 All right, good morning and welcome to this joint hearing of the Vermont Legislatures General and Housing Committee and Committee on Environment and Energy. This morning we are here to talk about S100 and ACT relating to housing opportunities made for everyone. And in this joint hearing, I just want to kind of lay out the way that I'm seeing this unfold, which is as an opportunity for the two committees to share ideas and questions about housing generally and S100 specifically, but not a place where we're going to debate policy, but rather communicate areas of interest and shared or concerns, questions that you have and you want to see addressed as we take the bills up. I'm going to start off by having, well, first of all, introduction to make sure we all know each other since we don't work with each other every day, at least not in committee. And then I'll ask Tom, Chair Stevens, to give an overview of what the General and Housing Committee did when they looked at the bill. And I'll talk about our process and our committee a little bit and then open it up to members to discuss. Does anyone have any questions about that? Seeing any. Representative Morris, would you start with introductions, please? Representative Morris. Springfield. Representative Bartley. Franklin 1. Representative Brian Smith. Orleans 1 from Derby. Representative Paul Kirtz. Rutland City. Rutland Town. Representative Seth Boingardt. Bennington 4. Robin Chestnut. And Chairman Rutland Bennington District. Representative Tom Stevens. Washington Chittenden. Representative Jamie Sheldon from Middlebury, which is Addison 1. Representative Laura Sevillea. Wyndham 2. Representative Kathleen James from Manchester and Bennington 4. Larry Sackwitz. Orange, Washington, Tottison. Representative Dennis LeBowney. Lyndon Newick. Sutton Sheffield. Wheelock. Joe Parsons. I represent the beautiful towns of Newbury, Topsam and Grotton. Good morning. I'm Larry Labor. I represent Essex. Orleans District 1. Representative Emily Krasnow. South Burlington. Hi. I'm Elizabeth. Excuse me. I'm Elizabeth Burroughs. And I represent Windsor 1, which is Heartland, West Windsor and Windsor. Hi. I'm Representative Dara Tory. And I represent Washington too. More town faced in Duxbury, Waitfield and Warren. Thank you all. Representative Stevens. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Sheldon. Thank you to the Energy and Environment Committee for having, for hosting this meeting. We are going to talk about S100 and about the work that we did. It was a bill that if you looked at how it was introduced, it said land use and housing. And I think that there's a general consensus that the two go hand in hand. But what we experienced, of course, in our committees is that the oversight of land use is the purview of the energy and environment and energy committee and housing is the general and housing committee, but there's the needless to say there's a display between the two. And so we just wanted to have the opportunity to share what we did and how we addressed the housing portions of the bill because as it came over from the Senate, it was quite different than what was passed out of committee in its original version. And we also added some material in the sections previous to the housing that one section in particular, which was there was a request for a summer committee on mobile homes. And it was very general proposal. We had passed age 213 earlier this year. And so we inserted that material for that particular committee into the bill that you have the that we passed out of our committee. I'm not sure if we need to do a section by section, but the housing portions of this bill were stripped in the Senate because they had appropriations attached to them in the way that the Senate was their work is because we get the budget first. They tend to strip out sections that have money attached to them. And so what we ended up what we started with was very bare bones housing and we needed to go back to the Senate has passed the committee to get an understanding of what their impulses were to make it a home bill, housing for everybody bill. And in fact, up until then it had turned into basically a zoning and active 50 bill. So we to our work concentrated on primarily bringing the Senate bill back to what had passed. We will have an amendment that won't affect your work in this committee that will deal with some rental issues as well. But that will be presented what we're doing work on that this week. We didn't have time in this compressed session to address that some of those issues that we wanted to deal with. Prior to needing to get the bill to you. So what what is in the section of the bill that we worked in includes the the program, which is the Vermont housing improvement program, which is which is a program that started a couple of years ago as a pilot program with federal money. This is the first year that there was a request to use tax general fund dollars with that. And so we had to consider that we then which we did throughout the year with the budget memo and the proposals that have been put forward. So we put back into the bill the policy, both the policy language and the appropriation request for for the v hip program. It's been a it's been a by all accounts. It's been a successful program, which allows property owner the ability to apply for either a grant or a loan for up to $50,000 depending on the size of the unit that that you're trying to upgrade. And in the past it was tied into whether it was in code or whether it was code compliant or not. And over the years it's it's loosened up and to the point where we are addressing things like weatherization and accessibility as as items that people can bring into code. And that came with a large request. I can't remember what we ended up at $15 or $20 million that 20 for this program. Also a missing what's being called the middle income housing