 Good morning. Good morning everyone. Thank you for being here today. We are welcoming all of our members to a joint meeting of the House General and Housing Committee and the House Human Services Committee on Homelessness Awareness Day here at the Statehouse. For those watching, we're not at the Statehouse, we're across the parking lot at the Pavilion building in case you're trying to find us. That's where we are. So we would love to go around the room briefly for introductions so people in the audience know who is sitting at the table and what parts of the state we're from and then we'll welcome a number of you up for a testimony and we so appreciate you being here. I'll start off. Representative Tom Stevens from Waterbury, Representative Washington Chittenden District and I am the Chair of General and Housing. Representative Robin Chestnut-Tanderman, Rutland-Bennington District and our Vice-Chair of Housing and General Services. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Burroughs and I represent Windsor One and I'm the General Assistant. Hello, Emily Kraus now representing Chittenden and I in South Brallington. Good morning, I am Representative Mary Howard. I represent Rutland District Six. Good morning, I'm Larry Labor. I'm from Essex Orleans District One. I represent the Towns of Newbury, Totsam and Braf. Good morning, I'm Ashley Bartley. I live in Fairfax but represent Franklin One which is Fairfax and mostly Georgia. I'm Kathleen James. I live in Manchester and represent Bennington Four. I'm Dennis Abowning. I represent Caledonia Three which is Lyndon Sutton, Sheffield, Wheelock and Newark. I'm Caleb Elder, Addison Four District. Good morning, Taylor Small from Wendyssey. Good morning, Ray Garofano, Essex and Essex Junction. Good morning, Dane Wooden from Bennington. Good morning, Noah Hyman, South Brallington and Winston. Good morning, Kelly Payala. I present London Dairy, Weston, Windhall and Andover. Hi folks, I'm Jubilee McGill. I'm from Bridport and also represent Surrey, New Haven and Laidbridge. James, Great War, Fairfield also represent Baker Street and Fletcher. I am Jessica Bromstead and I represent Shelburne and St. George. Good morning, everyone. My name is Teresa Wood. I'm Chair of the House Human Services Committee. I'm from Waterbury and I also represent along with Chair Stevens, Bolton Beale Score and Huntington. And we are very happy to welcome you all here. We have a couple of housekeeping things in case you need to use the restroom. It's just through the store and take a left and kind of like right before you come to the hallway where you came in. There are restrooms there. And then for witnesses, if you could come around the back of the head of the table here and come around that way, don't go this way because there's kind of stuff in the way, shall we say? So that would be great. And for the witnesses, when you come up to the table in case you haven't been a witness here before, first off, we're all kind of lined up here and it looks kind of a little ominous, but it's not. We're just people just like everybody else in the room. And so we welcome you to share your information, to share your stories, and we are honoring that today. So we would love to have you join us. And when you come up here, just state your name for the record so that we know all who are here. And in case you don't know, you will be filmed. This is being live streamed to YouTube. And so there are most likely people also watching at home or from their office or wherever they might be more comfortable than sitting around a table. So again, welcome here this morning. The first person we're going to have up is Polly. Where's Polly? She's not. Oh, she's here. Oh, okay, Gus. That's all right. First person we're going to have up is Gus Sealy, who is the Executive Director of Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. So welcome. And okay, I see you're already up there. You're going to share your screen. Wonderful. And I'll just say if anybody else is going to share their screen for some reason, and you haven't checked in with Ron Wilde or Lori Morse, please do so because you'll need to be made a co-host. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. Okay. Well, thank you very much. It's both chairs. And so great privilege to be with you today to talk about homelessness a lot. I apologize that I'm not either Frank Naff, who is the new head of the Housing and Homelessness Alliance, which is a new alliance. And I'm not Polly Major. And Polly thought that her instruction from Frank was to talk for about three minutes and then learned yesterday that there were only six witnesses and put together this slideshow and then called me and she found herself not feeling well. So I'll do my best to deliver her thoughts, but I'll share a few of my own. And I apologize for things you may have heard me say either to the joint session, but maybe Bear's repeating or some of the testimony I've already provided in Chair Stevens' committee. But for me, the issue of homelessness as an older person is one that is newly on the scene. I had a recent colleague say, oh, we can't do anything about that. The homeless have always been with us. And the truth for me as somebody who started working in community action in 1977 in the Head Start program is that homelessness was not an issue back then. The committee on temporary shelter and most of the providers across the state did exist because real estate was relatively cheap in Vermont. And we are not just here in Vermont, but as Americans figured out how to monetize real estate in a million ways that my parents' generation didn't imagine. There weren't home equity loans back then. You didn't need to get a home equity loan to send your kids to college. There wasn't Airbnb. And we've made housing much more expensive for a lot of different reasons. And Laura Collins gave you the quiz of nine different reasons you could say housing is out of control. And the answer was all of them are true. There are two things that are particularly true from my perspective. One is that the cost of building any housing has gone up relative to Vermont's incomes at a rate that none of us would have imagined. And we have lost housing to a variety of market forces and giving second homes. And there being these end, as the slideshow will show you, we're producing a whole lot less than we used to. And the reality is that the market cannot produce housing for people of very modest means. It just doesn't do that. It only works when there's subsidies. I do want to say to all of you that since the beginning of the pandemic, there's been something called housing recovery working group that includes my organization, the Housing Finance Agency, State Housing Authority, the Department of Housing, Community Development, and the Agency of Human Services that's met pretty much at least twice a month, sometimes once a month to coordinate the utilization of resources and focus on what we can do. And I think a lot of good has been done, but not clearly not nearly enough to solve this problem. I think it's going to take public policy and going to take dollars to actually solve it. That the governor suggested may not be sustainable, but I think we need to figure out sustain. I do want to say to all of you congratulations on Act 47, which is making a difference. The top right picture is a rendering of what the moving in Light River Junction, the 1000 gifts building will look like when it's rehabilitated as a shelter. It's a project that we've recently funded and has been recently permitted by Hartford after they had rejected the Upper Valley Havens request to build right across the street from their existing facilities in a church that they were planning to purchase. That was rejected based on character of neighborhood. There were people reposed to this site and I think Act 47 made a difference there, made a difference with a shelter that will soon open in St. John's Baron. In talking with Chair Stevens, the building you see that I hope will get under construction in Waterbury this summer was subject of a 3-3 vote, not to give it a permit by the Zoning Board of Adjustment and talking to Chair Stevens. I think one of the reasons that Waterbury reversed themselves is that they looked at what Act 47 meant and they couldn't oppose it on those grounds. So hats off to all of you and to the next phase of permit work that you'll be tackling in the coming session. Really important stuff. I do want to say if you want to get, you know, I get a lot of time with all of you and if you want to get me out of the chair quickly then say the word and as I get to come back. Thank you. Thank you guys. And this day really is about sort of hearing the whole stuff and we want to make sure we have plenty of time for people with lived experience. So as you said, you'll be presenting in our committee. You've already presented in Chair Stevens committee. So it'd be great for you to move through and we're going to, for my committee at least, we're going to hold any questions for Gus until he comes to our committee for testimony a little bit later this session. And Gus, I could ask you if you could speak up just a little bit because people are sitting sort of off to the side and I want to make sure that everybody can hear if you wouldn't mind. So just briefly, this is the accomplishment that's been made so far across the pandemic. These numbers come to us from the agency of human services. This is at a scale, not like anything that we've ever seen before. And again, I just clearly not enough. So many of the monitors still in motels. You saw this picture at the presentation pre-session and its main purpose that which I will not dwell on is to say that people are going in and out of homelessness. It's not that it's the same static population, but that people continue to find themselves unhoused for a variety of different reasons. This is the slide on housing production over the decades. And I do want to just take a quick moment to say there are a number of different solutions that I see. And one of them is just to integrate folks into our general housing market as fast as we can. There is also something we call purpose-built housing. And one of them is what we call permanent supportive housing. And so the upper building is behind COTS existing family shelter. It will open any week now in Burlington as permanent supportive housing, which is a different model for people called. They don't have to stay there for the rest of their lives, but they're able to and with supports. And the way they got this site is an interesting one. And it just goes to the power of permanent affordability, which is the building in front was one we helped the Y buy in the early 90s. And a decade later, they'd forgotten about that it was permanently affordable housing. They didn't have a need for it anymore. They wanted to start a capital campaign. They said, oh, we've got an asset on Main Street in Burlington. We're going to sell it for $800,000. And Rita Markley wanted desperately to buy it. And she called and said, we're going to give you an application and here's the price. And we said, that's way too much. This is restricted permanent affordable housing. And because of that covenant, she was able to get it for much lower price and recycle it as housing as a family shelter. This is a slide you've seen, but to go over it just precisely where we are so far with rental housing. And we do other things like farm worker housing, home ownership, housing for people with disabilities through the Vermont Center for Independent Living. But on the rental housing, since the pandemic, we've invested $218 million. We've leveraged another