactured housing investment, missing middle income home ownership, employer sponsored housing, and funding resource navigators to help our communities access the once in a generation funding that is coming through the federal level. This funding has been propping up efforts like transportation that are now losing funding and struggling to connect to the additional funding that's needed. So fully resourcing positions to help connect communities to the funding that is out there is also critical. All of these things are helpful to to the cause of providing a safe and affordable home for everyone. And so just have to ask, can there be more? Can the draft legislation go beyond what's next? And more importantly, what can we all do to help? So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we have hopefully Angela Harbin of Tunbridge on Zoom. She's on deck. On deck is Cindy's. There we go. Yeah. So good evening. I'm Angie Harbin. I do live in Tunbridge, but I'm here tonight as the Executive Director of Downstreet Housing and Community Development. We serve Central Vermont. I echo the appreciation that's been shared tonight already for the committee's investment in understanding the state of housing in Vermont. There are so many things I could share about housing needs in the state and the county served by Downstreet. But with only three minutes, I'm going to let it down to the simplest components. We need a lot more permanently affordable housing. We need to preserve existing affordable housing so we are not losing ground while we build new. And we need to assume the responsibility of ensuring that people can sleep indoors while we work to solve a housing problem that they didn't create. So I think we all know that we need enough of the full spectrum of homes from emergency shelter to market rate home ownership so that we can meet the housing needs of all Vermonters. Some well-informed estimates are saying that it will take up to 40,000 more year-round homes across the state to meet this need by 2030. That's a daunting number. And we know that our lower and moderate income residents are at the highest risk of cost burden, displacement, or even homelessness. So while we're determinedly bolstering the state stock through multiple creative and innovative initiatives, we need to be sure that we are intentionally providing adequate funding and enacting the inclusionary zoning practices that will allow us to create and preserve the permanently affordable homes that are a critical part of reducing homelessness, of stabilizing vulnerable families, and of creating more vibrant and equitable communities. Permanent affordable housing also is also necessary to retain Vermont employers and sustain our ability to access essential services workers need an affordable place to live. So achieving this by making an investment in permanently affordable housing means that beneficiaries of these public dollars are consistently the people who need it most. So I ask that you please fully fund the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board at the full statutory level as a first step in ensuring that we have enough affordable homes. And right now, in our community right now, there are people experiencing homelessness in part because we haven't made these investments in ensuring that Vermont has enough affordable homes. And that's on us. I mean, housing is a basic human right. In a just society, access is not predicated on market forces or one's health status or their ability to earn sufficient income. I'm the first to also add that housing is complicated. And I'm very thankful to tonight's other presenters that will talk about some of those complexities, including community and housing service needs. But as you're making hard choices about what to fund, I ask that you please consider what it says about us as a state and as people. If we choose not to ensure that members of our community have access to shelter, we'll also investing in our future and investing in the homes they deserve by addressing our permanent housing shortage. Thank you. Thank you, Angie. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Cindy Zook on Zoom. And Will Eberle in person, if he's here, I don't currently see him. Okay. Cindy. Hi, thank you very much for starting this this evening. This is really important. My name is Cindy Zook, and I am a SASH coordinator at Thayer House in Burlington's New North End. Thayer House is a cathedral square property and contains 70 of the over 1,000 apartments that Cathedral Square has developed across three counties for older adults and those with disabilities. Even with those apartments perpetually affordable for the future, we have over 1,300 people on the waiting list, as you have heard before. And over 200 people are waiting to get into Thayer House alone at this time. The average wait is three to five years. I am asking you this evening to please consider to make more funding available for perpetually affordable age specific housing. Please make it a priority for your session. Sometimes I don't think people realize that when low-income elder housing is developed, there's often a sunset clause and eventually those affordable units can be raised to market rates. Cathedral Square sees people having to flee from those buildings after the rents go up to come onto the Cathedral Square lists. A large number of our residents are remanters who have planned their entire lives. They have followed the three-legged stool rule of retirement. They have their 1,200, 1,300 dollars a month for their Social Security. They have their little pension of 200 or 300 dollars a month from working at the hospital or working at the city clerk's office. They sold their little house for not very much because the maintenance had gotten so bad. And now in their 70s and 80s and 90s, they have no place to go and live in the community that they have lived in their entire lives. The skyrocketing costs of living in Vermont cities is something that they never imagined. And there is a role for government here to help level that playing field for those folks who brought success to our communities. Families are trying to help, but there is certainly not much inherited wealth here for these folks. And as individuals try to maintain their health insurance and live a life, they quickly fall into deeper poverty that will certainly take more state money and more social workers to extricate them from. It is important to keep people in their communities that allows their children, friends, and churches and other support systems to come to their aid. For the foreseeable future, it is going to be a challenge to find the many healthcare aids and social workers to help care for our older remanters. They need to stay near support. The hiring crisis is real. So please consider making this investment now and support the older remanters dream that if you work hard and you have your little savings and you sell your little house to a young family that is starting, that you can make a lateral move to a safe, affordable place where we can support people. We want to support the circle of life and not a cycle of poverty. And I thank you very much for taking the time and holding this hearing. Thank you, Mrs. So next, as I understand it, we have Marion Leakey and Margaret Anderson, both of South Hero. They both live in the same community, so we might have them succession or together. That's if we'll hi. Is that Marion and Margaret? Yes. Great. Well, I suppose collectively you have six minutes. So however you want to divide that up is fine with us. My name is Marion Leakey. I'm 85 years old. I live in South Hero in Casino Square Park in Tobay, Newcastle. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today about housing. I am a few lucky ones. I have found housing in my hometown at the time I really needed it. I have lived for 37 years in South Hero in a three bedroom home a little over two acres. I kept up with it pretty well. I could cut the grass on my tractor. I couldn't use a bushmore for the weed lacquer. Our house maintenance issues became harder and harder. Finally, health problems with my Maggie Showers made me realize it was time to leave my home that I loved. But I wanted to stay independent and stay in South Hero. My home town is my long time friends. Again, I was lucky and my tiny was right. Cathedral Square was building an affordable housing community for older adults right here in South Hero. My son helped me fill out the application and mine was the first application submitted to Cathedral Square. There were well over 100 applicants for 30 apartments. I moved in just as past October. It was hard to leave your home within 37 years. I cried about it, but he arranged my new apartment so that the furniture's light was in my old house. And now I feel like I've come to closure with the change. And I really like it here and my home became available to a needy family. I participate in a lot of events that happen here at Bayview. I walk regularly. I meet new friends. I help teaching a girl how to knit. We made Valentine cookies and cards. I just signed up for SASH, so I will support from the staff here with my help and Bobby. In fact, my SASH coordinator calls help me so I can talk to you right now. My message to you all, please make affordable housing to priority to all ages so that it is only, not only, if you want. Like that, I think it helps and I think it's a family opportunity for me. Thank you. Thanks so much. This is Meg Anderson. Hi, Meg. Hi. My name is Meg Anderson and I'm a resident of Cathedral Square's new senior housing development in South Hero, also Bayview Crossing. And here's my story. I was raised in Southern Connecticut and raised my own family in Southern Vermont. My husband and I grew a one bedroom ranch to a four bedroom two-bed home on his ancestral land in Williamsville. Our three daughters all attended public schools and then went on to college, to UBM and one in Boston. After the kids left home, my husband and I parted ways amicably. I moved to Burlington to be near my daughters and he stayed on in the home we had built together. From 2012 to 2020, I lived at Little Eagle Bay off of North Avenue in Burlington, a peaceful rental community by the lake and on the bike path. I worked for TLC and eldercare, Cathedral Square as a property management and finally for KGM guardianship agency as an administrative assistant. In March of 2020, COVID hit and everything changed. My job with KGM ended and at the same time, my daughter lost daycare for her one-year-old son. So in May of that year, in order to help my daughter's family and to reduce my own living expenses, I bought a small camper and parked it on their land in Fletcher. I stayed there on my camper from May to October in 2020, 21, and 22. During the cold months, I found alternate housing. First with home share Vermont and then our friends rental unit in Fairfax. All in all, I moved seven times in three years. Let me tell you, it was exhausting. However, if I had to do it all over again, I most certainly would. For the simple and all important reason that I landed here at Bayview Crossing, where my rent is affordable, the community is respectful, caring, and kind, and I feel safe and secure knowing that I'm going to spend my days here, close to my family, and in peace. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much, Mag and Marion, and thanks Paul also for helping facilitate. We appreciate that. Next is Leo Schiff of Brattleboro. Here and then Patricia Tedesco disaster. Hi, Leo. Hi, I can't say the clock, but that'll work out. Hi, my name's Leo Schiff, and I've lived in Brattleboro for about 40 years, and I've worked in human services for the past 30 years. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I've worked for Morningside Shelter in Brattleboro for five years. I've been with the state of Vermont working for voc rehab for the past 24 years. I'm currently supporting the agency of human services effort to help individuals successfully transition out of the pandemic transitional motel housing. Today I'm speaking, testifying solely in my role as a board member for the Wind & Windsor Housing Trust. The scarcity of safe, affordable, responsibly run housing is a huge problem in Vermont. There is no single solution. However, organizations such as the Housing Trust play an important role in the solution. The Housing Trust is able to charge much more affordable rents than most landlords. Many of their projects include subsidized units which create affordability for more vulnerable populations. The Housing Trust also serves as a second chance landlord for individuals whose life difficulties have had a negative impact on their housing history. We've learned during the pandemic about the multiplicity of challenges vulnerable populations face and the impact of those challenges on the individuals and their communities. Safe, responsibly run affordable housing provides the foundation, the platform for individuals to make changes that they need. But it takes much more than just housing to transform their lives. Many individuals will need ongoing support services in order to successfully navigate their new lives. It is important for the legislature to understand that housing needs to be paired with support services in order to complete the success. There are many different models to provide the support services such as SASH for all, case management through designated agencies, those kinds of things. But the point I want to make is that support services need to be funded in addition to the support that the state offers to create new housing. In addition I would say that the subsidies need to keep up with the rising cost of housing in Vermont. So to summarize, I asked the state to fund more affordable housing projects coupled with subsidies and support services. Thank you. Thank you, Leo. Next is Patricia Tedesco and I understand Cynthia Haviland is trying to phone in and might have some trouble. Our staff are trying to help you as well if you can hear us and then we have Jean Zimmerman in person. Hi, Patricia. Good evening. Hey, I just got promoted. That was pretty cool. My name is Patricia Tedesco. I'm a resident of Woodbury, Vermont. I am the program services manager at the Vermont Center for Independent Living. DCIL is a statewide nonprofit established in 1979 to help people with disabilities. VCIL's home access program provides housing modifications for low-income Vermonters who have permanent physical disabilities so they can remain in their homes and live more independently. Our primary funding comes from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and we fully support their full funding. At the end of the narrative, which I've supplied, you will find before and after photos and stories from people who have benefited from this important program. You'll hear from Vermonters like Rodney in Franklin County who shared a story with us, quote, I had a lot of trouble getting in and out of my home because of the steps. I didn't feel safe going outside unless someone was there to help me. It was unsafe. Now that I have a ramp, I can come and go as I please. I also want to say thanks for helping me get more of my independence back. You'll find lots of stories like that and the photos and the testimony I supplied by email. Taking a shower or getting in and out of our homes easily is something most of us perhaps take for granted. However, the people that we help at VCIL see this as a daily struggle. I think we can all agree that Vermont needs more housing. Vermont needs more affordable housing. But another consideration is Vermont needs accessible housing. Universal design for new construction would build bathrooms that everybody can use, regardless if they have a disability or a guest with a disability or they end up with a disability later on themselves. As I always tell my 90-year-old parents, you need a ramp before you need a ramp. And they're finally getting one this spring. We receive about a dozen applications a month from people who cannot access their bathrooms or enter their homes easily. We also receive applications from elders who have moved into brand new senior housing built with a bathtub rather than an accessible shower. Seems kind of a waste of money to put in a brand new tub and then we come in and put in a brand new shower. So I'm urging you consider universal design so everybody has access. For as many projects as we help with, the waiting list does not seem to diminish and the need is high throughout the state. Post COVID, we've noticed that it's been difficult to get contractors. So in some cases we have funding in place, but nobody to do the work. I appreciate all of your help. I'm urging full funding for VHCB and I hope you have a good evening. Thank you so much. Patricia. Thank you. So if we haven't gotten Cynthia back, we'll go to Jean Zimmerman in person from South Burlington. And although people have touched on homelessness and emergency shelter, these are the couple of folks who signed up specifically under that category. Hello. I'm Jean Zimmerman and I live in South Burlington. I have a master's degree in clinical mental health and addictions counseling and have worked in this field for over 20 years. Vermont is a special place. There are times when we can do both what is right and what is emotionally sound. I'm going to talk about the funding Vermont is receiving for both homelessness reduction and as restitution for the crimes of the pharmaceutical companies who pushed opiates upon the American public. My husband and I have a son who decided at a young age to become a doctor during his adolescence. He broke several bones participating in sports. This was the 90s in early 2000s and he was prescribed opiates by the ER physicians. We told them how to prescribed and never knew he began looking for more. He started UVM with