program, which is a program we approved last year that would people would be able to build a house. So developers would end and potential owners would be able to qualify for almost like a bridge loan or a bridge grant that would say if it costs $550,000 to build a house. But it's only going to appraise for $500,000. Generally speaking, a developer can't build that house. And so this is a program that would if the developer is qualified and goes through the process, they may be eligible to receive that difference between what it costs to build and what it would cost to sell. And then up to about 35% of the public build prices. And if there's any money left over that money could be applied to the potential owner of that property in order to and it creates what's called in the housing world shared equity. And that just means you would as a house as a homeowner you would leave that equity behind when you sold the house. You'd be able to you'd be able to achieve certain elements of equity depending on how long you lived in the house. But that that would keep help keep that house affordable. At that level that it would provide that subsidy moving forward. It's been a successful program in the past in the affordable housing world where people who generally can't afford a house are they qualify at a lower level of mortgage. And but the trade off for that is that they don't get a chance to take all of the equity with them as they move forward is that they might not be a bigger house or they make they may not qualify for it any longer for on an income level. So that program we kept in and we also kept the funding up to that pretty much to where it was requested at 15 or $20 million. That was 20 as well. We also included a program for first generation home buyers. These were all things that were in the Senate bill that we had to replace because they had appropriation. So first generation home buyer program is again something that we started last year with excess funds for we funded it for a million dollars VHFA has come in and said it's been a successful program once they got it up and running. And it's going to run out of money. The million dollars that we gave to provide $15,000 grants to first generation home buyers in in order to try to get an element of our population had had the opportunity to build wealth through home ownership. And those that grant program started off it started off where they needed to set the rules up and it's well underway had asked for another appropriation and we decided to appropriate or make a proposal for appropriation of $2 million. Again, this is money that would be granted to potential home buyers that would lower the costs of buying a home. We also have we put in we put in the request for funding up to $50 million to VHCB to continue the work that they've been doing and that's it. That's on top of the amount given to the property transfer tax from the property transfer tax to the housing and conservation trust fund, but it is specifically to continue the programs that have been in place for the last three years where VHCB has been able to work with local organizations to purchase properties and turn them into housing as quickly as possible. It still ends up being a one to two year process, but it's that's a shorter timeframe than what happens traditionally with VHCB working with local nonprofit housing. We also added in a study from that did make it across it didn't get cut out that was from for fire safety to work on to look at the building codes and determine if there's anything in the building codes that they can adjust or that they can identify that would help make the materials less expensive in the sense that if there are building codes which do exist and which generally make us need to build at a higher level, are there other ways to still keep those codes in place but make some of the some of the improvements in the codes less expensive that may promote again development at a lesser price again the price development of single family homes in particular and also multi unit buildings but in this case for this bill has gotten extraordinarily high. And so this this material these these proposed appropriations would in theory bring down the price to make it somewhat more affordable to people building and buying. And I think that's where I'll leave it for now. These are programs that we have worked on in committee for many years our committee took a lot of testimony earlier in the year on these programs when we were dealing with the budget. And then there's a revolving loan proposal. Thank you for that. That's a $20 million proposal from VHFA which says that for multi unit buildings that are being built for people at a certain level income they developer may receive upwards like the middle income home program a subsidy per unit of $100,000 if they are building apartments that are for people between 80% of the area median income and 150% of the area median income. So we're the missing middle is more about the economics of people who make a certain amount of money. We know that the area median income across the state is different it's different in Chittenden Franklin County than it is in Orleans or Caledonia County or in Rutland County. And so we use these percentages which are which are expressed through HUD programming. So there would be about $100,000 per unit up to a certain number of units for that level. And if you were building apartment units that were going to be affordable to people between 60% or 65% of AMI and 80% of AMI then it would be about $150,000 per unit. So those are things that the if that proposal goes forward a revolving loan fund in our world simply says if I if I'm loaning out $500,000 to help you build these things that gets paid off over time and that money goes back into the revolving loan fund to be then lent out and at some point if we continue to fund this if it proves to be successful in its