 It's great to see all of you. My name is Ben Doyle. I'm an area director for USDA Rural Development. We're a federal agency whose mission is to improve the quality of life and economic vitality of rural America. And we do that by making strategic investments in a number of different areas, but most significantly in housing, which, you know, in our office, we always say housing's where jobs go to sleep at night. And it's just really the bedrock of any rural community. And so I was really excited to see that this was one of the sessions that was identified for Washington County. And, you know, Jenna and Josh really already gave a great overview of what we're doing here tonight. I'm gonna serve as the facilitator of this session. And, you know, as such, my role really is just to help guide us through a series of kind of questions that we've been asked to ask of this group. And as Jenna said, we're not here to develop another strategic plan or an action plan, but we are here to really listen to what's happening on the ground in Washington County and to think about what are the good things that are happening? What are the gaps? What are the needs for this community? And most importantly, like, what does Washington County want for its future? And all of that, you know, is gonna enter into the kind of wide end of this funnel and will be kind of synthesized and brought to the governor's task force as they consider what are the kinds of things that need to happen in Vermont writ large, but also specifically in Washington County to ensure that there's an equitable economic recovery coming out of COVID. So that's really what we're gonna try to do tonight. And again, my job is really more than anything else, it's just like a timekeeper. You know, I just have a kind of series of questions that we're gonna kind of go through and I'll just run through them quickly. First, we're gonna get a kind of spark story from Eileen Peltier, who is a, you know, our resident housing expert and doing great work at Downstreet Housing. She's gonna share some kind of five minutes of kind of inspiration of what they're doing, what's already happening in Washington County and some best practices around challenges around homelessness in housing. And from there, we're gonna talk more broadly about what do we want for our community when we're talking about housing and ending homelessness in our region. And then we're gonna ask the question, we're gonna spend about 10 minutes, what's holding us back from achieving this, right? What are the challenges both pre-COVID and now that are preventing us from achieving those goals? And then we're gonna spend about 20 minutes considering what are the, are there promising practices or strategies or programs emerging today, either ones that were working before or that are really innovative coming out of COVID that should be brought forward. And then we'll consider what are the things that are still needed, right? What are the action items that are still needed both locally, regionally and at the state level to address these challenges that have been identified? So we're gonna go through those in a very kind of structured way. And then at the very end, we're gonna hear from our great partners on the call, folks like Josh, the commissioner of housing to really reflect back on what they've heard, right? What are they hearing that's unique in Washington County and how does that correspond to what they've heard from other parts of the state? Does anybody have any questions before we dive right in? Great. And I would just say too, as we have this conversation, I can see most of you on the screen now. So I would say, as we have the conversation, just raise your hand and I'll call on you and unmute yourself and have at it. So with that, I'm really excited to hear from Eileen who's the second director of on-street housing and as a resident of Washington County and as someone who works at USDA, I know the incredible work that they do every day that's incredibly innovative and really excited to hear from Eileen about what you've seen and what kind of inspiration you can provide the group. Great. Well, thanks for inviting me, Ben. Good evening, everyone. So I'm Eileen Peltier. I'm the executive director at Down-Street Housing and Community Development. Although I saw on the other screen, it said CVCLT, our old name. I have a flashback there. So I have a few thoughts. I think I more wanna focus on just helping you frame how you might wanna think about this versus telling you what to do because there's really no such thing as a housing expert. There's so many unique complex needs out there. So March 13th, COVID became real. The governor said, stay safe, stay home. That was something that many of us were able to do easily, right? I know I ran to the grocery store and stocked up on supplies and essentials, toilet paper, all that stuff, but too many Central Remanters didn't even have a home. We were privileged. We're incredibly privileged to have a place to call home. That's a reality that existed before COVID and COVID has really put a spotlight on that challenge. And I think that's really the reason that Central Vermont probably put this on our agenda. It's a real issue and COVID has highlighted it. In addition to stay safe, stay home, we've all heard the term housing is healthcare. It's been around for probably a decade. It's a lot of the work that I do. Is that this intersection of health and housing? And again, it really highlighted this idea that having a home is healthcare. What I wanna talk about is I'm gonna spend just really like hopefully about 60 seconds giving you what I think is the environment in Central Vermont and then jump to some solutions that I think that are out there. Central Vermont, at best we've got about a 1% vacancy rate. For the first time probably in many, many years today we have vouchers available because of a variety of different things