straight A's fast forward junior year. His grades slipped. In his senior year, we finally discovered he was addicted to opiates specifically Oxtacone. By that time, he was also using heroin. He found a local doctor who prescribed Suboxone and other medications. Our son left UVM in his dreams of being a doctor behind in 2005. He became often on homeless working odd jobs. After several years in overdoses, he woke up one night at the ER face to face with an old friend from UVM who had become a doctor who convinced him to go to rehab. His first of more than 12 separate rehab stays. Each time he was released after two weeks, mostly unsheltered, no job, no money, the follow-up plan to try to seek out housing and go to the local clinic for methadone or Suboxone. He briefly stays in transition houses, each time asked to leave immediately at relapse. We know addiction is a relapsing and recovery disease. It can take years for sobriety to become stable, yet we send individuals with serious drug dependency to short inpatient stays. And if they are lucky enough to secure one of the few transitional housing beds, we punish them with homelessness. Our son has a disease that began with the indiscriminate prescribing of opiates to a child. He has gone from happy with a wonderful future to ashamed, broken and homeless. He has been viciously beaten on the street, molested, starving, freezing and exposed out in the cold rain and brutal heat of summer. He is ill, his teeth are falling out. He is dying on our streets and he is not alone. Vermont can use opiates, settlement and homelessness reduction funds to house those who have been most harmed by this crisis. And in doing so, we can benefit all Vermonters. We know from research that the majority of individuals who become housed recover over time, becoming more self-supporting as underlying problems and traumas are remediated, ceasing to utilize so many social services and saving tax dollars. We also know that individuals who feel hopeless, disenfranchised and desperate may reserve to crimes as they view it their only option for survival. Research also tells us secure housing over time reduces anti-social behaviors, including crime. In the reduction of crime, we see improvements in our own lives. Residential and commercial thefts go down. Our neighborhoods and business districts become safer. They appear more welcoming. They encourage shopping and dining and out-of-state tourism dollars to be spent and police and criminal justice costs are reduced. Vermont is a very special place and this is our unique opportunity to improve the lives of all Vermonters. Please let us not waste it. Thank you, Tina. Thank you. So Martin, Han has canceled and next is Rebecca Plummer of Montpelier. We were able to get Cynthia have a lot. Oh, great. Okay. She's on the phone though, so I'm going to put her phone. Great. Cynthia, we're glad you could join us. She's there. She's just muted. Okay. Cynthia, if you can hear us and you're able to unmute, ready to listen. Why don't we keep working on it? Cynthia, we're happy to come back to you whenever we can figure out the muting issue, but we'll go to Rebecca Plummer of Montpelier and then Lisa Grenveld on deck, perhaps in person. Hey, Rebecca's coming in. Okay. Cynthia does unmute. I'll just mute her real quick and we'll put her up. Great. Thanks so much, Mike. Sorry for that delay. My name is Rebecca Plummer. I'm a lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid, and I'm the director of our medical legal partnership project. Thank you for holding this hearing. At Vermont Legal Aid and our sister organization Legal Services Vermont, we work with people who are being hit hardest by Vermont's housing crisis, including people going through eviction and people experiencing homelessness. I've worked most closely in recent years through a partnership with clinics providing medication-assisted treatment to people with substance use disorder. These people, like Ms. Zimmerman, who just spoke a few minutes ago, her son, are folks who are trying to turn their lives around and need, more than at any other point, a stable place to live, but instead, they're often very precariously housed or experiencing homelessness. During the pandemic, Vermont's received critical federal assistance to shelter people experiencing homelessness and avoid an even greater public health crisis, but as we all know, that money is drying up. At the same time, the housing crisis has exploded. There's simply no housing to be found. Vermont led the way in keeping people experiencing homelessness safe during the pandemic. We did this reactively, but we've seen how important it is and how it helps all of us, and we have a chance now to plan and to do it better. We cannot return to unsheltered homelessness. We at Vermont Legal Aid believe, as Angela Harbin of Down Street said a little while ago, that housing is a human right. The Legislature is working through the Budget Adjustment Act to address the impending. Next month, for people who are sheltered in motels, we appreciate this and we urge the Legislature to protect as many people as possible through this fix and not let people fall through the cracks. We at Vermont Legal Aid strongly support the Bridges to Housing proposal for the future of emergency housing in Vermont that was put forth by numerous housing and homelessness advocacy organizations earlier this month, including finding alternatives to motel-based shelter, investing in affordable housing. We also support a rent-rescue program and other measures to prevent evictions that in a housing market with no vacancies are a direct vector of homelessness. I want to just say for a moment that the proposal by this coalition to fully fund and re-envision the GA emergency housing program is really critical. This administration has repeatedly expressed a desire to end the GA program and has not put forth a plan for emergency housing beyond the federal funding we have now. As we work with people who are experiencing homelessness and in danger of becoming homeless, we feel a shocking disconnect here. Yes, investing in housing is essential and urgently needed, but we can't pretend that this will happen quickly or that it will end homelessness completely. We'll continue to have people who need emergency housing and we need a robust humane emergency housing program for our neighbors who find themselves in these situations that protects them when they need a safe place to stay and helps them to find new permanent housing as soon as possible. Now is the time to create that this program. Thank you very much for your time and your work for Vermonters. Thank you, Ms. Plummer. So we are switching gears to zoning and regulatory reform, more formally. And I don't know if Lisa is here. Oh, great. Okay, I didn't see you by. Lisa Grenveld of South Burlington is up, followed by Peter Plummer of South Burlington. Ms. Chair, I was like a throne. Hi, everyone. Thank you for hearing us tonight. I really appreciate that. My name is Lisa Grenveld. I'm a very native and a resident of South Burlington. I am also the co-founder and vice chair of the Board of On Logic. We are a computer hardware company located in South Burlington with offices in the Netherlands, Taiwan, Malaysia, and North Carolina. Living close to where we work improves our quality of life and it preserves our environment. But purchasing or renting a home in many Vermont communities has become increasingly difficult and in many cases prohibitively expensive. So I talked to my team and I said, I'm going to go down to Montpelier. What would you like me to say? And so here are their stories and their own words. Of course, I'm talking about our employees who are by and large mental income folks. Derek Fanton, our communications manager, and his wife, both work in South Burlington, but they purchased a condo in Milton five years ago and now they commute. They spent a year actively shopping for a property in South Burlington and ended up choosing Milton only after carefully considering a possible move to North Carolina because they couldn't find anything affordable next to their offices. Derek wants you to know that he appreciates the state weighing in on issues of housing availability. Vermont legislators hear my voice, whereas officials in cities I can't afford to be part of like South Burlington simply don't. Nathan Hoffman, he works on our marketing team. He asked, quote, how does a new Vermont or or new American find a home in Chittenden County? I was only able to find housing because my parents have lived there their entire lives and use their connections. Prices are outrageous and most places need a lot of work. Lucas Trembley, our production technician said, I grew up in South Burlington. I just got a raise. I make good money, but I'm priced out of my own city. My life is a double whammy of student debt and unaffordable housing. I'm 35 and I only live here because I live