first trench then if we continue to add money to that over time it would take care of itself because the money would keep would would go out and then we'd be coming back in with people who have utilized that loan over paying it off. So those are the main highlights of what we did. We did have questions about about zoning issues and about Act 250 issues. But again, we tried to keep boundary in the discussions because of the shortness of time and for this committee. All right. And so that's some I'm passing, I'm passing time. Okay, great. Thank you for that. I want to acknowledge that some members have joined us since we did introductions. So Avram, would you introduce for the group for yourself? Hi, I'm Pat, I represent the one of two representatives representing the Memorial Washington district along with representative Lamont and I live in Worcester and I have been involved primarily in energy issues over the years both in the legislature and in my work before that. And a couple at the end of the table also. I'm Mary Howard. I represent Rutland District 6 and I have been on the housing committee for a number of years. So housing is not new to to me. Thank you. Good morning. I know a lot of my Washington district, the outside of them remember. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you representative Stevens for that overview. I can talk a little bit about where we are in our process so that we haven't gotten obviously we're just starting. We started taking up housing, the housing conversation last week in our committee. And we kind of framed it. You all still had position from the bill. And so we framed it under age 68, which was a bill that representative Baumgart's introduced and I'm probably going to have him maybe just talk a little about his process on that bill in a minute. But so we started talking about the housing issues looking at some of the issues we know we're in S 100 last week. And now we have it in our possession. And so we'll be taking it up fully. I guess what I would say is that when we get a new bill into our committee, I ask my committee members and myself to keep an open mind and to say like, you know, what's the problem we're being asked to solve here and how does this bill address those problems? And that we're still we're still pretty much in that place. You can see that we've heard from a lot of witnesses. We're still hearing from a lot of witnesses. We certainly haven't heard from everyone on all the topics in the bill yet, but we will do our best to do that. You know, and I guess with that, I would just say, I think it's maybe important because a big portion of the zoning pieces in the bill are grounded in age 68, which Representative Bongards introduced, putting a little bit on spot because I can give you a heads up. But I know that a lot of it's in your back pocket. And really, I don't need you to talk about the content as much as the just a background on your process when you how you did how you got to age 68. Short. So what I did actually two years ago, Kathleen and I worked jointly over the summer on a housing bill that became the number that it became for the number that became, but we pulled together a group of stakeholders and that bill actually relatively speaking passed in a while last year. This summer, I pulled together a group of stakeholders and over the course of the summer and fall, everything from VHCB three directors original planning commissions, a couple of town planners, Vermont Housing Finance, Vermont Natural Resources Council, the Office of Racial Equity. We were in touch throughout with the legal cities and towns. We invited them into the process. They declined to be involved directly. I'm leaving out half the people that we involved, but a group of 12 to 15 stakeholders that met, obviously ever north by the way or housing Vermont. We some days still think of it. And we decided also by the way the Department of Housing Community Development and that we decided we just wanted to there's a lot of elements to the housing issue. We decided to just focus on one of them and try to do it really well. And so we focused on the zoning and the fact that zoning can often have, you know, and I always say I believe in Vermont unintentional, but what you can have discriminatory impact and make it harder for people to, for incomes to live in downtown. And so we really wanted to focus on the extent that there's a major housing issue in Vermont and to the extent that the conclusion that we reach is that we need to in one way or another bring about either the construction or reuse of buildings to develop whatever the number, you know, there's different numbers floating around with 30 to 40,000 units. We looked at it as is we, if you're going to try to bring those kinds of units on line, what you don't want to do, what you want to try to do is do it in downtowns because the alternative is sprawl, alternative is building a farm wave in forest land. And so we tried to focus on how to extent we can do this, we can make that happen in downtowns with the byproduct of course being that housing in downtowns leads to vibrant downtowns. So that's what that's what we did and I won't go into the details, although I will say that some of the just a few of the highlights that really, so by the way, then what happened is that Senator on Hinsdale picked up age 68 with my blessing and made it the center of the bill that we're now working on. And most of what we had in the bill, which went to the things like in certain areas, there was with sewer and water, you know, a minimum density of allowed of five units per acre, the duplex by right, the by right provision, meaning that, you know, if you're allowed five, you can't get that little down to the process by NIMBYism frankly. And those most of those things that we had in the bill as the starting point came back and are now contained in S100. So that's the that's