almost $400 million invested in about 1900 units, 1,620 are new. Almost half of them were online by the end of 23 or 500 coming online in 24 and the balance in 25. So significant. And of the 1,620 new units, just about a third, a little over a third are households experiencing homelessness. And then last, the people we work with on a regular basis are now up to a quarter of their portfolio, housing people who previously had been unhoused. And you asked in the budget bill that we target 40% this year, 30% this year, and the providers we've worked with are actually at 40% for units that have become available since July 1. And over the course of the pandemic, and I think this is another value to having this permanently affordable inventory. They've taken 1,000 households who had been unhoused into that portfolio, which would not have been the case for the old federal style of 15 years or 20 years of affordability. And then you could sell property for marketing. I'm not going to dwell here a lot, but just two projects recently opened this year. One is in Bellows Falls, a former garage cement block garage on Main Street. It was a dilapidated structure that is now 27 units, really nice apartments. And then a new neighborhood in South Burlington also funded by us. And we will bring to our board next week this building owned by Washington County Mental Health here in Montpelier that will become 24 apartments for people who have been unhoused. You asked us to focus on infills in mobile home parks. Here is a, and we, yesterday, Chair Wood have been able to fund 13 units so far. I expect about three more specifically for folks that are unhoused. Another 16 infills, not with the special funding that you set aside for that purpose will also take place again for low and very low income families. And there's a new product available called a zero energy ready mobile home. They're coming out of a factory into North, but the offensive changed standards to create this certification. So it's a little bit more expensive, but not a lot. But for those of you who are interested in our climate impacts, it'll have a very positive impact. Hotels to housing. You've heard a lot about the Oregon model. When I talked with my friends, colleagues in Oregon, they had done 18 hotel conversions to housing. We had already done 12. We just didn't label it. But on a per capita basis, we are right up there with Oregon and in fact exceed them. Rainburne apartments, two of these have been done by the Champlain Housing Trust. They have been heroic in their work over this time. Rainburne Apartments was an isolation facility for people with COVID during the pandemic. It's been converted again to 20 units of heating housing. Now, Quality Inn is a project that we'd like to have happen and where there's been a long negotiation with the owner, not complete yet. And that's the way real estate goes is sometimes you can make a deal and sometimes you can't. And I can talk a little bit more about the Chalet and the Champlain Inn if finalists. A lot of investment in shelter and over the years, we've invested, I think, in every shelter in the state one way or another. But here in central Vermont, we added 50 beds, 35 at the old motel on the Barry Montpelier Road. And then we had a facility that DC, excuse me, corrections no longer attract the Phoenix House floor and added 15 beds in South Barry. Again, not enough, but 15 beds over the course of the pandemic here in central Vermont helped the groundworks collaborative with their facility in Brattleboro, which provides both kind of day station, but also 20 winter beds. And the organization working with survivors of domestic violence triple their capacity. Again, with the support of the Champlain Housing Trust in Colchester. An issue for us, because we are on the capital side, our role is to make grants to do physical properties. We are not the experts on human services by any means, is that service providers in some cases have been all the well. I had a conversation a few weeks ago with the director of the homeless prevention center in Rutland, and I said, you know, we really need a facility. And we work with you on one. And he said, us right now, I just cannot hire the staff that would staff that groundworks even before the tragedy that took place at Morningside had been the partner at the chalet in West Brattleboro. And one week in the summer, before that murder, three of their employees just quit. It was just really hard work. The impact of the chalet on the West Brattleboro neighborhood has been really difficult for the owner of the Wind of Windsor Housing Trust, because reputational farm, which has slow development that they're working on in Putney, because on social media, you'll read Wind of Windsor equals drug trafficking, all those kinds of issues. So again, in a conversation I had with chair Wood yesterday, I don't know what the rights maximum size is. We've done really well with facilities at 20 or less. We've been in the 35 and above. People have had real difficulty operating those facilities. Faith-based group called a new operator to the Champlain Inn. They came for two years, again, to seek coronavirus relief fund project that had where the money had been spent in our homes. They sprinted, we sprinted. They got help from the Equal Square to wire the facility. But it was not a success for them. They couldn't staff it, particularly after Burlington opened the pods. They felt they lost staff to a different provider. And they wanted to just convert it to something else. And they said, no, they agreed to permit restrictions. And they have now, after several months of difficult negotiation, transferred the property at no cost to the Champlain Housing Trust, which was willing to take it on if CVOO would operate it. And they've agreed to do that two or three years. They have a similar partnership with Tim's Place up in St. Albans, where, again, a local group maintains its place and they've stepped in. So building that capacity at the social service end, one of all of our challenges. On the nuts and bolts construction side, we have made technical assistance awards statewide group called Evernorth to provide help to organizations that don't have to do real estate development, to do construction management. We're in discussion right now with more groundworks about the placement of the morning side facility, where the murder took place. And they'll be helping them. They helped stand up a facility in Rutland in the old John Deere dealership. That's transitional housing as well as the course of the pandemic. So we are trying to find ways for technical assistance. I guess it would be good if we can sort of wrap things up so we can. I'm just going to say two things. One is, Deacon Apartments is another supportive housing development. This was done with the support of the Medical Center. This is old data, but the data tells us that people's healthcare costs went down pretty dramatically once they were housed, as opposed to before they were housed. So while it's very difficult to find dollars to support people in permanent supportive housing, I guess what I would say to all of you as we think about the equation, whether it's in our healthcare budget or our corrections budget or our mental health budget, we're going to ultimately spend those dollars if we don't solve this problem. And so I think that it's worthy of more investment. And with that, I'm going to say thank you and I appreciate the queue and the purpose is for you to hear people other than me. And I look forward to working with you to continue to make progress on this really critical issue that strikes all of us as staying on what we want them up to be. Thank you. Thank you so much, Gus. Appreciate you being here and appreciate the work that you're doing in collaboration with so many partners across this state. Next up on our list we have Ken Russell, who is the Executive Director of another way in here in Montpelier. And while Ken is coming forward, just want to remind everybody that there is a day-long schedule of events related to homelessness awareness day. After this, there will be a vigil on the front steps as there has been in every year that's not going to COVID year. And then there will be some events later on this afternoon on that schedule is available in the State House. So make sure you can stop in and see or participate in the vigil on the front steps at lunchtime. With that, welcome, Ken. Good to see you again. See you. Microphone is yours. Thank you. It's no microphone. Great to be here. My name is Ken Russell. I'm the Executive Director of another way. Another way is a drop-in center for folks with psychiatric disabilities or an alternative to medical model for psychiatric care. We have a proud 40-year history across town. You might see us if you're going to the co-op to see the place with the greenhouse. And we have had a lot of great support from many sources over the years. We're funded by DMH. Over the years we've dealt with a lot of on-house people and it takes a toll. We have a model. I mean, every day it can be heart-wrenching and it can be beautiful. I would like to say that we deal with the people who are following through the cracks in the system and we meet them. And it's hard. It's hard on staff. It's hard for the folks who are living outdoors. We most recently had a gentleman and he said it's okay to talk about a story who lost his leg trying to jump through a train by shots across town. And he has some behavioral issues and he keeps flunking out of various places. And so we're sitting there at the end of the day, figuring out where he's going to go that night in a wheelchair. So one night I said one night only because I have to think about liability and set up a tent on our porch. It's like where is the most physically safe place he can be right now? And talk to some board members, talk to staff. You know, we'd like this was a moral choice. The next day we do what we often do is we engage with a whole network of people. Really good-hearted people, service providers, folks working for AHS, different capacities, church volunteers, synagogue volunteers, and one way or another they get into somewhere. What we did with this guy for six days, another way, bought him a room at the comfort end, 200 bucks a pop using donor money. City of Montpelier used to have a fund that good Sam administered that would buy motel rooms. Conilodge, Hilltop are no longer offering rooms. There's been a change in ownership. Since I have this opportunity I'll say it. Oh, I heard Gus talking about motel conversions. I guess that's the right way to say it. I was like, why didn't they do admin domain, run these things properly? Why did they earn through so many tens of thousands or millions of what? You know the numbers. Who knows? But you need physical plant for folks. So we deal with folks. But meanwhile, so there are these big housing issues that I'm counting on all you to figure out. And I'm way off script. But we're dealing with folks who are somehow keeping it together. They're staring at the abyss. They are in existential crisis, like not like a liberal arts kids sitting on a hillside somewhere. They're like really in crisis. And we have a great staff and people are motivated. I mean, there's a reciprocity in this. People show up, you know, like it's a struggle and there's something really fricking amazing knowing that everything we're doing is making a difference for folks who show up at our doorstep. People are really grateful and there's a lot of mutual care and that's got to be one of the, you know, design principles of solutions is recognizing people really, really do care about each other. That's