with my mom. This is a well-known problem in South Burlington. Housing is a disaster and I don't see it being fixed. There are a lot of stories. I'm even going to skip the next one unfortunately. This is a fellow from California who was shocked that housing in Burlington is as expensive as Sonoma County. These are Vermonters who make nationally competitive wages, yet can't find affordable housing near our global headquarters in South Burlington. With low and middle market houses in extremely short supply, our teams have been pushed to the outskirts of Chittenden County and this shortage is holding them back from building their lives and it's impacting our environment and it's slowing our economic growth. I want to thank you all for the hard work you're doing working with Vermont communities and I want you to know that South Burlington is a wonderful place to live. The state of Vermont is a wonderful place to live and OnLogic wants to help. Anyway, we can. You're welcome to come to visit. Please do me a big trip. Thanks so much Lisa. And a sort of mid-course reminder that we will take written testimony and post it on our website and so we can hear all the stories. Thank you so much. We have Peter Fumo of South Burlington up next and we don't have Nicole Kesselring here yet, so after that would be Eric Stacey in person. Hi Peter. Well thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Peter Fumo. I'm from South Burlington as was mentioned and my comments I think are going to be a really nice adjunct to what you just heard from the representative from OnLogic. Currently I am an independent consultant in organizational change and service and product innovation. I've lived in South Burlington for 23 years specifically in the Southeast quadrant and I'm very happy to be here to express my very strong support for the omnibus housing bill. My professional background is an infrastructure and economic development planning and consulting and I've advised policy makers and private businesses across the country and around the world on these topics. In my opinion this bill is an essential piece of helping remove local barriers to meeting Vermont's need to grow its labor force and to attract quality jobs by allowing the addition of much needed homes. From the perspective of employers such as OnLogic, particularly in those kinds of clean and green industries Vermont wants to attract, retain and grow, proximity to qualified employees is almost universally cited as a critical factor in deciding where to locate. In other words if they can't find the workers they'll go elsewhere therefore facilitating the development of housing that working families can afford with accessibility to quality jobs is essential to building Vermont's future. I think we can also um excuse me I think we all also agree that we want our kids and their families to have a viable economic future here but doesn't require them to move out of state. However according to an analysis by the Washington Post, Vermont annually loses 58 percent of our college graduates which is the lowest rate of retention among all states. Certainly increasing our stock of housing across all price points can only help improve the situation. Finally as I'm sure you know employers desire and need predictable and stable business environments to thrive and provide jobs. This bill will make zoning and building requirements more consistent and predictable across the state thus making home building less costly and promoting economic development. In sum by making it easier to build badly needed homes this bill will help overcome a critical challenge for Vermont's future economic vitality. Thank you very much for your hard work on this important issue. Thank you Peter. So if we don't have Nicole um then next we'll go to Eric Stacey of Windsor and after that is Gary Winslet. Good evening representatives thank you for your time. I'm here to discuss eviction procedure and that the whole process takes at least eight months and costs landlords at minimum $20,000 per eviction. That's my review of the experience. It's in the details where the knife fight really happens. Per chapter 137 on residential rental agreements and in the case of an ejection for non-payment the only statutory defense available to the tenant is non-habitability. In a no-cause ejection or where the landlord has significantly increased the rent the only defense available is that the landlord is retaliating against the tenant for actions taken in the previous 90 days. Now when all this gets to court most problems revolve around who did what in land. Again from chapter 137 and this is tedious. Actual notice is defined as receipt of written notice hand delivered or mailed to the last known address. A reputable presumption that the notice was received three days after mailing is created if the sending party proves that the notice was sent by first class or certified mail. Now anyone can drive a truck through that reputable presumption and it's done frequently. Do you retrieve your certified letters? Also there is absolutely no proof of delivery for that first class letter. So I suggest the definition of actual notice be amended to replace first class and certified mail with priority mail since priority mail comes with tracking. That way everyone involved gets third party proof of receipt or not and the problematic language of reputable presumption can go away. My bigger point here is that there is just not that much to adjudicate. Most evictions start having nothing to do with habitability or retaliation but since these are the only available defenses that work tenants attempt to add them after the fact and quite frankly at the suggestion of legal aid. But with verifiable notice the next reform would be to require the tenant to show proof of said notice for a habitability defense or supporting evidence for retaliation defense at the rent escrow hearing. Please understand that at the rent escrow hearing all stakeholders the judge the tenant and the landlord are present. If the tenant shows that notice was sent and that the landlord might be a bad actor then there's certainly reason for another hearing but if there's no evidence to believe that there's anything to be adjudicated then it's a tenant who is being the bad actor and possession of the property should be returned to the landlord. By the way being a landlord in Vermont is what feeds my family and so sadly the first thing I'm going to do with my multiple $12,000 losses is try and cost shift to my fellow good actor citizens either by raising their rents if I can or if not by not fixing the nuisance issues. There are no saints in housing but it is the service I provide. If the state creates conditions whereby I'm not getting paid then I will be unable to continue to provide the service. Notice how we get back to the starting point of the downward spiral that we're all in. Thank you for your time. We have Gary Winslet of South Burlington in person we don't know if we have Pam the ranger yet so next up that would be Joe Gunter in person. Gary. Hi my name is Gary Winslet I'm an assistant professor of portable science and international politics and economics at Middlebury College. My family so my wife and my now four-year-old daughter and I moved to Vermont in August of 2019 we were really thrilled about it we like winter we like mountains like the outdoors and you know after starting in about 2021 we had what we thought would be a down payment together for house and we just we've been on the housing market ever since and can't afford to buy. You know we think of ourselves as kind of like one of the young families to Vermont kind of wants right like I'm a professor at Middlebury my wife. She is a physician assistant in orthopedics in South Burlington so we'd like to be fairly near where she works and there's just nothing reasonably priced near there like at all houses that would be 300,000 350 and a lot of comparable places are 600,000 or more nearest and we can't afford that we just we can't you know and there's there's a lot of young families you know who have just left because it's too expensive to be here and they don't come knock on your office door they don't come yell at you they don't trip to meetings they just leave because it's too expensive and it's so expensive because we have extremely limited supply and the reason we have extremely limited supply is we've got some regulations that maybe had a lot of good intent behind them but have a lot of unintended consequences so we've got Act 250 at the state level and we've got a lot of zoning at the local level now again I think there's some good intent behind these but the problem is they're really really easy to leverage by one to six people who just don't want to see anything change and it's across the board it's in urban areas like Burlington you'll have people who don't want to see anything above two stories even though it's a major metro area that things