the foundation of H100. I mean, S100, a lot of things that thing, all the things that the general committee's been working on were added into by the Senate on, you know, people on the ends of the bill. And so that's the that's the background of the work that started this over the course of the summer. We met, we worked for months and went to 15 or 16 drafts of meeting every sometimes every week and sometimes every other week by Zoom. And that's that's the process. Thanks. Open it up for members to discuss. Representative Smith. Thank you. So far this meeting I've heard talk of housing, housing and housing, appropriations for housing. We, our committee is environment and energy. I believe that this bill should be separated somewhere so that the housing can be addressed as much as the Act 250 idea should be. So I'm just a little confused as to why we are addressing a housing bill. Yeah. So we're addressing the land use parts of it and certainly land use effects housing. But it is in one bill. Yeah. So I think it should be separate. There should be two bills here. I'm not saying they're either good or bad. I'm just saying that I think there are two separate subjects that should be addressed. I hear you. Yeah, let's just the third of that. That's actually what we were trying to do with the bill with age 68 was have the one portion of it be the land use bill. But got turned into on it was both actually very similar to what happened with 226 last year. We'll recall our committee focused on use portions and the housing committee. There are other portions that work very smoothly and we got through. If I may, I would like to ask Christy with the question to this for clarification. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. The first generation home buyer is a $2 million. Is it a forgiveness loan or is it a payback loan? It's a grant. Well, so it's a it's a it's a grant to qualify home buyers rather than alone or rather than a forgivable loan. It's simply it's a grant. Okay. It's a first time. I believe you've worked on anything at this level of a grant that hasn't had the loan tied to it much like much like even the via program is which is federal grant. No, this would be using state tax dollars. Last year when we last year when we created the idea of VHFA did phenomenal work in making it making the language work so that it includes that it was all inclusive to any first generation home buyer. There was a million dollars that had been appropriated the year before in a bill that had been vetoed but the amount had passed through. And so we use that money which was which I believe was federal money to create the idea of the proposal last year. This year the money requested is from general fund dollars. Thank you. Other members. Representative Sebelia. Yep. So really excited to be in this joint environment have a couple of issues that Madam Chair I've talked with you about I don't know if they actually are relevant for our committee or for this broader committee and just thinking about in terms of housing generally. I'm not sure where or who is keeping track of how much housing we need to build. How much housing has been built at what level of affordability that housing is at if we are building housing for the middle class. And so I have been starting to put together some thoughts and communicating those with you Madam Chair and also have spoken with Commissioner Hanford. I'm not sure if that is actually in our committee or something that we should be talking with the housing committee about. I'd like to see us have some more language around counting and reporting back to us on progress. Another issue that I'm not sure which committee would take up one of the elements of the rural caucus amendment is this rural recovery coordination council. One of the things that's really apparent when we look at this bill to me anyway is that you know I can typeboats starting to leave for over month for places that don't have sewer and water or other critical infrastructure. And so this council would be one that helps our communities really start to grapple with our communities that are able to really start to grapple with these infrastructure issues which are pretty limiting for housing. So that's another element again that's part of the rural caucus amendment. And that would get taken up. So those are two things that I want to put on the table. Thanks. I address the count. Do you have time to address the count? Let me see. I'll see if. Sure. Any other any other just member comments? Yes. Representative Bartley. Thank you. I definitely would. I think that's a great idea and understanding where we are and where we need to be. I know we've all heard that. Or at least our committee has heard that we need 40,000 units in the next 10 years. I think some of us aren't sure if that's really how much we need or what there is out there. So I think that's really important. A concern that I've had is kind of because these are separated how should somebody who is concerned about that an environment and energy come to us. We've already voted it out. How are our concerns going to be heard? Can we join or sit in on a committee? Are we going to be asked? Are we going to be able to ask questions ourselves? This process has been a little frustrating for me. And so I'm just wondering. It sounds like that should be a general and housing question that we address. And can that be put back into the bill? And how would that, how would we do that? Yeah. So process wise, there's always amendments. I think representative Siemens already mentioned that there's likely to be, you're likely to have an amendment and then it would, if it's an area that's in those sections of statute that are in one of the committee's particular areas of jurisdiction, then it would go there. Members are always welcome to and actually enabled by our current technology in your free time to watch our hearings and