part of the peer support work is is mutual care. And you know, it's like you have, you have the government, you have the bureaucracies that each follow the imperatives they need to follow. And you have the ground up. You have people on the ground taking care of each other's that the people from the faith community who bring meals day after day. Oh, one of the solutions for this guy in the wheelchair was it was that cold night. It's going to be eight degrees. And I was getting ready to be a hard ass and say, we can't do this another night. And the UU church said we're going to open up a cold shelter with 270 plus year old volunteers who's spending through the night. But there's there's risks. I like to say there's, yet we have to be adult on both sides of this. And this has to do with the sort of the stigma piece. We have to be compassionate. We have to not, we have to put in context the situation people are in there. But for the grace of God, go I like what would you do if you were living outside all winter? Yeah, I'd be drinking or whatever. And then but there are also some really rough edges. There's some really dangerous behavior. Yesterday, two days ago, I exited six people for behavior that seemed to stem from opiate addiction. Dangerous stuff like leaving putting needles in somebody's locker. I showed up there. Oh, there's a tent on the porch. And there's a bunch of needles on the ground. There's a couple having sex in the bathroom on, you know, presumably high breaking the bathroom, hurting themselves. We had a staff meeting yesterday about my decision to exit a bunch of people. And I feel like I've over the years, I've had a lot of, I've learned more and more gravitas and dealing with this with the responsibilities of my job. Like, and it's like I talked to the lawyer Karen Stackpole, she's a great lawyer. And, you know, she's like, it's like my adult self has to sink deeper and deeper into what what the liabilities are for our organization. Something goes wrong. Our organization loses its buildings. I get sued for whatever I have, you know, it's like, I have to put that out there. And then my staff is like, we can feed them out the door, right? I mean, it's like, it's like, so this whole range of challenges, I know I'm up to three or five minutes. I really appreciate the work you all are doing. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the work that you're doing with with everything that you've described. I mean, we're honored really to hear you and to hear our following witnesses do, but just to know that it takes a toll. And we thank you for your service and you're and you're staying with it. You've been here for you've been coming back back. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. Next up, we're going to hear from Jess Graff. Morning, everyone. And of course, all yours. Thank you for the record. My name is Jess Graff. I live in Fletcher, Vermont, and I'm the director of Franklin Grand Valley Community Action, which is a program of CTOEO, the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. I also serve as co-chair to the Bounce of State continuum of care and am a member of the board of the Housing and Formlessness Alliance of Vermont. I really appreciate your time. And Franklin Grand Valley Community Action, among many programs, it's one of the three community action programs of CTOEO. And among the many things that we do, we administer hot funding, housing opportunity program funding, which prevents homelessness and resolves homelessness, prevents it through rental arrearages, and resolves it through security deposits. We also have, we're the lead agency for coordinated entry. And we have programs that have staff on, say, at motels, providing housing, navigation, and case management. And we also have staff that run community outreach programs and spend time in encampments weekly and do outreach to people who are unsheltered in our house. And one of the legislative priorities that is shared by CTOEO, as well as the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, is to build services to meet the emergency shelter needs of Vermonters. And today, I'm going to present to you some information from coordinated entry, which uses our homelessness management information system, our HMIS, and we've collected some statewide data to just be able to do a little bit of level setting around what we saw in 2023. And I hope it can illustrate both the current need, as well as the success of the systems of support that we have in place. In 2023, there were 4,952 households enrolled in coordinated entry, which was a total of 8,138 individuals. That included 6,019 adults and 2,108 children, as well as 563 youth, which is defined as individuals between the ages of 8.24 and 422 seniors, which is person's age 65 class and 276 veterans. Homelessness is complex and there's not one face of homelessness. We have a lot of single individuals who are struggling with developmental disabilities and mental health issues. But in Franklin County, in the last three years that I've served in my role, I've also served two individuals who made six figures and were men after divorce and living in their car while they were working full-time and looking desperately for a rental or even a home purchase. And so the complex level of need and a huge variety of support that we have to be able to be prepared to offer people in various person by person. But of those, we do see some reoccurring sort of common themes and of those enrolled in coordinated entry in 2023. 3,508 attested to having a mental health disorder, 1,167 to having a developmental disability, 2,157 to having a physical disability and another 1,850 to having a chronic health condition. It's important to note that those are not necessarily different individuals. A person can attest to having potentially all three of those. But so overall it is a really vulnerable population with complex needs. It's also really important to note when we read the coordinated entry data that these numbers are a baseline and they're always an undercount. They only represent people who knew about and chose to engage with the coordinated entry process. For the most part, it represents individuals who are staying in emergency shelter, including economic services division emergency housing programs. It often does not include many individuals who are served through our domestic and sexual violence shelters and programs. And historically, we often miss individuals who are unsheltered. That population is often hidden and isolated. And even with our teams that are working to do unsheltered outreach, we can struggle to locate people who are living in forests or in vehicles that they have to move often several times a day. The unsheltered population has been really the hardest for us to feel like we have a solid count on. And we don't have great data to really guess how many individuals are experiencing unsheltered homelessness at any given time. But through the coordinated entry assessment, we do ask people where they stayed the night prior to the coordinated entry assessment. And in 2023, 1132 reported that they were living in a place not meant for human habitation on the night before their coordinated entry assessment. For the most part, people are referred at the point where they enter shelter to a coordinated entry. And we usually get to them within three days. That's always the goal. Across the state, we do a pretty good job of that. And so most people are already in shelter when we ask them that. And we don't have great data on the unsheltered count. But that still seems like a really significant number to me to imagine that we have that many people who at some point during the year experienced unsheltered homelessness. Important to note that coordinated entry is a process and not a program. It's a process through which we connect people to services and resource. And it's a process that works. In 2023, 2,204 individuals or 64% of them enrolled in coordinated entry, accidded into positive housing situations, including 1,144 with ongoing housing subsidies. Housing subsidies are a critical tool for us in doing this work. As at any given time, about 67 to 70% of individuals enrolled in coordinated entry make under $1,000 a month in income. Housing people takes time and with limited resources and extremely limited available housing, most of those that were accidded from coordinated entry in 2023 had been enrolled for between 90 days and two years. And the 4,618 people that remained in coordinated entry have been enrolled for more than a year. So about 24% of those that stayed within coordinated entry that we were unable to house or that didn't exit have been enrolled for more than a year. That's not necessarily a measure of the duration of their homelessness as many of them might have been homeless multiple times in their lives or for several months before they were enrolled in coordinated entry. Although there's always room for improvement through coordinated entry, we have a process that works for many. We have successes every day. And now more than ever, Vermonters are dedicated to to build much needed housing. And we know, we know what works. You had a great presentation from Gus about what works. It's not the first time you've heard from Gus. You hear from Schindlin Housing Trust and the home ownership centers across the state. We know what works. We have the solution. But the reality is that it's going to take us time to get there. And the unfortunate reality is in the meantime, we need added emergency shelter. We appreciate the administration's commitment to increase the emergency shelter programs that's been presented asking for the funding for the four additional emergency shelter programs. Almost this response service providers agree that more emergency shelter is critically needed. However, we have great concerns about large and temporary shelter programs targeted at only those who qualified as part of the June cohort and ask instead for partnerships with other divisions within AHS, including the Department of Mental Health to take the lead on opening smaller specialized emergency shelters that would provide services and support specific to people with identified needs, such as mental or developmental disabilities or those struggling with chronic health conditions involving substance use disorders. These populations are often the most likely to struggle in our current models. And as you heard in testimony right before me, are often most likely to end up on sheltered or in difficult situations where they're bouncing from shelter to shelter or different parts of the state as they're exited from motels and have to try to find new motels. We really think that there's a huge need for a model of shelter that is very focused on with skilled staff on providing treatment and support in addition to shelter. You have often been told that emergency shelters offer better services and supports on the motel program, but I want you to know that across the state there are dozens of dedicated and skilled staff that work to ensure that people sheltering in motel rooms and encampments are supported in both meeting current needs and addressing housing solutions. Most of the motels across the state have staff that are on site daily that are really working in a wholeless way to meet the needs of individuals and connect them to resources that address medical care, vocational support, accessing food, treatment services, and so much more. Although there is always room for improvement, the programs that provide emergency shelter including motel rooms are critical to thousands of remoders and it's not an exaggeration to say that they save lives. And today we have testimony from those with lived experience that will share their stories of accessing emergency shelter programs and we hope that you will hold their stories in your hearts as you make the difficult decisions over the session about the future of these programs. Thank you very much. I appreciate what you do every day as well as you're being here today. Tell us about challenges but also give us hope that there are ways to address those challenges as well. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thanks, Justin. For any witnesses who have electronic copies or want to share the copies of their testimony, please feel free to forward them on to either Lori Morse or to Ron Wilde, the committee's assistance of the two committees, so that we can keep it on record. Especially something with numbers that would be great for us to have those updated numbers in our conversation. We're going to start a run of witnesses of folks with what we call lived experience. And the first one we have on our list is John Medeiros, who's a veteran. And if you don't have the electronic copies, please feel free to leave the hard copies as well. Welcome, Ron. My name is Hines John Medeiros. I'm 62 years old. My friends call me John because that's my middle name. I'd like you all to be my friends and call me John. I have an interesting opportunity here this morning to thank nice people like you that have consideration for other people to not be hard hearted and say thank you. Thank you for your efforts and the things that you have to put up with from some people that may not feel the same to to persevere towards the outcome of us all living happily ever after. A person that suffers from ADHD, I have since I was a young child, I was one of them kids that was put in a desk with the sides on it so that I don't know what it was so that the other kids couldn't distract me or that I couldn't distract them. I have to write things down and have a thing that kind of like go on, you know, so that I can kind of stay on track. Another thing that's been very helpful to me is I get my medical care from the VA hospital because I'm a veteran, a Navy veteran, you know, because I was one of them kids that raised my hand and said pledge allegiance and then became a Boy Scout and then became a VN Scout. And I served my country like you all do in your own special way, even the ones that stay at home, you know, love America and do their part. So I'll do this thing, I'm here, I accuse myself number one. I don't do this very often and you all are in for a special treat because you get to actually meet the type of person that you are working for, you know what I mean? And in the end, it comes out to be a happy ever after story. So, you know, you're gonna feel really happy. You're gonna be great. I guarantee it. I'm here to represent homeless veterans and I'd like to share a little of my story with you. So, when the pandemic hit, see, I'm kind of a personable person, you know, when I'm clean and I'm shade, you probably wouldn't know I was the homeless person because I'd be that guy over there on McDonald's on my laptop. You know what I mean? Laughing to myself with my headphones on doing something God only knows what the police were not called. And that brings me to another good point too. Lucky for me, after I got out of the Navy, which I participated in alcoholism, 100%. You know what I mean? On the base, we had machines that put 75 cents and then a beer came out. I mean, you know, you go to do your laundry and there's like a gallon of alcohol that somebody else has had there already. And we were also drunk. Hi. But lucky for me, I was able to go into the AA program at 27 years old. And now that I'm 62, I've enjoyed all these years of not having the obsessive problems with choices over alcohol. So my body, as far as the liver, whatever, you know, thank God, it's not her. But I unfortunately do have an addiction. And that is smoking. That out of all the things that I let, like, you know, I never tried to out be it. You know, I'm 62. I'm not really in that hip generation, which I'll get to later, which when it has something to do with the environment of homelessness, considering here we are in our 2024, as opposed to the 80s, when I first became a vagabond and saw America, like the sign on Interstate 80 that says the highest point on Interstate 80 or the old Las Vegas or, you know, different things like asking the people that are Native American that I'm riding with in their car, why do they call this the painted desert? Because flowers grow there at a certain time here, I guess. Interesting that, you know, I took my tours of the country while I was at a young age and could enjoy it. And it's probably a good thing that I did because now that I'm 62, I don't have the money for that kind of stuff. And I suffer from severe COPD. So I don't get to really walk as far as I used to, which is a very important part of homelessness is being able to walk around and not be like part of the pack that looks weak. You know what I mean? So thank God, things worked out the way they did. When the pandemic hit, a lot of the businesses and other resources like the coffee shop and McDonald's and the kitchen that you go to to eat dinner and socialize and make connections. There's a word for that, I can't think of. All that flows down. Everybody was really afraid of each other. And me with COPD and the transmission rate of 20, excuse me, 25%, I was scared to death. You know, I was wondering who was going to get my laptop and who was going to see what was on it. So I called the 800 number for homeless people that were, you know, and then I got put into the comfort inn in White River Junction, Vermont. And I'll tell you, when I walked in there, they looked at me like one of those homeless people. I wonder what kind of drugs or trouble this person is going to start. By the time I walked out of there, a year later, thank you all very much for paying all that money, because I sure did enjoy it, the room at the comfort inn. I made the very best of it. I took it very seriously as if I was in a pandemic. You see, I wasn't going to die of a pandemic because I wanted to hang out with my friends or think this was some kind of vacation resort. You know, I'm a soldier. I take things very seriously. So I took advantage of the money that was given for my housing from the Vermont social welfare people. I called the number, they paid my rent. I held my breath every 30 days to wonder if they were going to do it again. And that became kind of a little bit of a mental problem, but I talked about it with my psychiatrist over there at the VA. And we got it all worked out and it did. It all worked out, as you'll see, towards the end of the story. I'm sorry if I go over three, five minutes, but I think it's very important for all of us to go on a suit. You have a white shirt on. You know what I would do to a white shirt? We were able to communicate you and somebody like me, us in the big melting pot. So I couldn't go to the coffee shop. I couldn't go here, couldn't go there. Called the number I heard that they would get you off the street and sure enough they sure did. And they were very patient with me and very kind to me. Like I sometimes had to talk to a person that was like in charge of the White River office. And she was a nice lady. I can't remember her name. I'm really sorry about that. Somebody like you guys, I'm sure. And thank you again. And didn't talk down to me or anything and just, you know, I guess it wasn't her money. So they paid and paid. I think it was $3,000 a month at King size bed, internet, air conditioning, electricity. And believe me, I know how to use those things. Hot shower. You have no idea how amazing it is. Running water. You ever have to carry water? You ever try to carry water in a five gallon bucket? And then it all sloshes on your leg. God help you if you had to go up a hill. Anyways, running water. Instant on lighting. Like that. So then I made it. And then I, unfortunately, since I live on inhalers and very expensive inhalers come to mind out. I called it 800 number for medical needs to the VA hospital. And that's the first time I ever wanted to have anything to do with them people. Cause you know what Navy means? It means never again, volunteer yourself. Stay the hell away from them people. They talked to me through it the first time. I think I wanted to add is knowing that we're drinking at a very young age, but I haven't had any problems with the law. I'm not a felon. I'm not addicted to hard drugs. Once in a while, I enjoy the legalized marijuana. That was a really good idea. But unfortunately, people don't realize that smoking causes COPD. So, you know, every silver cloud has a rainy side, I guess. Anyways, not a hard drug user, not a felon, not a child molester. And through all this vagabondness, I never ended up getting in serious trouble like stealing a car or robbing somebody or for any of that stuff, which, you know, some people might have bad choice making into considering their, you know, addictions, especially addictions. And that's something I want to talk about as far as the new socialization of homeless people, the type of homeless people, different than in the 80s. So, I call the VA. They gave me my inhalers. They were really cool about it, too. And I'm telling you, these are really expensive inhalers. And God knows that I am addicted to those, because they keep me alive. And even with the inhalers, you know, I still am having a downward spiral towards my health, but my mind is sharp. I'm a New Englander. You know, I can make stuff. But the ADHD kind of slows me down a little bit. So, when I got out of the Navy, with the ADHD, you know, I was the perfect butterfly. You know, I just went vagabonding and just saw things and just had a really nice time. So, I got into the HUD BAT program at the VA, and then I was able to have health, because I have problems filling out forms. I read really well, but I don't write things very well. Like being an ADHD person, I never really caught on like sentence structure. You know what I mean? You know, I've been putting periods on the end of what I think is a sentence, and I hope it makes sense. So, I got out of the Social Security, got a big jack, and I was really careful with it. It didn't, and I'm happy to say that in my case, the big jack to me was a lot of money as a person that, you know, lived on the gratitude of others, you know, caring. And I got on the food stamps. And then something I got on the HUD BAT program. I get my health care, physical and mental health from the VA hospital. My case worker helped me to apply for housing and to find an apartment in Springfield, Vermont. I live at 6B Reservoir Road in Springfield, Vermont. You all are welcome to write to me, send me your business card. If you want to ask me questions after this, I'm open to that. I know a lot about this. Guys, I have like an interesting person to talk to, you know. This is my first apartment in 10 years. I really enjoy being outside and living in nature. Like, for instance, at different times of the year, when you're out there, you can see when the grass starts growing or when the trees change and the leaves change and certain kinds of birds come through at certain times of the year and skunks and just all these things that happen that, you know, people that drive in cars probably don't really notice. And the old man against nature thing. I have sleeping bags that were donated to me, like the one similar to the ones that you would go camping on Mount Everest with. And I would put one inside the other and some other things to keep me warm because I even enjoyed camping