revolve around you'll have people in South Burlington who you know they want rural picturesque from their back deck but they want to be five minutes to trade your jokes and so they object to housing near them you'll you'll see it in in rural areas as well this becomes a weapon in the hands of people who just don't want to see anything near them and that creates the housing shortage you know and that's a problem and you know it affects everybody on down because then you get don't get any filtering when you don't build a new housing my life and I and and our daughter and you know we may have another kid or taking in laws we can't buy a house so the condo we currently rent we're pricing somebody out and we don't want to do that that's not something that makes us feel good we want Vermont to be affordable to everybody so we need more abundant housing not so that like middlebury college professors can afford a house but so like middlebury college janitors can't afford a house like that's the people who really are on the sharp end of the housing shortage and we have a shortage because we have these regulations they're just too easy to leverage by people who don't want to see change thank you for your time thank you and we believe we have Cynthia back on the phone on zoom Cynthia can you hear us we need to hear I feel like I'm at a stand like what's happening just a minute am I there you can tell I didn't have to zoom during the pandemic appreciate whatever bearings you face together well thank you for your indulgence my name is Cynthia Haveland I'm 64 years old I've lived in Vermont since 1989 and until March the 30th I'm living in a friend's apartment while there in Florida but then beginning April 1st I have no idea where I'm going to live for the past 19 years I've lived and raised my son in Richmond however near the 1st of November my landlord showed up with a notice of termination for no cause from my apartment of over five years where I have had a stellar record of tendency and I had to be out by December the 31st I started looking for a one-bedroom apartment the day I got my notice of termination and although I'd love to have a place where my son could still live with me part time a two bedroom apartment is stratospherically out of my reach then I learned that there wouldn't even be an available affordable one-bedroom apartment before I had to be out so after the circus that's moving while working over Christmas while breaking up the my 22 year old family that was my child and myself I finally got back to a permanent housing search just after New Year and for the first time in my life and I never thought I would say this I'm actually happy to be designated as a senior because it appears that subsidized senior housing is going to be my only option although are you still there although I lost a month of my temporary housing while trying to make sense with a master's degree of all the complex subsidy and senior housing why and where I'm now on all feasible wait lists in Chittenden County but don't yet know if I'm even going to qualify for subsidy I continue to look for apartments across many housing sites and through extensive word of mouth and I'm not that picky I don't want to mention I'd rather be living in something smaller but I would like to be relatively near Richmond it's the community that I've lived in in my life the longest so my housing clock is ticking while I anxiously wait and I can wait but after hearing from Nancy from Cathedral Square I'm not so sure but I've worked with all my children with children all my life so I'll wait but I have some questions both real and rhetorical where am I supposed to live for possibly the next 12 to 60 months while I wait I wonder while I wait if I will have to deplete my small savings that I reserve from leaving a domestically violent partner with my toddler years ago and use up my tiny pension I have coming from my underpaying career in education all while paying for my belongings to be in storage I wonder if I'm going to have to leave my front my friends my medical support system my job my hobbies and move out of Vermont and although I would never equate my current situation with someone who's defined as homeless by the Vermont subsidy guidelines I do wonder if the definition needs to be revised perhaps our current definition isn't broad enough for the housing situation in Vermont at this juncture because although I'm staying in a house I feel pretty homeless and from how behind building new housing is I have a feeling that unaffordable and unavailable is probably going to force me away from your high school I thank the committee for their work and now I wait thank you thank you so much for your patience making it on with us um we now turn to the miscellaneous set of categories that people wanted to testify under and uh Joe Gunter from Middletown Springs speaking and then Maura Lane of Moortown soon after that good afternoon everybody I appreciate you taking your time and doing these nightmares I know they can be grueling uh so my name is Joe Gunter I live in Middletown Springs I am the town manager in Fairhaven Vermont uh our last three speakers I think it were an excellent segue to into what I wanted to talk about today which impacts my community both Middletown and Fairhaven uh is a missing middle income housing um and in regards to that I wanted to talk about the I think it's S83 Senate Bill 83 this is the the bill that will allow municipalities like mine to create project-based tax increment financing districts yeah that's a lot so I'm going to call it project-based tip or just tip to to shorten that up yeah it's it's too much so um it is great so a lot like we just heard when my wife and I we moved into the state five years ago we had the exact same problem that the last three speakers had like we're not poor but we're also not rich we didn't need low income housing what we needed was less expensive housing to move into the state to take my job I had to liquidate 10 years worth of retirement just to buy a house I'm the lucky one right not everybody can do that like the young man said before people just leave and that's what's happening to our workforce people are just leaving so let's talk about s83 uh the project allows for for tip districts to be established in municipalities uh much like mine by approving this bill uh the legislature would add a very powerful mechanism uh to the development toolbox for our municipalities it'll allow us municipalities to take control of our development dollars and stop this endless cycle of requesting federal grant funding I had a housing development in my town a gentleman he had done the footwork he came to me and said Joe I'm ready to build I said great let's find a builder I reached out as soon as I said federal tax dollars everybody stepped back from the table these tax dollars have strings attached my builders they need to make money it's just the truth of the matter as soon as I say federal dollars nobody wants to deal with me it's too much to deal tiff tiff tiff districts however leverage future tax money the municipalities like mine can use to to make those those construction projects more palatable more profitable for these for these construction companies so I guess my major point and I'm going to be over right on time I thought I'd be I thought I'd be brief um the establishment of tiff districts uh s83 as it introduced as it is introduced is a great bill however it limits it limits those districts to affordable housing what I'm asking is that restriction to be removed my town other towns need middle income housing not just low income housing as per v sas we need we need this to help remind us keep this housing crisis to help the gentleman uh that spoke to me spoke before me moved from his condo into his next home to create that wealth to improve his wealth um I guess that's what I had to say okay thanks everybody thanks thanks go to get the gold star farthest more lane from more town on zoom and then after that I believe Susan erinoff is also on zoom oh she's in the room okay okay hi morah you're muted yes okay okay um such moving stories I've been listening to um you have a big problem with housing my son philip callum is 42 years old he has down syndrome he will never be able to live independently the only option for him is shared living which is essentially adult foster care he has lived in two different homes in the past 20 years both of the families that he lived with were wonderful and I was able to keep in contact with him he was with one family for four years the most recent family that he lived with he lived with them for 10 years they retired and moved to florida philip is heartbroken heartbroken about having to leave this family this disruption in his life has left him depressed and anxious I am hoping that in the future there would be service supported housing for people like philip where he could live with his peers someplace