but related to COVID and we don't have enough housing to put those, to use those vouchers. The flip of what we typically are experiencing. The cost of construction is consistently for many years now higher than what people can afford to pay for rent, which is why we don't see development in Central Vermont beyond what an organization like Down Street can do with many of the federal and state sources that come into a deal. We are looking at an incredible challenge on the home ownership side. For someone trying to buy a home at an affordable rate it is nearly impossible. We're seeing this in all regions of the country where people imagine it's a safe place. And as we know we've been fortunate to be in Vermont and probably the safest state in the union. So people are buying homes for a million dollars that are valued at $600,000, $200,000 homes are going for $300,000. We cannot find home ownership for people today. And that challenge I think is gonna continue for some time to come. Our tourist economy, second homes and Airbnb's to relate to that really put pressure on the amount of homes that are available in Central Vermont. In the 1950s there were over 10,000 people living in Montpelier today, a couple thousand less than that. And part of that is due to how we live. There's five bedrooms and there's two people living in the house. That's part of it. But it is also the tourist economy second home and Airbnb that's really putting pressure on our ability to find homes for people. Homelessness, I think it was probably a surprise to some people in Central Vermont that Washington and Central Vermont was the second highest number of homeless people in hotels when COVID happened and the state very smartly put people into hotels at the height of it, we had more than 260 people today as of well, all right, this is a week old but basically today we had about 160 people, sorry, households in hotels, another 60 people on the streets as of a week ago. These are significant numbers for a small community like ours. So there are a lot of, those are some of the things that are sort of behind the scenes, many of which existed before COVID. But as I said, housing is healthcare and stay home, stay safe is what it's all about today and that's a challenge for far too many Central Vermonters. So there are lots of innovative solutions but what I wanna take a moment and say is that housing is as unique and varied as the number of people on this call plus few zeros, right? It's unique for each individual. So when we need to have a variety of solutions and I often think we tend to think, oh, let's just do 10 more Taylor streets or a great project like that, that's not the solution. That's not gonna get us there. It's part of the solution, but we need to be innovative. And so some of the things that are out there just in many of you I know on this call and I know you're aware of these so I'll just run through them quickly. There has been a real push in the state to buy hotels didn't work for us in Central Vermont. And I don't know that that's really a long-term solution to the need for housing but it is certainly one option. Tiny home communities or tiny homes and infill sites like we've done on Brip Street and Barrie there is a huge amount of interest in the state in doing that and it is a very viable appropriate option for some individuals. There's a lot of interest in that type of housing accessory dwelling units. I cannot tell you the number of people that I have spoken to in the past year since we did our first tiny house about interest in ADUs. If you think about that Montpelier those 10,000 people living here in the 50s maybe we add an ADU next to that home that may have an extra bedroom but because of the way we live we don't wanna have individuals in our home. How do we create the right zoning the right opportunities to have ADUs sitting next to that old Victorian on the hill in Montpelier. And that gets at density and it helps address climate change as well. We also have a need for some people who really need a congregate setting for permanent where there's permanent supportive housing options so services that's the population of the need. Where do we go with shelters in central Vermont? It's a big question for our community right now our shelter had to close down because we couldn't be CDC compliant. We have reopened the shelter in Barrie but at a much reduced density. What's our solution there for the short-term and the long-term? We are operating the rental rehab program. We have a lot of apartments in central Vermont that are offline for a number of reasons. When you talk to landlords it's about things like the cost of eviction the cost of damage to the unit could we have a risk pool? There are a lot of unique reasons why landlords choose to keep our property offline but how do we address those barriers and get those units back online? For some people recover residents or what is needed? We're seeing a huge increase in numbers of substance use in 2020, I think I saw I may not have this exactly right something like 35 or 40% increase in the number of overdose deaths in 2020 compared to 2019. That's an ongoing challenge and that's a unique form of housing that individuals need. And of course we need additional just new construction both market rate and affordable. So I think what I'm saying is there are a lot of needs and I'm curious really curious to hear what all of you think about how we approach those needs I've identified or whether I don't need to say you're seeing and I'm not sure if you know what I'm saying, I'm honest. Super, thank you. Thank you so much for that. I mean, it really, I think a really great kind of really in a way comprehensive framing of the conversation. So thank you for providing that perspective. And with that, I think we really should just open it up with our kind of first question. When we think around the challenges around housing and homelessness