in the winter. You know, but when it gets less than 18 degrees, I have to decide, you know, whether it's freedom to go outside and sleep outside in the winter or insanity to make that choice. And lucky for me being sober when I made that choice, it worked out so far. But my health and my age prevents me from living that lifestyle now. In April 2021, I moved into my new apartment. And, you know, being a person that didn't ever have an apartment in 10 years and no like reference and any normal amount, you know, and no credit rating and all that stuff that a homeless person doesn't have. They're like, well, you would never heard of you before. You'd be like, that's the way I wanted it. For instance, they wanted me to qualify for being homeless by having a record of homelessness. I'm looking to have a record of homelessness, but I'm hiding in the woods. That's a rule that's very unusual. I can prove homelessness. Well, they said you could have a police officer say that you were homeless, or you could have a person listen to that. And the other thing that said you were homeless, I don't have contact with police officers. I'm like my business and I keep my hands to myself, just like my mom told me to. Since then I have lived in my apartment, which is beautiful. It was like a miracle. So then when I do one apartment, all this other stuff works out for me. The apartment that I moved into on the first floor, walk in, I can roll my electric bike through the door. I do carry insurance case electric bike burned down the house. Anyway, so in two and a half years, the electric bike has not burned down the house and I put 600 miles on it. And the best thing about that, my rent includes electricity. That's the kind of place you want to get. You don't have a car with that. You're building have electricity included then they can buy it. I lived there for two and a half years. Oh, the apartment. So before I moved into the apartment, I guess it was kind of a tone. And then the landlord got some kind of a loan from somebody like the government or the state. I don't know that, you know, it's all about loans. And so they took everything out of the apartment, all the walls, all the drywall, everything and redid everything in the entire apartment. It looks like a condominium. It has all stainless steel appliances, which I keep shiny because I have stainless steel cleaner. And I know how to use it. I did mention how the soldier, I take a lot of pride in how I make it. The carpet looks like it did when I moved into an app years ago. You know why? Because I bought a brand new vacuum cleaner to use on my brand new carpet. And I cleaned my vacuum cleaner. Like I take it apart and actually clean it because you can't clean the floor with a dirty appliance. It's all about cleaning to the corner. I continue to pay my rent on time. I lived there for two and a half years. I pay my rent before it's due. Like one time it was Christmas and I email my landlord just to keep in contact, say hi, how are you doing? I just wanted to say I hope you have a really nice day and things are going really well here to keep that communication open. That way if anything should ever happen, they'd be like, oh, that's John Maderos. You know what I mean? So I wrote to him one time it was Christmas time and I'm like, you know, I really appreciate this. And I just was trying to think of something to do nicely for Christmas. You know, I said I'm going to pay my rent early. I paid my rent two weeks before it's due. I just wanted everyone to know how much I appreciate what everyone has done for me and that any money spent on me has been well spent. So I was telling you about that I got all that money and I didn't end up using it on cocaine and Ores. So I'll end up with it back in my drinking problem or call up the ex-wife and ask her if she wants to get back together. You know what I mean? Any stupid things like that. But because I have a post-traumatic stress because of this experience, I do things like I bought Coleman lanterns. You know the kind that you put the Coleman fuel in and pump it up like that. I have three of them. I have backup power supplies like I wish I had back in my tent. I bought one. I didn't like the way it worked out. I went to vocational school for electronics when I was in high school and so I know a little bit about manufacturing things and I didn't like the backup battery lithium ion phosphate battery that I bought premade from the factory which came from eBay and it didn't even turn on. So I wrote to them. I said don't you guys catch these things before you send them out? So since I didn't like that I built my own. I feel like I can rely on it. Similar to buying a fire extinguisher in the case of emergency, I have allocated some of my resources to preparing for the worst case scenario of this beautiful dream that I live. That I live disappearing. I've used some of my money to prepare for that. This is why it is so important that our government continues to provide assistance and funding to the HydroBash program and other programs like that. So that's me. Do you want to ask me a question? We're just about five minutes, John. Do you work times in your lifetime that you're going to have a chance to be able to ask a person like me in this cycling environment a question? No one has a question for me? I think you were pretty thorough, John. And I appreciate you giving us your address. I wrote it down and I appreciate that. I actually wanted to applaud for you at the end of your presentation. Just because one, I personally appreciate your resilience and sharing your story the way you shared it and the things that have worked great for you and the things that you're still working through like your post-traumatic stress and feeling like at any moment this, as you said, this dream that you're living might be yanked out from under you. And I think that's really important for us to hear. Yeah, it's all about the funding. I get the discounted rent payments because you guys, I really appreciate that. I've been very careful and I just wanted to tell you all that at least in this case, your money was well spent because unfortunately what happens is some vagabond type people, travelers, wandering souls, people that have a traveling bone, as you get them into a nice place and it would seem like that would be like all they could ever want. And they flitter off like an alcoholic taking his next drink after promising not to drink again. It's because some people just aren't ready to settle down. So when the time comes that a person does settle down and uses the money wisely, then I think that's an example of why we have to keep trying. Thank you very much. And I would just add, John, as you're sitting down to say, it's good to hear this part of the story that there are successes. We hear so much, especially every January, how much more we have to do as if what we've been doing hasn't been working and I keep carrying a story of where it worked. Thank you. And thanks for coming up all this way. It's great. Hopefully not on the electric bike. Catherine, I don't want to, for Zine, for Zine. Oh, she was very excited and has not been, her phone is an off for, which is sometimes what happens. Okay. So I have her testimony that without her, without being able to communicate with her, I don't want to give it to you. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. And if you're able to reach her before we end the hearing, then we'll certainly hear it. Okay. And if it can be submitted. Yeah, as a commission. Yeah. So Rube Schold, it looks like you are on the screen. Are you available? Hi. Oh, welcome. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. And the floor is yours to share what it is that you'd like to share with us today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the record. My name is Rube Schold. I was asked to share my experience with homelessness today. Okay. Homelessness is obviously very difficult. It's draining and confusing and it makes people lose faith in humanity. There are a lot of hoops to jump through just to have shelter. And I'd like to assume that everyone here is in agreement that shelter is a basic human right. So I'm left wondering why it's such a struggle and why we as a species can't meet people at this basic need. Why does something so ingrained in our species have to be so complicated? It's painful to summarize my experience in a short segment, but I think it's important to help people understand that the homeless find themselves in dangerous or difficult situations all the time. And many of these dangers are things people are experiencing for the first time. Just several examples that I've dealt with personally is being caught up in fights that break out from seemingly nowhere, not having access to medicine when I was sick, sleeping outside in illegal areas when I had no other options, being told a shelter is at capacity and I will get a bed after carrying all of my belongings all day. Organizations or programs losing my housing paperwork or just generally not being very communicative, probably from a lot of work overload, I would imagine. Not having anything to eat for dinner is just kind of a gimme, losing friendships and not knowing how I could have been better is probably the hardest thing that homeless deal with. People yelled rude expletives at me and through trashing me from their car and told me to just get a job when I wake up every morning cold and wet and dirty and a lot of shelters will say that we can't have a beer after dealing with all of this all day and all week, dealing with feeling like the world just hates us for existing. So it's quite dehumanizing, you might say. The stigma is all around us and it's not going anywhere. So I really wonder how we can initiate change on that. I'd like to mention an organization that's been extremely supportive of me this past year. It's called Pathways Vermont Community Center and I think they're doing a lot of things right. And I'd love to see other programs emulate what they're doing. I never felt like I was a homeless person when I was at Pathways. I just felt like I was home. The staff are extremely supportive and meet people where they're at. They provide a safe space to feel whatever I was feeling at the time and they build trust with the community and allow friends of the space to store food and use their kitchen so that they can have their hot meal probably their only hot meal fresh with actual produce that they've had all week, which meant a lot. It's also just a comfortable space to be. A lot of shelves and shelters just don't feel comfortable to be in for one reason or another. But Pathways is just built as a nice place for community. This certainly isn't everything that Pathways offers but it meant the most to me. So I'd like to shout them out. The other shout out I'd like to mention is a non-profit Food.Cops. Food.Cops is an invaluable resource not just for food security but also community. There's never any stigma against the homeless at Food.Cops and they help people meet their needs whatever that may be. So if somebody needs a drink or needs a smoke then they'll help us get that which I think goes a long way. The last thing I've been asked to weigh in on is what would have been more helpful to me while facing homelessness and that's sort of a big question. The simplest answer is just you know shelter. Why do we make access to safe shelters so hard? I don't understand. And if you ask my opinion I'd say we should tear down the barriers we've created for people to meet their basic needs. I think it would be helpful if wealthy individuals stopped profiting off of real estate. I'd like to mention that I'm