 Michael Mati welcome. It's just a pleasure to see you here. How are you doing today? We're doing good. How are you ready? I'm well. I'm well So as the as the operational leader of Champlain Housing Trust you were thinking about the COVID-19 Epidemic, I think probably sooner than most people in the community. Yeah, how did you prepare? What did you see and how did you prepare? Well? I mean, we have a great team of people and department heads and leadership in different, you know, different sections of the organization. So we immediately began to sort of say, okay We're gonna have to do a lot of remote work. Let's start that process. Get IT running, get people laptops, get people all the resources they need to be able to work at home. We're gonna need to continue to just do emergency kind of, you know, repairs and how do we think about that? So we began a process a couple of few weeks ago for sure before the order to send, got sent home was done by the governor last week and started putting all kinds of systems into place. You know, I think we're in pretty good shape. You know, frankly, we're still working through some of the kinks here or there. But, you know, we did a, we had a head start, you know, immediately began to make our own disinfectant that kind of stuff. We hired a couple of other folks to bring on board to sort of pad out the resources we need because, you know, when somebody gets sick, we really can't afford not to have an individual sort of there. And we're part of the essential services. Not everybody at CSC is, but we're mostly a part of the essential services. The governor says has to continue to operate. So we had to make sure that we're a little doubled up on occasion with different kinds of folks. So give us a sense of the scope of what Champlain Housing Trust manages in terms of their units, your landlord, as well as property owners who you share property with. Yeah. So we do like, you know, we go from homelessness to home ownership. So there's been really two kind of tax. One is, you know, how can we support the homelessness response? Getting, we, you know, we transitioned Harbor Place into a pre COVID isolation unit, worked with, you know, Rita and Mark and a whole bunch of other folks in the community on standing up congregate facilities for folks who are sick, you know, began to share our information on the parts of the state, communicate and coordinate with the state around resources for all of that group. So there's a large vulnerable population of people out there that are different than perhaps you and me and many others in the community where, and when we isolated home, we could talk about what dinner we're making. But for the most part, there's lots of people who have no dinners. And so, you know, their food delivery and everything else. So we, we participated in that we're able to get up real quick because we had something in place and provided a little leadership and support for the rest of the community on that kind of stuff. That was one whole task, still working through those details really, frankly, and, you know, daily and trying to make it work, hiring additional people, putting our fencing, getting more support and security. That was one tact, still thinking through those things, have meetings every, every day with other folks in the community on home and stuff to sort of see how we could help out and do some work. That was one piece. Then the other piece is just CHC other than that, which is, you know, 2400 apartments and 100 people working and, you know, doing all that. So we started trying to make sure that people understood that if there is, you know, said they should stay home and give them support, make sure that nobody felt bad about needing to stay home if they had to, you know, gave everybody additional time off, essentially to work through issues at home. And then began to communicate with tenants about their condition, their situation, providing them with information, getting make sure, you know, we're doing more distance, we're actually spraying down and disinfecting sort of common areas and common hallways, closing off playgrounds, responding to only emergencies now. So a whole range of things relative to sort of how they, you know, they can be safe in their home. You know, we pledged no evictions. We have a couple of right, frankly, that we're health and safety of their neighbors are at stake. And so we're trying to see if we can pursue that. But for the most part, you know, people are paying rent, we're going to be working with them in the future on sort of all that and actually sent a note to all our tenants saying, if you lost your job, please contact us. And, you know, what we have to figure out is how to work with them on getting them the resources they need to either pay the rent or how we might be able to get some resources to be able to sort of assist in that regard. So there's a lot of, a lot of unknown still, frankly, and most of it has been trying to sort of prepare ourselves best as an organization to sustain, you know, the loss of rent for many people, how to do that. And you're mainly with folks and how to do that sort of so that we can then make payroll and keep our resources going. People pay us rent when they pay us rent, they're paying for utilities, they're paying for emergency, you know, emergency management, kind of stuff that paying for the collecting rents and moving people in and paying for a whole range of things. There's nobody else, you know, the rents aren't going to pay for a new boat or, you know, some fancy vacations someplace necessarily. So we're going to, you know, we're working through that, you know, trying to sustain ourselves organizationally. I think a rent per month is like $1.8 million. So just not getting all that money every month would be pretty tough challenge for us. But, you know, a lot of folks do have some resources already because they have vouchers or they have somebody else assisting them payment. That's maybe half the folks. But we've gone through, you know, every, this is the work we have been preparing. We know who has been working, you know, we have about 500 or so people, we know that they were, they were employed. And so when we, you know, we know that when this month rent goes by, we'll, you know, we'll have communication with them and work with them. We're redeploying different people to help with those phone calls and to talk to people. And so it's a whole, it's a whole like kind of, okay, the ship is going in this direction. Now we're going in that direction. A whole bunch of new systems we never had before. Like how do we, how do we pay all the bills? You know, we have like 400 or 500 people who we need to get checks from