in Washington County and those are some pretty stark numbers that we've heard. What do we want for our community in this area, right? In the housing sector, what is it, what will, what do we hope for? What's our aspirational goal for what providing housing for everyone and ending homelessness in our community? What does that look like? So please, anyone that, you know, if you'd like to talk about what that would look like for you, please just raise your hand and get started. And as Paul likes to say, this is just like therapy. We can just sit and enjoy the silence too. But I know that there's a lot of great experts on, or not experts, but a lot of great people that have a perspective to share. So please jump in. Yes, Ryan, please. I'll start us off. Thank you very much for putting this together and thank you, Emily, and for all that you have to share. So I work at the Berry Community Justice Center. We serve people who are running community from incarceration and have 11 transitional housing beds and Washington County, specifically Berry City. So I was really happy to hear Eileen bring up recovery-supported housing, looking at it through the lens of the work that I do. There's definitely a huge lack in central Vermont for recovery-supported housing, specifically for women. There are, there is some beds in Washington County for men and young adults, 25 and under, at here in Berry, but there's really no recovery-supported housing for women in central Vermont. I know V-4 had made a move for Mont Foundation for Recovery, had made a move to get housing in Berry, and I don't know where that's at. I think that might be stalled at the moment. So that is definitely one lens that I'm looking at and in conjunction with the new legislation that is going into effect in January, the Justice and Reinvestment Act, more and more people are going to be coming back to their home communities from incarceration without recovery supports in place, let alone without recovery services, whether it be through transitional housing agencies like ourselves or other, because doing away with the furlough system while it's really beneficial and I think that it's very positive in general in reducing our incarcerated population, more and more people will be coming to the community on parole and not have that requirement of having an approved residence or transitional housing where they get those wraparound services. So for me in my work, that's definitely a lens in which I'm looking through it and much of what Eileen said is in my personal life, that is how I feel, but in my work life that is very much the lens that I'm looking through right now. Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate that perspective. And so just to kind of recap it within the context of like what do we hope to see in the future in our region around this issue? I mean, what I heard from you is filling some of those gaps, right? Particularly around recovery, housing and wraparound services for folks. As we think about reintegrating folks into our community, whatever situation they're coming from, whether they're incarcerated, but I guess a housing landscape that provides options for folks like that to kind of reenter into our communities and assist in that way. I don't want to list that Ryan was highlighting recovery residents for women, which are a particular challenge. And Ryan, we're on it, we're waiting on some funding where it should happen in 2021. Right, Jack? Great. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for adding that. Yeah, I wasn't sure where it was that. And just to add one other piece that I left out is with more and more people returning to the community from incarceration. And during COVID, we've seen a mass release of individuals, which is very positive. And then come January when the law goes into effect. My concern on that is more and more people are going to be released to homelessness. I don't know if that's necessarily going to be happening or not, but it is a big fear of not being in stable housing. So while our numbers right now are high, I fear that they're going to increase even more, not just because people losing jobs, but also this. And that's all I have. Thank you. Thanks, Ryan. That's a really valuable perspective. Does somebody else want to give their perspective on what they would hope for in this area? You know, when we think about, if things were working the way that we hoped that they would, what would the housing sector look like in Washington County and Central Vermont? Please, Tanya. There you go. Tanya, I can't hear you. I don't know. I don't see that you're on mute, but I still can't hear you. Sorry, Tanya. Maybe call in. Maybe you can call in on the phone and join. That would be great. Anybody else want to? I'll just throw one other, one thing that we've learned from our experience of sort of looking at who is in the hotels. And Down Street has certainly experienced this when we go to lease up a new building, a significant number of elderly women who are now widows who do not have a pension are moving into our housing. So they're living on their social security. That's a significant number of the people who are also on the coordinated entry and on waiting lists. So, just because I think people don't necessarily think of that population, and we're an old state, we're aging by the second here, especially with these eating meetings sometimes more quickly than usual, but it's a real issue about there. And then the other population, I think people are probably more familiar with this, but young people who have a significant college debt, who are working just can't afford to get an apartment and certainly can't afford to buy a home. So all that population, there are different reasons for homelessness, right? There are certainly economic reasons, like I just described in those two scenarios. And then there are people who are struggling with complex