that he could call home a place that he would not have to leave he will very likely outlive us it would be great if money could be appropriated towards housing for this very vulnerable population people like philip thank you thank you mara thank you um so susan erinoff here okay okay that's uh susan erinoff on zoom no no yeah we look pretty bright here we go hi susan hi good evening um first of all thank you madam chair and um mr chair i think that you're holding uh this evening is just so important and thank you to all the committee members who are hanging in there uh this long my name is susan erinoff um i'm a state employee i'm testifying this evening on behalf of the bremont developmental disabilities council for those who are not familiar with it i would direct you to my written statement just a brief overview in the interest of time um i am the rare state employee whose position is entirely federally funded i'm a creature of federal of a federal law the um developmental disabilities of rights act all 50 states have a council we exist to bring the voice of the lived experience of people with developmental disabilities to you i work for a council that's made up of 60 percent of people with um disabilities or their family members we have an annual policy platform it has four items on it this year two of those items are housing items the first is oh my god i'm um so glad that i'm following the woman who spoke before me um i want to talk with you about shared living providers shared living providers provide housing to people with disabilities they're funded by medicaid they work through our designated agencies you know like Howard mental health in 30 days march 17 um 2023 they're going to be under a new set of regulations and we already don't have enough shared living providers in the system they really took a hit during covid they went from like having supports and services in the community for the people they were housing to being 24 7 support providers and we need to really take care of our shared living providers um i would like to see them our proposal is to see them included in some of the newer housing programs so that people who need to make renovations on their homes to comply with the new rules and their housing people with disabilities can get funding to do that we would the set that's one of our policy plans the other is to please include housing for people with disabilities in all housing policies and programs um you've been hearing about the shortage of housing for workers imagine if you were a worker with a disability imagine if you're someone newly acquired disability and you want to age in place that home access program that um paddy tedesco described is great but it's very limited we need more um thank you thank you for your uh service and for your support thank you um so i believe we have a few people on zoom coming up michael monty of burlington and then david fry and michael crancer michael thank you madam chair and thank you members of the legislature for your service to vermont um it's appreciated really i know and understand how much work it is to do the work you're doing the difficult choices and issues that you had to face us i am the ceo sampling housing trust we work here in northwest vermont do provide some services to the entire state through some mobile home lending and some other programs as we work in and i did provide some information i think to members of this committee uh the joint committee um as we think about affordable housing and the need to address affordable housing we never think of it as either or but and and both i think it's really important to understand that the the range of points of view that you've heard tonight which go comes from people who are disabled the development of the disabilities to folks who are facing homelessness are all really in a range of continuum we think of it of our work as a housing continuum of working from homelessness to rental housing to home ownership and when we think of that we think of the opportunities that we provide people to move from those you know from the streets into permanent affordable housing rental housing and to the opportunity that home ownership provides when we think about these things we think of those as as homelessness as providing people with safety safety and we think of home ownership we think about that as mobility and wealth building when we think about rental housing we think of it in terms of security the ability to make sure that people are safe in those homes secure in those homes and have a rent and an owner that is going to make sure that they are not displaced you heard testimony just recently about someone who is simply evicted we don't do that unless there's serious cause for that we provide permanently affordable housing and i think i want to say that that's a very important policy that the state of Vermont has and how critical has been and how different that is from other states which don't do that in other states where they're creating affordable housing where permanent affordability is not the policy they lose as much affordable housing every year that as they gain they actually take steps backwards as they create more affordable housing because there is a loss that happened in burlington vermont and eighties are almost dead with north gate but because of the north gate experience where 330 families were going to be evicted from their homes because it wasn't permanently affordable the state of Vermont created a policy that permanent affordability is a critical important policy to follow we follow that and i think it's important for you to understand that that provides permanent security to people the folks in our mental housing have the opportunity to move into home ownership or to move to other rental housing they need to let me just say that in order to accomplish this your generosity over the past couple of years has been enormous it's been essential it's been critical and what i would ask you to do is to continue to provide funding for the creation of more housing more programs for people who will need homelessness more who are in homelessness more people so they can move into home ownership and with that thank you very much i appreciate your time thank you michael um so we have david fry and then michael crancer hi i'm here hi i'm mr friend thank you for letting me come on tonight and uh thank you everybody i live in north north farasburg my name is david fry um i'm the member of a of the vermont develop developmental disability council on the i'm on their policy committee um i'm going to share you some experience i've had with home care living providers my first one that i moved in with i didn't feel comfortable living there because i'm gay and i really felt that that one didn't uh they didn't they just didn't they didn't care about me because i was gay and i was pretty much sheltered and i pretty much left my door closed the second one i went to the case manager and i said i really would like to live with two men because i'm gay and you know i i wanted that that experiment with with living two other gay men that that were in the system so they put me into that and you know i went to work every single day i work at wake robin i've been there 15 years and i came home and you know i would always have my door door closed when i was gone and they would go into my living quarters and telling me that that i need to pick up my room or my bed you know was smelling or i went came home one day and they gave me some token powder to put token powder in my shoes because my feet stunk and and so and then i knew at the the end that i just had enough of that home care provider and then i went into somebody else's home and the boss was my case manager so there was a conflict of interest of keeping my kid my case manager i liked my case manager i had to i had to move on out of that home and then i lived with somebody and then now i'm living on my own so i just wanted to let you know that i like living on my own but then during during the pandemic i'm not getting full services that i should be getting i mean having someone come to my home and you know like checking my bills or what's coming in the mail that i don't understand and sometimes it's hard living on your own but i'm doing it thank you you know let me testify thanks mr. thank you thank you david okay we have michael crancer of stowe and if matthew laflore it is uh on zoom he's on deck but we don't believe we haven't yet thank you michael and you're muted i'm not sure if you knew that all right about that thought i understood thanks for the opportunity to testify i've had a house in stowe for 10 years i split time between stowe in the philadelphia area my mother in law has lived here for four years in morris dual my daughter lived down in southern vermont my background is that uh i was a lawyer i was the chief environmental regulator of the state of pennsylvania i served in the