still young. I'm in my 20s still and just 11 years ago when I was living in a two bedroom with my father our rent was $800 a month and today the same two bedroom would easily be $3,000 a month. So if you're wondering why there's a housing crisis I think there's your answer. That's all I've written down. Thank you. Thank you very much and I don't know if you heard Representative Steven say if you're willing to share you know what you have written down it's always helpful for us to be able to go back and look and reread the testimony that people have given and I very much we very much appreciate the thoughts that you have about ways that we can try to make things better when you're going through not feeling like people are even treating you as a human being and I think that's one of the most important things for us to take away from what you said as well as trying to why do things and I think that John said this as well why do things need to be so complicated you know and I think that's a real lesson for us as we look to try to make things better so we really very much appreciate you sharing your story and your thoughts about how we can improve things today. Thank you for being here. You're welcome. Thank you. Next up on our list we have Brian Plants. On the other side there. And John moved the chair so you can move it back. Some of you might remember Brian from our on our side of the table at least from our joint hearing with the senate earlier this year so. Thanks for having me back. Some of the folks this might be a rehash but luckily there's new faces that I haven't seen that get the chance to hear it. Well thanks Brenda and Brett McGill for helping coordinate getting me here today. I found out about this earlier in the week but it didn't become official till like about five o'clock last night so it's like scrambling to make a record. My name is Brian Plants second from Bristol Vermont. I was born in Burlington raised in Chittenden County. I graduated from high school. Then graduated an associate's degree from Champlain College. I worked retail on health care as a contractor for the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service and ultimately as an occupancy analyst for J. H. Morgan Chase, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend to me, a writer, an artist, a bit of a nerd and obviously she fled. Late October 2020 through mid-August 2021 I lived in John Graham Shelter in Virginia. This was followed by two years transitional housing through the SRO program which stands for single resident occupant and Brett McGill is my landlord. We won't ask you how good of a landlord she was. I lived there from August 2021 through September 2023. On September 1st, 2023 I successfully leased up in a newly built apartment in Bristol, the firehouse apartment for the visitor. At the time I entered the shelter I believe that that was the lowest point in my life as well. Just prior to entering the shelter appointments of a good friend of mine, familiar with the system, helped me start the mountain paperwork required to acquire services. Plan prior to moving into the shelter was this acquaintance would run point volunteering her time and the shelter staff would provide support. Fortunately that did not happen after about a week I was essentially ghosted. Paperwork that we had started was never submitted. So after going back and forth we ended up wasting about two months of time before we actually got the paperwork resubmitted or submitted for the first time I guess. Again the process of also began the process changing service coordinators. If you count the initial advocate I'm now officially on number 11 in three years. This is not unique for people experiencing homelessness. It's around the same time I began to try to access the federal government's lifeline program to free sell service. Reminded service by Q-Link. Their actions forced me to go without a phone for months while it couldn't help me and I didn't have coverage. It took about six months to resolve. Huge barrier to keeping up with appointments whether it's doctors, the appointments for government agencies, service coordinators, whatever it's if you can't unfortunately phone is a necessity at this point. Late January early February 2021 was presented with the opportunity to participate in the single room occupancy or slash SRO program which provides a pathway to obtaining housing or housing choice section eight voucher. This would be my first experience of filling out VSAJ paperwork. It was required to fill out a 20 page application providing financial information as requested. In April I was asked to refresh the financial information which included filling out the application in full for a second time. About two months later I heard back that I was accepted in the program. I can tell you that the lack of time frames and communication is problematic especially if you're suffering for something like mental illness or challenges. If you have the rough timeline it helps if they say a couple months and that you can reach out but sometimes these indefinite things just gives the line time to one. Once you go by it is easy for someone dealing with something like depression without despair and hopelessness to say that. System has less down than many times before why would you do that? I said earlier that I thought moving into the shelter was the lowest point in my life I was wrong. That would be August 25th 2021. That was the day of my disability hearing and I moved into the SRO. Hearing was brewing because your life is late bear for people to sift through all the worst things about your life confirming them while others are actively trying to deny you assistance. The experience nearly broke me. I was then unceremoniously moved to the SRO program or unit without contact from my support network for several days. These people I depended on knew how hard this was for me knew my health and transportation issues and how bad my health was a limited ability to get around. Thought I'd build connections with and I was left to flaunt for a few days. Thankfully I made it through the initial move period I could go on about various programs that were supposed to help with one thing or another for example furniture that fell short. I did receive a V-WRAP, the Vermont emergency rental assistance program. I was fortunate with my decision in my disability case. But with a favorable decision came losing benefits. Fedgiveth and the state takeover. I was able to keep Medicaid during the COVID emergency order. It helped greatly recover my many medical medications, counseling appointments, physical therapy, and durable medical equipment. But with the rescinding of the order I'm no longer eligible for Medicaid and I've already begun to see the concerns that I had come to come to life. Co-pays for counseling alone forced me to go less often. Additionally in losing Medicaid I'm no longer eligible for the Lifeline phone program. Over the course of the next two years while trying to get my life back on track, every few months it seems like some agency or another needed paperwork filled out. Someone actually needs to read through these questions because many are unclear especially when a person is worried that one wrong answer can get them dropped from our program. With a long wait possibly get benefits restored. It strikes me confusing that even some of the service coordinators get the answers wrong or stumped to the lack of clarity. This is also, this is even made worse by the unrealistic turnaround times. If I never see another 10-day prior response request be too soon. That's received not postmarked. The request often shows up four days late after the date but it's printed by. We shop and use a person 24 to 48 hours to gather the info and get it back to the mail to make sure it shows up on time. Service coordinators are readily available to me and such service and notice due to their caseloads. If multiple clients receive the same request somebody gets left out. Fear, stress, the panic and the anxiety this invokes and many, many clients struggle. The mental illness echoes for days and weeks. Trust me you have no idea how much damage it's caused to people. It's especially insulting when a press packet sits on a desk to somebody for weeks or months. It's not acceptable. I hope it's an error that somebody can do. As stated earlier, it successfully housed as of September. My section 8 voucher almost didn't get extended. How's my choice for the question? For those unfamiliar with the SRO program, a person accepted on the program spends one year in a transitional living space at the end of one year if they are in good standing they become eligible for housing choice section 8 voucher. Currently it's the only clear path for many to receive assistance and available in only limited spaces. At the end of my year I was deemed no longer eligible for the subsidy at the locations I was living but I could stay there paying full rent. I was informed that I would have six months to use the voucher or lose it. In other words, I was treated like if I didn't find a place I was something wrong and that it might be possible to do a short extension. Anyone familiar with the housing situation knows how limited the supply is, how high the rents are and how dire the situation truly is. I conducted my search with having very little success in the input. In November 2022, the MI service coordinator, number nine for those who keep track, began to reach out to the SHA to make the extension process easier. The six month period was set to expire January 30th, 2023. He reached out five times before receiving a brief response asking who the request was for even though my name is clearly provided multiple times. The holidays occurred to which we reached out five more times before the debt. We reached out eight more times before getting a response in late March. In April, I received a letter telling me I was terminated from the program due to inactivity and that I could appeal, people requested an appeal. I requested the appeal only to follow up with BHA to have them tell me they felt hearing was unnecessary unless my financial situation had changed. I then had to fire back that they kept dodging my questions that I had spent months trying to get answered, that they kept referencing stuff that I already knew that if a hearing was the only way to get heard, I demanded BHA reluctantly agreed to have the hearing. Prior to the hearing, I provided them with cell phone logs, date, time, phone number and all email correspondence. About 15 minutes before the hearing, I received cancellation notice for the hearing along with an email of soft apology reinstating me back into the program with them needing updated financials and yet another 20 plus page questionnaire application. I want to be clear this is not an uncommon story. I didn't keep fighting, keep great records, I might not be housed today. How is someone going through their worst days facing challenges whether it's substance abuse, disorder, trauma or mental health roadblocks, if their service coordinators are not bringing their A game going to get the help they need? Why are people experiencing this always held to a higher standard than the providers, state agencies and others? They can miss deadlines, we cannot. They can lose paperwork, we cannot. Somehow I made it through. Mine is a story of success. Unfortunately, the problem of homeless is not going away and it cannot be ignored. I returned to Montpelier today to try to finish bookending that chapter of my life and to give it some meaning while I figure out what comes next. If able, I still like to return to some capacity to being a productive member of