multifaceted challenges like substance use disorder and mental health, domestic violence, all of these things. And I think we need to think about all of these kinds of solutions and the housing needs of those populations can be very different. So it's just important context to think about who's on that list. And I think almost half the people on the list had some form of income. So, I think we get some stereotypes in our head about who homeless people are. And I guess I'm trying to say it's more complicated than that in New York. Yeah. So, Eileen, it's fair to say that like if things were working in a way that they should, right? That the solutions would be able to match the complexity of the challenge-based, right? That there is a variety of solutions or opportunities for folks to find the housing that's appropriate for them. Right. And I think that in this, in Vermont, we tend to sort of pigeonhole homelessness into somebody who has substance use disorder or mental illness. And there are different types of homelessness that's typically more chronic and there's episodic homelessness. And that number, this episodic homelessness related to both the aging population without pensions, because nobody has pensions anymore, and COVID is gonna increase these numbers of episodic homelessness. And in an environment where we just have no housing available at any cost, that's the real challenge that we're facing. So those numbers that we see are rising, I think are really a mix and maybe even skewed a little bit more to the episodic economic causes of homelessness, which might be a new challenge. And that's just pressure on rents because there's so little housing available. Thank you. I see that Lucas Taring has his hand raised. Mr. Mayor, please. Sure. So, sorry, I'm keeping the video off. I'm at another venue and I'm just trying to sneak in while I can here. So one of the questions that I had was actually, if you have one of these Victorians that have five bedrooms and you have a number of widows that could also be housed, is there an opportunity there? And then the follow-up question is not related to this, but it's really about the cost for developing new housing. If there's a lot of concern about what the actual cost is, you know, at the legislative level, we see a number of bills that are put into place that actually increase the cost to develop new housing. And, you know, we've been trying to work on Act 250 to see if there's other ways to allow housing in different areas with a decreased cost. So maybe this is more of a question for Josh on here, but are there any other opportunities that we could look into for decreased cost in housing? Great questions. Thanks. Josh, do you want to answer that now or? I mean, I can give a quick response and then, yeah, I mean, probably be a larger sort of theme at the end of this of some of thoughts of what I'm hearing would touch on this as well. But yeah, I get concerned about the ever-increasing cost of building the housing we need and that we're not building some of the smaller sort of, you know, middle housing, they call it, where they're smaller units, they don't necessarily need to be, you know, determined affordable housing with the big A and they're not really high-end market. The market is just failing us at this point that we're not having this sort of housing boom that does that anymore and it costs more to construct a home than it's appraised at the day it's done and you're not going to go get a loan to build that or to purchase it with that scenario where you're underwater to begin with. And, you know, you're right, Lucas, there are some of that is, my opinion, is some of our own doing. We have a lot of great policies, but they do add cost and we need to recognize that and that if housing is the foundation of our society and how people are successful, in my view, that's first. You know, the other added on policy that we get and the benefits there have to be looked at through that lens and I think sometimes, you know, looking at our communities, is every community have a housing commission? No, probably most of them have the energy commission right now. I just think, you know, I'm not picking winners or losers, I'm just saying there are some policies or things that we gravitate to that have unintended consequence of adding cost and regulation to housing that typical Vermonters could go out on their own and afford to build or buy. And it's complicated and complex and in my view, it's been building for 40 years, 50 years, in that the last time we actually had housing that was built that met the demand was in the early 80s. And since then, we've been stealing from more Collins's housing report, but, you know, every year we've been reducing what we build in housing by half in this past decade, we've produced 0.1% increase in housing. We're barely keeping up with the housing that we lose each year, despite the fact that we have investments which are needed and great that are increasing our public investment in building housing to the tune of about $80 million last year in the housing investment report, but it's not even keeping up with the housing stock that's lost each year. So there's a underlying problem that, unless it's addressed, it goes to Eileen's opening comments that we could build French blocks all day long with the resources that we can put and find and it's still not gonna address the problem that these underlying fundamentals don't shift and change. So. Thanks, Josh. And that's really, and Representative Stevens, I see is your hand up. I just wanna say, like unless somebody else has something to add, I'd like to shift the conversation in the direction that it's already going, which is what's holding us back, right? And we just heard, I think really great questions about the regulations or the cost of building house and the fact that they don't appraise out. So Representative Stevens, what would you like