learn more about it and join our process as we go through it, if you'd like. And of course individuals are always able to bring forward amendments on any bills. But did you want to talk about the count also? Yes, representative Sebelius. So of course we took a testimony and updates from the numerous organizations that are, I mean in particular though VHCB and DHCD, the Department of Housing and Community Development. So the VHIP program itself, which is bringing units back online and has, has netted approximately just over 400 units. That was units that are geared towards primarily finding residents who were experiencing homelessness. And if those tenants weren't able to be found, they would be available to tenants who are at 80% of AMI, the area median income. And then if a tenant there couldn't be found at that level, then the property owner would be allowed to, with approval from the department, to rent to anybody at a market price. So I'm going to actually just interrupt for a second. Yeah. I mean that's a little bit too into the details. I think just that's a topic on the table is that question of who's keeping track and count. Representative Bartley, I want to make sure I actually got to your point in that, if you have a topic you want to put on the table, now you could do that. I'm concerned about Act 250. I want to make sure that the, I know from when the bill was in Senate economic development, there was a decent amount of Act 250 reform and zoning. And that kind of got significantly watered down and Senate natural resources. That's a very large concern for me. We've heard you can't build houses without land and keeping it to the designated downtown. That's 0.3% Vermont. And so who, I guess the question is who do you plan on having testifying and do you have a course of action on how you're going to address Act 250 reform? Sure. I mean, we've already had folks in to testify here. Welcome to look at who we've had in. I actually had our legislative council do a summary of all the work we've done on Act 250 in the past five years. I can share that with you. We are pretty, you know, we've many of the members who have been on the committee for those years have spent a lot of time taking a lot of testimony on Act 250 past a number of bills. And I think as your committee is aware, we are waiting to hear back on two really important topics with reports coming back to us before the next session. And you know, those of us who've been working on Act 250 all these years were holding off, taking up Act 250 issues until we got the reports back. But this bill has brought it forward. So we're going to take it up. Thank you. Yeah, representative Clifford. Thank you. So I guess this is a pretty good question. I know Representative Sibili touched on a little bit about water and sewer issues. And from the standpoint of addressing those water and sewer issues as far as capacity goes and how it's a strain on certain, might be a strain on certain cities and towns. I mean, that's one of the, one of the issues that I know that relevant city has as a matter of fact, the mayor is here today and we discussed a little bit about that this morning. So if there was something in the bill that had to do with water and sewer issues as far as, you know, the capacity, you know, adding new, you know, more, more rooms, more toilets and how it affects the capacities. So would that procedure be to have an amendment on that? Would that be addressed in our committee or, that would be in our committee? It would. And I actually did get a DEC to come in there. They were not available for when we invited them. But we are, we're going to explore that topic. Absolutely. Since it's a pretty big part of this. Okay. And the other issue I have is not issue. The question I had is the, is the timeline on this bill. Are we, are we looking to get this done this year? Is it going to be one of those complicated things where we have to, you know, some sort of questions? There are a lot of questions. We're going to have to work that out. Okay. Yeah. As, as, as we begin, kick the tires and figure out what we're comfortable with now. That's ready to move. And what is it? Thank you. Representative James. Oh, sorry. Representative Morris and then James. Oh, thank you. Representative Stevens, thanks for the information on, just a clarification on the $2 million for her first generation home buyers. So I'm a parent. My kids would not be eligible for that because it is, what do we mean by first generation? It was defined and the definition of it was updated after one year to, to what's in the bill, which is, yes, your children would not be eligible because if, if in fact you have owned a home, they would not be considered first generation home buyer. Correct. That's what I understood. I just wanted to get a clarification for sure. Thank you. Representative Jane. Could you, Chair Sheldon, could you remind folks, please, about the two at 250 reports that are due, what those, what those topics are? I know they're significant. I know we're waiting on them and I've lost, lost the thread on when they're due and what they're going to cover. Yeah. So one is on the designated areas. And they are both underway. And that is just looking at the process, like those designated areas. It's important for folks to understand that they were not intended to be a land use tool. Like they weren't a regular, they're not a land use regulation tool. They actually primarily came from the housing. There is a situation. Yeah. They're a taxation tool. And kind of a, so we're looking at them. There are currently five and this bill kind of looks to enhance them and it's a little bit, maybe a little bit of cart before the horse. But again, we're going to look at the proposals in the bill as they came to us and see how it fits in with the more specifics of the study that, and that's a study that's happening at ACCD. We're doing the