governor's cabinet i was judge and chief judge of the state environmental court uh so i have some background in that um what what is the state of housing here in vermont well i think we've heard it's it's really bad it's terrible it's kind of like if if the state of housing were like it's like damar hamlin he's sitting there on the field in cardiac arrest but more importantly all these people who've testified are damar hamlins and only you the legislature can help so what do i see is the elephant in the room the elephant in the room is absentee short term rentals these are problems that have tentacles in every area we've heard tonight landlord abuse and i'm not saying all landlords are bad but we heard synthia have one story well i bet you don't us the dollar that landlord simply wanted to convert to short term rentals for absentee owners we have seniors in peril we have homeless people in peril we have rich versus poor because these absentee short term renters buy houses second third fourth in stowe we have a guy who owns 16 of the houses and he's out of state he's out of country actually um so these are the problems that are driving the drying up of the working force all of these other issues we've we've talked about today and i have experienced this in my neighborhood i had to go to court and sue to shut down a party house in my quiet residential neighborhood and i took that burden and i went to court and we won and we shut them down it was an offense to our neighborhood but these short term rentals have tentacles blood on their hands and other problems too it's an environmental threat they're always over occupied you know the the wastewater permits are for say 12 people well they have 16 18 people in there well that's a groundwater disaster waiting to happen you've got social justice inequality you've got rich versus poor we've heard about that tonight these absentee owners conduct businesses with multiple houses okay we're the professor he can't even buy one house these people buy multiple the landlord abuses over tenants we've heard about that they shove these long-term tenants out in order to have short-term rentals and you're favoring the interests of out-of-staters because they're all out-of-staters most of these people who own these places and just ask emily cornheiser your colleague she had introduced a bill because massachusettsans were coming taking up housing in her district and preventing her people from getting housing so we've already talked about um the lack of availability of workforce etc etc so i think the elephant in the room and this is a cross-committee issue is absentee owner conducting business as short-term rentals and i thank you for your time i have written testimony submitted and i have actual proposals that will ameliorate this problem and i really want to work with the legislature to get this problem solved which will solve a lot of other problems thank you thank you mr. krancer thank you so um that concludes everyone who we know is present who signed up to testify um i'm pausing to see that anybody else has arrived i've consulted with chair stevens and there are three additional people tonight who are here in person who have asked to testify and we agreed that we would allow that um so thanks for nodding your heads into agreement as well we know it's getting late um so we have uh thomas weiss of montpelier good evening i am thomas weiss i'm a civil engineer and my professional experience includes planning and design of wastewater and sewer systems permitting and environmental reviews and i truly thank you for squeezing me in at the very last minute to speak to you here this evening as you are aware a housing bill doesn't and cannot stand alone other concepts that support sustainable affordable housing should be integrated into any bill food security child care on-site treatment of wastewater reducing vermont's carbon footprint and more today i present seven recommendations for your consideration first require that new housing does not add to greenhouse gas emissions uh senate natural resources and energy is working on a bill about reducing thermal loads and uh you can either support that effort by by possibly putting something into your bill on thermal loads or or at least coordinating and understanding what they're doing and how these 40 000 new housing units are going to affect thermal loads and the stretch code and commercial building energy standards are inadequate to reduce those thermal loads by the levels we'll need to do to meet the state law uh retain existing act 250 jurisdiction over priority housing projects perhaps 80 000 to 100 000 people could reside in the 40 000 units that are being talked about uh representing 15 increase in population and that potential growth exceeds that of vermont's highest growth decades which were 1960 to 1980 so permitting for these units needs to be comprehensive and robust act 250 does that other permits zoning and state permits do not provide a comprehensive review and collectively these other permits do not address many of the act 250 criteria expand act 250 jurisdiction outside the chapter 76a designations the projection of 40 000 units is something like a quadrupling of the rate of recent housing construction even if 30 000 units go into the compact areas that leaves 10 000 new units in the rural countryside which means no reduction of the pressure on the rural countryside retain state and oversight and connections to municipal water and wastewater systems i looked into this in 2021 those permits would not if they weren't required would not decrease overall permitting time because of the other permits needed the permit fee has a median cost of 175 dollars per housing unit not much but it is something and the state oversight has benefits uh number five present mr weiss we just probably need your concluding thoughts at this point right i've got two more sentences that okay okay prevent the isolation zones of water and sewer systems from encroaching on a neighbor's property where municipal water and sewer are not available and provide access to sunlight the gardens sunlight i think we can do that um and i'd like something more detail to both committees yeah based on what i thought thank you very much for allowing me to testify this for weeks this evening thank you for coming in that's the best um and we have steven wittaker of mott piliers i want to keep this focused on housing thank you for fitting me in steven wittaker my pleasure uh i want to close on a note that seems to get lost for years i've been working on behalf of the unhoused and the marginally housed in and around my pilier we still have today people sleeping in stairways in cars in basements in churches without permission and in vestibules of commercial buildings uh there are people that don't fit into the warehousing in the hotels program i have attempted and done extensive research it is within reach to do to build quickly build interim dignified shelter there's a thing designed in oregon called conestoga huts they're private lockable soft shelters that folks can live in for about eight thousand bucks a year you would walk to a common trailer for toilets or showers but that those clusters of that type of housing is what this emergency requires that it's going to take years to develop these thousands of units that we're talking about we need shelter now and especially if the housing the hotel program i i agree with i commend thomas weiss for his thoughtful he's done good work here in montgomery keeping the council's feet to the bar so in fact look at a variation boxable spelled box a bl those are accessory dwelling units made manufactured pre-fitted fixtures everything they can be trucked in on a trailer and unfolded and occupied within a day uh brilliant design we we should see about franchising and manufacturing some of those here so in effect we we can designate identify put a priority on identifying the areas in town each town where six or 10 units i don't advocate the internment camp in burlington that model of uh you know pods look like jail cells and they remind me of the the japanese internment camps that's not dignified shelter we really need to there's another model out of europe that are nice colored cylinders uh the anyway there's a lot of information available i've reached out to chairman uh stevens um walking distance is important identify the sites for small clusters have site managers paid even some of the unhoused folks can become site managers paid 25 dollars an hour to stay up all night and these site managers can coordinate and make sure you've got a creative a set group of people occupying each cluster so that you're not putting the heroin dealers and the junkiers in the same shelter or all the drunks in the same shelter thank you mr. witter could you have a concluding thought or i think i'm happy to provide it in more organized fashion if i get another opportunity but i think this is