to share? I think you're muted. How's that? I think the one word answer is it's politics. Everything is political. It's a joy to be in a meeting and a Zoom meeting today with people who not just care about housing but understand it up and down and backwards. A lot of the difficulties that we've had this year on all of these issues that we're talking about, new policies or new regulations or new deregulations get hung up on either an advocates, advocacy group's needs or wants. We've had, I mean, for instance, we went very far with recovery residences this year, very far from where we'd been before. And full disclosure, I worked with Eileen on the board of Down Street for quite a few years and this was a project that Eileen really grabbed onto. And so I perhaps knew more than my counterparts, but the fact is that we got a great deal together and really it got torpedoed because some advocates felt like it didn't protect 100% of the people that were gonna be utilizing it. So, and that's without the money because this was actually a program where money wasn't the biggest issue. It was about actually landlord tenant law. And so, and how do you change landlord tenant law to the degree that allows people in recovery to stay in places where they won't hurt other people if they fall out of recovery? I, you know, there's, it could go on for a long time. I've been working with Josh and with the department on trying to understand a bill as 237 that we're in the middle of trying to learn about zoning, about this middle housing. And we are getting a lot of pushback from the planners and from VLCT and from municipalities who may not see that the words traditional housing or exclusionary zone, I mean, all zoning is exclusionary. We don't, we're gonna prevent people from building so there's no sprawl. We've done that as a state and that's made other building more expensive. But what about downtowns where you have access to water and sewer, which is the footprint and capacity, if you have capacity. So we have to thread some needles there about how do you describe exclusionary housing to people who aren't in the business, who don't think that their town is being overly exclusionary, which in this day and age means about people. And what we learned about COVID, we just spent 90 million, we're gonna be spending like 90 million dollars on helping homelessness, helping mitigate homelessness in the year 2020. Like of all the things that we came into this year with, COVID provided us with upwards of 90 million dollars to do this. And the VHCB is gonna end up spending close to $35 million on some of the issues on buying motels. Just think about how many units they're gonna get, 250 units for $32 million. It's not enough, right? But the money is finite and it's always finite. And this was this weird little weird thing that happened that allowed us to make these investments. And we're not gonna cure it this year. We're gonna make a lot of improvements. So this is a long way, I'm sorry, it's been a frustrating week for me. So understanding that the advocacy of the groups that are here on this call, all of them, but it's important because voices get heard in a certain way. I think we moved the ball forward on people understanding to Eileen's point earlier about what the stereotype of homelessness is. I don't think it was erased or eradicated, but I think a lot of people in the state house in this year's classes understood that it wasn't just the stereotype of what you think a homeless person is. They had neighbors, they had friends who are at risk. 80,000 people had to apply for unemployment. How long that lasts? I don't know. There are days where I feel like this was the best year for the purposes of the missions of the affordable housing industrial complex as I like to call it. But on the other hand, I think it's also something that people are gonna forget very soon if we don't keep the voice up. And so it's hard in that building or what passes for that building now, somebody coined the phrase Zoom Peelier. It is difficult to get everybody on board to make sure like in the musical Hamilton, do you have the votes? It's that simple. Do you have the votes? So thank you, Tom. I mean, I think, you know, what I, again, what I heard is the short answer is politics. What I heard in the kind of longer answer, right, is really just continuing to raise awareness about the complexity and the challenges of this issue and to try and build a lasting kind of consensus around it in terms of how we move the ball forward. And yes, and then working with an administration where, I mean, Josh's team is great, but it's finite as well. Their power is finite as well. I mean, we have a great year with Josh, but it is, if it comes down to money, a lot of people have to weigh in on that. And believe in it and move it forward. Thank you. And Paul, I still call this therapy. That's what it felt like. Thank you. Great. Eileen, do you have something you'd like to add? I'm glad because of what you're there, Tom. I don't want to miss what Lucas said about, you know, buying a Victorian and having five elderly women live there. Just to sort of try to throw something pretty out of the box. And I tossed it out there in my intro comments a little bit. You know, this idea of density, of finding a way for, like if we're trying to come up with this sort of, what do I want for this community? I want to have a way to deal with the fact that I walk every morning at 530 and I probably see 10 unique homeless people in downtown Montpelier. And most of the time, although not during COVID, you know, I have an extra bedroom here. How can we create a system that would allow me, me who does this work, who actually talks to the homeless people out there and, you know, has some level of comfort with it. How I can support that and bring somebody into my home. Why can't we think, you know, differently about this? We've got. . . . . . . . .