designation looking at that. And then the other study is primarily on location-based jurisdiction. And natural resources board is spearheading that one. And what that means to me, they're very similar because what we've started to do is use the designations for location-based jurisdiction. But, you know, the question that has arisen in the conversations in the years of talking about Act 250 reform, updating is what is the role of statewide land use regulation in the modern era with all of the growth of regional planning commissions and some of our communities having very advanced planning at the local level. What is the role of that? And, you know, how do we want to, what benefit does it add to Vermonters? So the two studies for me will inform that. So the kind of flip side of where do we want development is what are those resources of statewide significance that we agree, we don't really want to have a lot of development in those areas. And so these, both of these studies are complementary, I hope, and will help inform that conversation. And when I say areas of, like natural resources of statewide significance, I think many people's minds go to our ridgelines, our mountain areas, places Vermonters go to, you know, recreate and enjoy our beautiful state. They go to river corridors and they, they may go to other places too. And that's what this study will inform. I hope. Representative Smith. Thank you. Would it stand to reason that Representative Bongarts has, has a bill that will address the previous question as to separating this bill. Would it stand to reason that we let hundreds sit by a little bit and both committees study what bill he's going to be presenting or is presenting before we proceed with that 100? I hear your interest in this. And it's, I guess we'll take it under advisement. We can consider that. Yeah. Thank you. Other members of thoughts. Representative Sebelia. Yeah, just on the active 50 pieces and past and future work that will take place. The chair has just detailed some important studies that will happen. I've been a little skeptical about our ability to progress with any kind of comprehensive active 50 reforms. I've seen those kind of miss with rural Vermont. And, you know, I just want to put on the table that I've actually reached out to VNRC and others as these studies progress to, to work specifically with rural Vermont. With rural caucus and others on issues related to infrastructure in our rural communities to see if we can make more progress. In terms of those comprehensive reforms. And I'm hopeful that we can also move some of these questions in this bill. This year I would not support actually separating these bills out. I would support us doing what we can. I appreciate the chair bringing the two committees together to see if how we can work together on this bill and us getting the best bill out that we can this year for monitors. I think really need us to do something on housing. So, and it's time is ticking. I'm not used to calling my don't roll off my tongue, but I think I'm going to usually cut a couple of syllables out. So I, I am very aware of representative Sebelius concerns about rural that the rural areas have the opportunity to take advantage of funding programs and one thing that I think our committee has kept in the forefront is asking about the funding programs. Where will they, where are they useful? They're, you know, and one of the pieces of information was that the program has actually had more uptake. Ruraly. It's been in the, in the conversation. Precisely your concerns. That it, that it be the benefits be statewide. Not regional. That's all. Economic sectors. Representative Stevens and following up on that. Thank you, chair. I'm following up on that. The, the, the mission statements of organizations like BHC. The, the, the mission statements of organizations like BHCB and VHFA is to be statewide organizations. And while there has been some with the federal money up to date, there's been testimony we took show that, that more projects have happened in more populated areas that there's been a commitment also from those organizations to focus, to make sure that they have the resources that they need. Just to make sure that the resources are available. But on an even equity basis. So we're seeing. We're seeing things get built. Seeing housing get purchased and built. And I think we need to always remember. That it's always going to be a two to three year process because whether it's nonprofit or for-profit housing. They have to go through the same permitting processes and the same, same funding processes, but not the same funding processes, but they have to go through funding processes, which are extremely complicated at times as it is for the private industry. So things are getting built. Things are happening. What I appreciate about the conversation about where development could happen in rural areas is that if when rural areas band together like this, there's something done and really focused the, the conversation on what the needs are in rural communities in a different way than, than has happened in the past. And I, we should all, we should all appreciate that and try to make changes that address that. The dresses that we're making, whether or not it's in zoning or whether it's in funding is an important, they're important steps along the way, but the housing won't show up in June. We have to keep addressing these issues in their longterm. Some of the programs are shorter term, but they're still longterm solution. And I think one of the proudest things I can say is that the committee's fact that we're sitting together shows that how integrated housing and all of the other portfolios are across, across our state house because we've operated in silos before that haven't been as efficient as they should be. And so while this conversation may seem a little rough at times, it is really a step