society. Since the last time I was here, I've conducted several interviews about my story with Vermont Housing Conservation Board, Vermont Food Bank, Addison Housing Works and I've submitted two letters of intent to join board of directors for two different organizations likely later to be made official later by May. I intend to participate in the mental health awareness advocacy day on the 29th. I may even be back to testify for some of you again, so you like to stick with me? I don't consider myself an advocate. That's certainly a path that seems to be unfolding in front of me and I choose to take it. I do hope by continuing to share my experiences that it lands in the years of those who need to hear it and instead of pulling up the ladder behind me, the process gets smoother and less painful for those that haven't been able to go. Two things that didn't add to the speech because I didn't have time to completely edit it. BSHA still has problems with this organization. I recently received two letters from them. One telling me congratulations, you've been accepted for the Section 8 Housing and this is how much money we're going to help with it. I knew that five months ago. Why are you sending me this now traditionally? Do I need to respond? Do I need to fill out something? The second letter was telling me that they wanted updated financials for the tenant-based voucher, which I had not received assistance from them since September 2022. It kicked me out of in April of 2023 and I had to fight the abatement to get my voucher back. They're still disorganized. When I followed up with them to ask them what's going on, if I needed to send anything in, my field rep had no clue why I was sent this information. It was then forwarded on to a couple different other people who came back with, oops, we don't know why I get sent to you. Sorry for the confusion. Again, I think I'm sharp. I figured it out, made it through, but other people would be panicking. And if I leave with you guys with anything, I get to go home. When I'm done here today talking, I get to go home. All of us, I assume, I'm just making an assumption here, get to go home, whether it's apartment or condo or whatever. There are a lot of people who are still going to get to go home. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Hey, next, guess who we're going to hear from? I'm on stay housing authority. This will be, this will be both Caprice and Dale. Yeah. Hi. Hi, everyone. I'm Dan if I could talk with or want to say how the authority, unfortunate to hear that experience. We're going through a lot of challenges with staffing, like a lot of folks and but still not acceptable. But I just want to thank John for his highlighting these experiences with bash, which is another one of our programs. That's one of my points I'm making today is that the bash program is a federally funded programming and it pays for the subsidies and it pays for services. However, at your request in 2019, we presented on why we were unable to use some of our homeless funding and had to subsequently turn it back to HUD. And one of the reasons is because we have to have a map for that program. That's called the shelter of care program. And the match at that time was about, we lost about 25 to 30% at the sun back. This last year, we had to send about 70% back because we are not getting any applications. We don't have enough service providers or capacity in the area or around the entire state. Everyone in the shelter of care program that are from homelessness, meaning as a disabled condition and 12 months or more of literal homelessness. And everyone has some of the highest needs of any of our programs, including corrections, experiences, criminal records, no income, frequent stays in the motel programs, victims of sexual violence, substance use disorders, and severe mental health issues, often exasperated by homelessness itself, increasingly people are older, 60 plus. And in the actually very recent publication by HUD, they highlighted the housing first program and which thankfully the legislature approved an expansion of last year into Bennington County through pathways Vermont, which is another speaker. And that's been our only real viable utilization of our funding is because they were able to serve people without extra services. Their utilization compared to our other program, they've utilized 58% of their grant, so more than 30% were at with our original shelter of care grant. And it's increasing every day, but it's only increasing incrementally, but it could do a lot more good if it was expanded into another area, which they've deemed a high need area in Rutland County, which is they have 20% of the homelessness of all homelessness in Vermont and 16% of all the chronic homelessness in Vermont. So it is one of the highest needs area, but also one of the lowest services for permanent part of housing, which Gus also mentioned, and it's Cheney with homeless prevention center who I work with as well and other programs, there is a lack of services available. And also not just services in general, but quality services, it requires a full complement of teams to the pathways housing first program to make sure that people are consistently and successfully housed, their success rate is 5% utilization for it has been for years, which is very high for permanent sort of housing at this time. So that is that's what I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Just wondering if your colleague has anything that she wants to add? Caprice is going to be talking about the manufactured home program. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm hopeful that I can leave Molly sent my power point on that I will be sharing with the committees today. First and foremost, my name is Caprice Hover. I work for the Vermont State Housing Authority and I'm their project, a special project manager. I have overseen VRAP and now I oversee the landlord relief program and the mobile home improvement and repair program. These are critical new opportunities at Vermont State Housing Authority to help address these items that you are speaking of. I also want to take a moment to thank the folks with lived experience who had a lot of courage and braveness coming to a room where there's usually generally pretty intimidating for folks. So thank you for sharing your stories. And as a former couch surfing teen, I can relate to the humility that comes with working with folks that don't necessarily look at you as a human being. Unfortunately, it would look up here like the hosted is I'm not able to share my screen. If there's a way to change that, that would be great. Thank you very much. I know you all have while we're working out, I know you all have a hard job to do and I want to thank you for the challenges I have been advocating in Vermont around homelessness and housing support services my entire life. I believe that there are a complexity of folks you've heard from me before that I've said that homelessness is hidden and I think COVID opened the doors and really showed us the complexity of what folks have been working with on the ground level for a very long time. We've also created opportunities where if we could figure out how to do more of the hotel conversions like Gus spoke of, there are communities that have been established in these hotels and those supports and I was able to do a site visit in court at the Cortina in Rutland and I saw many of my clients that I used to work with the Brandon training school as well. So we have to understand that there is a level of complication and support that's needed that it's going to be long term and it is expensive and it is hard to find social workers to work at the levels of pay that they have been requested to. If somebody wants to give me a thumbs up when I'm ready otherwise I can just- It's like co-hosting. You're okay. Super awesome thank you so very much I'm very excited to be working in these programs the mobile home improvement I've always believed mobile home projects are a source of affordable housing for our state. So as I said I'm with the Vermont State Housing Authority our mission is to promote and expand the supply of affordable rental and home ownership opportunities on a statewide basis. Each new endeavor will enhance or increase the organization's capacity to continue its mission and to assure the effectiveness of VSHA as a provider and an administrator of affordable homes. What is the mobile home improvement and replacement program? It really was created to work with homeowners and parks in order to address the lack of housing affordability and safety. So we have three components we have an infill program for vacant or abandoned lots. We have an opportunity to do a home repair for existing homeowners and we have the opportunity to provide new foundations for the placement of new housing opportunities. Between the ARPA we were granted four million dollars to start the program and then through the state general fund that was increased another four million that eight million dollars in crew includes program support. So not all eight million goes directly to the homeowners and the infill but a good majority of it does. What we have at the moment the financial assistance we have two point five million dollars will be for community small-scale infill grants seven hundred and fifty thousand for home repair financial assistance and seven hundred and fifty thousand for manufactured home foundation grants. To this point we have been open less than a year and we have been able to facilitate the accommodation of one point eight million dollars to the various counties across the state. These you can see we can also let you know if you're interested by which town and that would be helpful for your constituents. Whereas the money been spent you'll see that the foundation deposits and foundation final we have thirty nine new homeowners that have foundations with that are had certified. We also have a little over one million dollars that has been spent on home repair projects. Oops sorry when we see homeowner contractor dollar amounts we actually have several homeowners many homeowners that are doing their own work or working with folks that have their experience in doing construction so are able to make that happen. The infill project has seen a little over five hundred thousand dollars in order to provide new lots for new homeowners. I'd like to share with you some opportunities what you're about to see are for folks who were homeless and are now going to be able to be in new housing. The first comes from a gentleman who is a contractor as well as was precariously housed during the covid situation and this is the photo of his his home before he was able to begin working on it. He has been able to do with eighteen thousand dollars a great level of work interior and exterior to ensure that he has a home to go to for a very long period of time. This situation is a situation where a family's home was burned to the ground they were then able to access resources through the through the state of Vermont to be able to be safely housed while the asbestos and foundation work were completed so that we can now put a new home in place for her. She is currently awaiting the hookups for the electric and water and sewer and will be housed very shortly. This is an infill project as you are all probably aware. Ludlow was hit very hard with floods and the park owner in this situation had already been trying to infill vacant lots but it is a very costly situation and so with our program he has been able to more than double the number of lots that he would be able to work on and provide a new home for folks to live in. When