within reach within months and we should have used arpa money to buy those toilet and shower trailers they can help in our disaster preparedness as well and i just want us to be really careful about invoking internment camps and people's extreme loss of freedom when we talk about trying to shelter the unhoused i just want to say that but thank you mr. wittaker our last speaker tonight is samantha warren oh samantha from warren i'm sorry you were looking at me funny i didn't even know about this actually somebody told me about it so thanks for making it out for me yeah i actually really wanted to speak with um you started the box and never mind i'm just gonna read the email sorry i just wanted to say a couple things um this may i may be a little unpopular um but this is my not so happy story about being in tax credit housing um but you know hopefully it could be used to be turned round and um something come out of it um to make things better all around for everyone who lives in affordable housing so i'm originally from vermont i grew up in warren i um went to college i moved out to seattle lived there for a long time came back when my mom was terminally ill um i also around the same time developed a physical illness for the Lyme disease and the Lyme bill i was here back then um uh my income took a plunge uh ended up in uh you know thankfully affordable housing so i had a roof over my head um sometimes i question whether or not i want to i'd rather be camping and right in the dead of winter now i'm i'm glad i have housing but so i'm writing i'm just going to read this i'm writing to um express several concerns regarding affordable housing um you know i'm sure you know i don't need to repeat the obvious fact that there is a lack of available affordable housing in vermont what i want to share is my personal experience renting in vermont especially my experience in affordable tax credit housing it has been an eye open up while i appreciate that i do have housing i can currently afford it has come at a significant cost to me many times i feel it has not been worth it and i've been even considered living out of my car in essence becoming homeless living in affordable tax credit housing i have been a victim of crime committed by a few tenants who have repeatedly threatened to kill and harm myself and other tenants i personally have been threatened with being beaten killed raped and been the recipient of ongoing harassment and bullying one tenant has on numerous occasions attempted to break into my apartment in a volatile drunken rage i've had my property destroyed i've had tires i don't know if anyone purposely did that or not but i i've almost had a hammer lodged in my head but it's the same violent neighbor uh gosh where'd you go the same violent neighbor for building a porch privacy barrier so i couldn't be so because they're trying to not be seen going and coming um i have had to resort to placing in those stocking order i've never done that before which has been violated over 17 times the police didn't come out all those times though so the judge thought she'd generally combined i have also been witnessed rampant alcohol use and at least the drug use drug dealing and illegal firearm use i do not feel safe in my home i do not have peaceful enjoyment being a victim of this type of behavior has had some significant emotional impact i suffer nightmares and PTSD symptoms i have lost time from work and other working life opportunities i have lost too much of time out of my life contending with these housing issues i've looked for other housing but it has been extremely difficult i do not wish to live in affordable tax credit housing or subsidized housing again because i'm afraid i've spoken with numerous people because this is what i do who i'd live in various affordable housing complexes run by different housing agencies and i hear similar horror stories these tenants live in fear they have suffered trauma they do not feel safe they're not happy you know what they're living situation yes they have a roof over their head and yes that is a good thing but again there is a cost it is not contributing to living a productive life it ends up eroding your life the management company eventually after two years attempted to affect one of the tenants and they fail to affect them citing that it was too difficult in vermont to affect people i have a video and audio documentation so i find this bewildering due to these experiences i have two concerns the sorry the first is that it has become too hard to affect bad tenants both for landlords and for the physical and mental well-being of other tenants who have to live near them the second is that while i believe that everyone should have opportunity for housing and appreciate the initiative to home the homeless i feel many homeless are not ready to be housed in a community housing housing the homeless who have significant prediction who exhibit disruptive behaviors and mental health issues creates very unhealthy conditions for those also who live near them i believe there needs to be more transitional housing and social services to address these issues this would also be housing for tenants with significant behavior problems people who already live in housing and and some type of housing for these people with behavioral problems and those who can make crimes against others thank you for hearing my concerns thank you samantha thank you that completes our list and the folks who have come and offered their time i would like to really um on the on behalf of the general housing committee in the house i'd just like to thank everybody who came out um including the people who stayed home at zoom and and shared their stories who came here to this room um building tonight i can't tell you how much it means to hear um stories like somathism you know it is not what we seek to do but um but it is real for you and for your neighbors and so i appreciate you having the courage to come down sharing your story with us tonight and we will our committee will be starting work on a housing bill starting next week so we'll be following the senate's lead on some of the housing issues that we talked about tonight but i would also just like to thank staff who helped us set this up tonight and it's worked as long as as longer than we have today because i think we got a break um like for ronch and scott more and ron wild and and elia gillen and we have lori morris and and peggy delaney downstairs who helped us all get up here and i would just like to thank them for for hosting um but again most importantly from our perspective thanks to the witnesses who came first with us tonight yeah i just um i'd like to echo uh those thanks and um speak to our process a little bit first i i do want to thank our counterparts in the house uh i want to thank my committee we've been living and breathing this housing bill since the session started um this has been really illuminating and helpful tonight and we'll probably add a little bit more dimension to our work that we hope to conclude next week um with a vote so this can go on to the other committees of jurisdiction and over to the house but we in our final deliberations have thought of pieces that we might pass over to the house um you know to to get your work on it since we really took on exclusionary zoning and that has taken up a lot of our time but we're really grateful to hear that the house is going to work on supportive housing recovery housing landlord tenant issues um some of the things that folks may have spoken to tonight that they might not see reflected as deeply in our bill but hopefully we'll be part of the final product between both of our committees um we have a lot of people who submitted written testimony who are who were here tonight who are not here tonight i want to thank Scott our committee assistant i think you put at least 50 new uh written submissions onto our website that we hope will be of benefit to you all and other legislators as this work continues um you know finally in in our thanks to everyone who testified um often in our committee we've said that the most voiceless in this process are the unhoused they're not voting in these communities right now they're not necessarily at every planning commission or select board meeting because they are sleeping in cars they are precariously housed they are in motels they are not in our state yet they are children um and you know this has been really valuable because we've heard more of those voices and we know that we've also heard from organizations that do their best to bring those voices to us when those folks can't be present themselves it takes immense bravery to share some of the stories that were shared tonight and we deeply appreciate people's courage and willingness to go on this journey to alleviate our housing crisis and make sure everyone in vermont has a home so thank you very much and i hope everyone gets some rest now