forward in integrating all the different pieces that go into building housing across the state. I have a question or a housing. Yeah, question about, I think we heard yesterday that we had a certain population, something 2000 of unhoused for monitors. And then we've, we've sort of built or put online housing for those and we still have the same population of unhoused. So how do we wrestle with that? Like I'm curious what, how do we get a handle on that? Again, this is a conversation. The answer is, I don't know. You know, we as a system don't know. We have, again, to appreciate the fact that we've housed over 3000 households over the last since May, March of 2020. And yet we still have this tide rolling in of the same number of folks. I think it's a deep systemic issue about poverty, about the amount of housing, you know, is not simply about the units, though that's important. If we do not have the other two legs of the stool, which are the services and the funding, then the folks won't be able to sustain that housing. So it is a, it is a question that we're wrestling with in a committee. We're wrestling with it in the human services committee. The folks who remain unhoused are needs, supports that we are trying to provide. But again, it's out of balance. And so that's it. We only gave an hour for this conversation. We could be here for a couple of days. Others. Thank you. Yes. No, I don't want to chime in on that. A lot of it is because of the influx of people entering homeless. Right. And what we're learning, what we learned at our joint hearing in this very room a couple of months ago was that that is not affecting only low-income Vermonters. That is affecting middle-income Vermonters, et cetera, because when we look at our housing stock, we have people who have homes that are too large where they have lived and they would like to downsize. However, it's not affordable for them to do that because they would save money by staying in their home that is way too large. But there is no housing that is affordable for them to move into. And so what we have is a housing stock issue and a systemic issue because it's not, when we're looking at it from angles of only addressing certain dimensions of this, whether we're looking at affordability, whatever that may mean. We're looking at accessibility, whatever that may mean. We've heard testimony that majority of the people experiencing, what is it? 78% of the people experiencing homelessness are people with disabilities. Right. And so when we're looking at what types of housing are available, the types of housing that are available are not available. And so that, I think as we're addressing this issue, it's really important to look at the types of housing that we're going to have available, not only where they will be built, but accessibility and what that looks like and design to help mitigate some of that. Because when we're looking at that, the middle income vermonters who would like to downsize need some place to go to. Right. And that will free up some housing for families and people who are coming to Vermont for jobs and opportunities who can't find housing. One piece of your zoning world is going to be talking about shelters. Yeah. And about the ability to regulate how long shelters can be open, which is not a simple issue. Here in Montpelier, the winter shelters open at 7pm and they close at 7am and then there's a day shelter that opens it. So it is something that you will directly address in terms of what the community is, what you're going to hear may not be the simple, it's not a simple section. Yeah. We took a little testimony on that yesterday. Yes. Representative Burroughs. I went to dovetailing with what Representative Lamont said. We also have, we took testimony on what's the name of the rental relief. COVID rental relief. V-wrap. V-wrap. We took testimony on the ending of V-wrap. And the number of people who are renting for more than 100% of their income, which I think was 4%. So there are 4% of V-wrap recipients. So there are going to be more. More people added to the ranks of people who need help. All right, members. I'm not seeing any hands. Representative Burroughs. I really appreciate the work of the housing committee. It's been great. Everything that you've talked about. I'm going to. Some of the. Some of the end that the get out addresses. Representative Burroughs was talking about in terms of providing some relief that will. You may not see that directly in your committee. If we get it out as a community. And you'll see it later. And. And I'll never want to leave a meeting on a high note. There are organizations. I'm chairing. There are organizations that are talking about this. Just to do not, as much as I'm proud of the work that we're doing, that we've done, I just always am reminded by the sober comments made by organizations that work directly with this population. And they're talking about buying tents for people right now. And so, again, changing zoning isn't going to get people into housing at the end of June. But to keep in mind that there are going to be upwards of 2,000 to 5,000 contractors who are going to be leaving subsidized services that have provided mostly, but not solely by the federal government in the next several months. It's just sobering to know that the skills that we have brought to the fore are being put aside for a moment because we have to buy tents and sleeping bags for monitors because it's summer and they can sleep outside. It's not, it's a very, I won't say anything except for my personal morals is that's a difficult thing to hear and to work with in the face of the work that we're already doing. And so that's what keeps me awake. That's what keeps me focused on it. So thank you for joining. Thank you. And thank you all for your participation and your passion and concern for monitors and the housing crisis that we're in. With that, we are adjourned.