we look across the spectrum what our work in progress is we have had 492 applications in less than a year. Our program opened at the end of February of 2023 and we have provided approvals to just under 200 of those applications and we are continuing to process. We unfortunately needed to shut down the home repair program in May as the amount of requests that came in was far exceeding the amount that we were able to provide for homeowners that needed repairs to their situations. We reopened the program November 16th and have seen 130 new applications and we are processing them as we go. I want to thank you for your time. I would love to be able to answer any questions if you have them but I also know that you have a tight agenda so I have provided in my testimony the way to reach me. Thank you Chris. Appreciate your sharing that information and our committee has seen some of those slides or some of those some of that information so thank you for sharing it again. I want to thank the opportunity of you folks for the opportunity to do this amazing work. This is new for the state of Vermont. We have a great relationship with the agency of commerce and community development and CBOEO without whom this partnership without this solid partnership this would not be able to happen. Thank you. We have two more witnesses left here scheduled. Lele Silger who is the interim director for the department for children and families and the economic services division and our we tag teaming. Miranda Gray who is a deputy commissioner of ESD at DCF is also here so thank you so much for coming and thank you for being here throughout the whole hearing. Thank you so much for having us and we will go quickly. We know some of you maybe have seen some of this before so we tried to add in some additional details but yet I think to echo what Caprice said and what others have shared we just really appreciate the attention on this topic today. We appreciate everyone being here to organize and to listen and to just take this space to recognize people's experiences and then all the hard work that people are putting into it. So just we'll oh I'm sorry I'm Lele Silger the interim director of the office of economic opportunity. I'm Miranda Gray. I'm the deputy commissioner for the economic services division and we'd like to thank the Vermonters who have shared their experiences with us today it's really important that we're hearing that so thank you. Okay great I mean just again this to kind of ground us in the numbers that we are seeing around the state this is from last year's point in time count which showed unfortunately increased in the number of Vermonters experiencing homelessness. You can see that this continues to be an unfortunate trend that we're seeing in Vermont so you know again today we want to highlight just some of the programs that AHS is supporting to address homelessness and we'll kind of go back and forth between the two of us. I'm going to be really brief knowing that I have shared this information with both committees already about the three programs that we're running. So that is information is here and then this is just updated data every week we are pulling new data to be able to share this is on our website as well so I will continue on. I think this is a no mystery to this group either is that we have been paying a lot for the motels currently our average is $132 a night we continue to work to reduce these costs and we know that it's not an ideal scenario having people be able to have access to shelters in case management housing navigation is far more beneficial for everyone. A really key partner in this are our local coordinated lead agencies and it was great to hear from Jess Graff from Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity earlier today because I think she really painted a picture of the work that she does in Franklin Grand Isle and that her counterparts do around the state so they're a great resource and again I appreciate you having Jess here today. We also at the Office of Economic Opportunities for partially remote emergency shelter network to you know appreciate the efforts of people have taken and the investments that you all have made to increase our capacity you know to get back to pre-pandemic levels I think we've shared some of these slides before in terms of the investments that we've made over the past year in terms of maintaining shelter capacity expanding shelter projects and we have a number of projects both in consideration in the short term and for next fiscal year you know we definitely want to be working with our community providers whenever there's capacity there and we also understand how challenging and how much work it is to stand up these shelters and you know and then we want to make sure that we're exploring alternatives if necessary if community providers are not able to add capacity but we remain in close collaboration with them. These are other key investments we've made you know our client financial assistance continues to be a significant resource for folks in preventing homelessness as well as helping folks exit homelessness so we appreciate the support additional one-time funding for this program we now have about 4.5 million dollars that we're having available to community providers for this resource and about 50 percent is going to rental arrears to help people maintain their housing and then the rest is going to help support safe exits from homelessness and you know again this is just a great tool that we have and appreciate our local hot fund administrators who administer this program. This is a summary of the expansion of our family support housing program which is great and again we've shared this slide and you can see the summary of the expansion from where we started this fiscal year to where we are now. I did just want to highlight the role that our community service community action agencies play through the community services block grant and addressing homelessness and housing insecurity they provide a range of services and support some of that includes actually providing direct emergency shelter through emergency departments or shelter units and I just wanted to highlight that as part of our annual state plan process which we do in the summer we have an opportunity to identify what are priority for Vermont based on the needs that we're seeing and I don't think we always talk about the fact that we in Vermont actually do defer and utilize community services block grant to address housing and homelessness and so I wanted to just highlight that today and appreciate the work that our community action agencies have done for instance you know in Chittenden County launching their core their community outreach resource team we also support training technical assistance through these dollars for the network of housing and cheese providers around the state and then are able to support individual initiatives and communities so this is a resource that you know is not explicitly for addressing housing and homelessness needs but I wanted to take the time to call out today that we definitely leverage it to do so in Vermont just to identify some of the additional investments and this is you know since I think we last presented I think the number we had when we last showed this was maybe 82 families exited homelessness from with the home voucher now we're up to 90 so I think to the the theme of today there's there's so much more that we need to do and what we're doing is working and impacting families every day you know it's great to hear from Daniel and Caprice our partners at Vermont State Housing Authority they administer the landlord relief program with us and Caprice and I get to work together closely on that we've had over 200 applications approved supporting landlords who are working with us to house Vermonters exiting homelessness or who are utilizing rental assistance I don't know if you want to say anything for Vermont rental subsidy but I know BSD has expanded there in particular to help people maintain housing to kind of address as we come down from federal investments during the pandemic we've supported with Vermont Department of Health homeless health care capacity building projects over the past year or so and then we continue to support supplemental community resources through the emergency rental assistance program housing stability services so while the actual direct financial assistance has ended via OEO and through a few grants at our partners at Department of Housing and Community Development continue to fund supplemental resources for activities such as housing navigation housing retention supporting being engaging landlords again and working with us as partners and also supporting legal constant consultation or representation in preventing eviction and so these continue through June 2025 and provide again the supplemental resources that we need to address our you know the current challenges that we're facing I think as we've talked about before you know just these this is what we know works this is what we need in conjunction with each other I did want to share in closing just pieces from a letter that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sent out in December when they released their point in time count unfortunately there was an increase nationally as well when it comes to homelessness so this is from their letter compared to the 2022 point in time count homelessness grew by 12% overall this is incredibly difficult data for us to take in but we must not be discouraged in our efforts to provide safe and affordable housing to all of our neighbors despite nationwide efforts assisting people to exit homelessness in record numbers a challenging rental market with historically low vacancy rates expiring pandemic air housing programs and a growing number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time I'll contribute to this increase we appreciate the percolating efforts taken to meet these challenges and this work is more important than ever our work is grounded in the belief that homelessness in America should not exist that it is solvable and that even in the most challenging times we can make progress and I think we share those sentiments at AHS and know that you do as well thank you thank you both for being here today and again you know we've heard a lot of challenges this morning for sure and I know that your jobs are no less difficult than anyone else's that we've heard from today including you know the people who are living through this in their in their day to day lives as as being people who struggle with their ability to stay housed or to be housed or to deal with the impacts of having been homeless in their life so just appreciate that and appreciate everyone who testified today as we as chair Stevens talked about earlier we have at noon time a vigil on the state house steps and welcome you all to join there and yeah thank you for for hosting this joint hearing for our committee our morning meet our next morning schedule could be postponed it was just important to hear everybody today appreciate people who could testify and I was glad we didn't limit them to two minutes and it's so that we could hear the stories that we did here and thank you to the administration folks for yes everybody needs improvement we all need improvement and what we're doing but it is inexpensive if you um it is a heart issue it is a it is a I appreciate the time and energy that the that you're putting into helping us and helping move the other pieces of our community start by mitigating it and then trying to end it in ways that are humane so thank you thank you all I think we can go offline now