us. How do we pay all those bills when we have sort of a lot of remote work going on? How do we receive all the checks? How do we receive coins? People come in bags of coins. And all that kind of stuff has been sort of reinventing. So it's been great in some ways because it's been a great challenge. People have done pretty well in terms of being able to respond to it. And our team is pretty much held up every once in a while. There's some stress here or there, but I think folks are doing well, doing okay. How do you think the federal response will affect you? Are you satisfied with what the feds have come up with? Well, I mean, I think I see a lot of stuff in there for a whole wide range of different industries and folks. I did ask our attorney to see if we could sort of register as a cruise ship in the Bahamas and he's working on that. So he said it's going to take some work to make that shift because we know that there's bailouts for that group. But more seriously, there's lots of good stuff in there for different sectors. And there's opportunities potentially in pots of money that have gone to the state or CDBG funds, for instance. Nothing that's specific yet to what we might do where we have those 500 people who are employed who might not be able to pay rent and how to backstop them. They're going to get maybe unemployment insurance. They may be able to get some other resource, like a check from the federal government. But the question is, we're not their only bill each month. How will we ensure that they can pay us rent without them suffering and without us sort of not being able to cover our bills? So nothing specifically yet. There's a couple of SBA loans where we might be able to borrow some money so that we could sort of weather some loss income on a handful of months here. There's a few other things like that. I think everything we're doing with the homeless folks as a response may be FEMA eligible, but the state is really going to be bearing a brunt of that expense. So there's a couple of things really we kind of need very specifically. And that is, you know, renters need either a resource that they can go to because they've been temporarily hurt so that they can pay their rent, or we need to have some cash that comes to us directly to us so that we can then subsidize some rents directly for those tenants who are getting economically displaced, essentially losing their jobs. So you mentioned that you've been working with Rita Markley and Spectrum and talk about the collaborative statewide regional response you've been part of. Well, so I think, you know, let me just say that that response has happened three or four different places. So daily there is a group that works together on homeless issues. And that is really, are the meals in place, there's a kind of good housing, which is where people will go if they are tested positive for homeless. Is that up and running, you know, sort of just sort of working through issues, small, small, seemingly small issues, but important ones. For instance, if somebody is sick, and they're in one of our congregate housings, HIPAA protected them, from us knowing. So we would have somebody who is sick in our house in one of our room where they're sharing kitchens. Well, we're able to sort of get that through as an exception. So just working those kinds of deals. So Chris Donnelly, who's our legislative guy who spends a lot of time doing, you know, funding this time of year, is now working on sort of these various issues that we're sort of working through and, you know, changing that. So the homeless stuff is happening. There's also a statewide meeting of all property, you know, nonprofit property managers that is meeting on a regular basis to share information, share resources, share, you know, how do we model the potential loss rents for the next four months, small things like that. Then some stuff happening on a national level where a couple of the larger financial firms are doing some training, but also we're part of a larger group where, which is meeting as cohorts and they're, again, sharing ideas, sharing approaches, you know, how are we doing this? What are we doing in terms of resources? The whole idea of, you know, we didn't, we didn't really prioritize closing playgrounds and, you know, just small ideas like that, just sort of and big ideas coming out of that is really kind of important. So people, I'm on a handful of calls a week, at least a handful, then I mean, like five or six a week, other folks are on individual calls to sort of see how we can do it better. And it's been, you know, each day is a change. It's been a every day seems like a week in terms of the amount of stuff that gets done and thought through and these kinds of things would typically, well, let's have a meeting or let's get together. And, you know, it's more, there's a lot more command and controls, shall we say, you know, let's do this now. Typically, it would be a little more collaborative and thinking and maybe people are going, no, let's not do it that way. It's better this way. And now it's more like, okay, that's good. Let's just do that now. A little triage, you know, a little more, you know, that kind of thing that has been, and so it's been fast in many ways, very fast in terms of decision making. It's been good that way. Well, and it sounds like it's also been creative that people are able to move off the territory and towards a solution. Yeah, not as much, you know, not as much sort of, you know, maybe disagreements over some things, you know, the little, the small things now become, just disappear. And, you know, every once in a while, there's an issue of like, hey, we got to change this guys, and we get a little resistance. And then we have to sort of like now, as a group advocate for, you know, for instance, the head to change where we said, what do you mean? I mean, not going to tell us, we have to tell us who these people, you know, just be in a big house and die together. That's crazy. And it's a little like, you know, that facility on Pearl Street in Burlington, where it's, we have to, we have to be able to intervene and know. So that, that was good, you know, but that took, that was probably the time when there was a little bit of like stress and fighting going on, but not, not fighting. I don't think, I think people on the other who protect people's rights through HIPAA, you know, thinking this is the way it is, and we got to do it this way. And yet, clarity came forth when you think, yeah, but everybody else will suffer. So I think we've gotten some good changes that happen on a statewide level. Folks, I think the leadership in, in Burlington and a state has been really good in terms of sort of really trying to make it, make things happen. Aren't you glad you're not in New York State? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I imagine a lot of creative thinking is also going on. Yeah, I think it's a little, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's all a scale of things, right? So, I mean, but frankly, for instance, when I told somebody who was in Wyndham Windsor, who's a, you know, friend and colleague doing some work down there, and she said she wanted, they wanted to close a facility with, you know, 10 or 20 people. And then I said, do you think we can advocate on closing all the facilities around the state? And I said, well, that would be about 400 or 500 people here in Chinden County. And she went, oh, so there's a scale difference between Burlington and some of the rest of the state, you know, Wyndham, Wyndham Windsor's getting some impact, but certainly other parts of the state like Grand Isle and, you know, few other locations are actually pretty good shape and not having some of the impacts would need them to have that response that we need to have here. Where we literally, I counted about 450 folks in motels and shelters and kind of new living facilities that number might even be higher. And now those folks are all vulnerable and at risk, you know. Beagle and the motels are in pretty good shape, frankly, but the other worry about the other a couple hundred folks. You said that Chris Donnelly, who's generally the development director, he's a bit working on these other aspects. Are you concerned about a drop in philanthropic giving? How important is that? Well, you know, I would say that it hasn't been the first thing we thought about. Certainly that could occur. We've seen some foundations stepping up where they're saying they're pushing money out sooner. Now they have a process of putting out money and they just, they usually go, well in six months we'll put out another pile and Hale Foundation did that, where they just said, well, let's push it out now. There's no time to wait. Let's go and do this. So, you know, some things may respond more positively. Our biggest concern is that we have lots of, we have, the way our system works is we have, you know, all these properties and they all have some amount of reserves, but some properties, especially properties, which are serving the most vulnerable, work just on a thin margin, you know, just enough money. And we're worried about how they might really get through this process. And so our biggest concern is really lost rent. We're projecting, you know, $2.7 million in lost rent over the next four months, which is a lot of money. Some properties will backstop that, some can't. And so we're trying to figure out how to work that. I think that's our biggest risk right now. And board meeting is coming up on Wednesday and like giving us some powers to try to renegotiate rents, renegotiate mortgages and talking to vendors and reducing some costs. And, you know, we can't really just lay off people because we need everybody to do the work. So it's trying to be, you know, but also people have some rights to leave with the new leave act. People do have some rights to take a leave if they need it. So we got a lot of balancing and a lot of cash. And that's really what we're responding to is sort of cash flow. Because ultimately, I think on the other end under it, there might be additional resources and support to backstop it. But for the next, you know, bunch of months, it's going to be a little tougher. So would you redesign your continuity of operations plan based on what you know now? Well, sort of, we always sort of said, we always had these little plans in place, like if there was a fire, what do we do? You know, we sort of had some concepts of that. We just didn't think this is the kind of fire we would have, you know, the building is still there. We have a handful of folks going in an East Department sort of like the lights burning and to sort of send folks working remotely information and stuff like that. But for the most part, you know, laptops and we have all of our software is now a lot of our stuff is cloud so people can access stuff that way. And now we're able to do a lot of work from the comfort of our homes, although I'm driving going a little staircase. Be good to get out, you know, I think a lot of folks sort of would like to get back to the office on occasion and see everybody. How are you relaxing? Oh, God. That's interesting. I went for a little scooter ride two days ago, waiting for the weather to break and that's how I get out. I'll get out and I'll take a ride for half an hour and just sort of see what the town looks like, go out to the country a little bit, you know, break it, break through a couple of, haven't been able to binge watch any shows. That's what seems to be the thing, you know, frankly, I haven't had time to binge watch any shows. There's one or two shows I've been watching, but it really turns out to be like an hour. I watched a baseball game from 2003 the other day. Of course I had to win that one and that was relaxing. Yeah, I find it interesting that people have a lot of time on their hands. I don't know who those people are. Yeah, I have so little time, I'm not complaining because frankly, I think I feel better that I can be productive and do good work with everybody who we are, you know, at CHC and others and I frankly, I think it's better for me to be able to sort of keep that going and, you know, take the occasional break to seeing who's posting what or, you know, take a little walk around the house kind of thing or, you know, that kind of thing. So it's been fine. What are you telling your coworkers when you sense that they're tired or their capacity is flagging? Yeah, so I think I think mostly telling people that they're not alone, you know, that there's a lot of people in on this one, you know, that everybody has sort of a personal story. There's a little bit of that and everybody sort of struggles. We're trying to be sensitive to sort of the individual's needs and, you know, again, if anybody feel, you know, certainly anybody's feeling any kind of symptoms they're sent home. We have one person who's coming off of that now. They're not COVID but they were in some symptoms. But, you know, there is some people actually the new law had gave people some rights in terms of they have children to be able to sort of take care of them. There's some there's a leave act now and then we're going to be pushing that out for everybody. I think that'll help quite a few folks who have sort of like they need to be home, the children home, they need to work. How do they balance that? So give people some right to take some leave and for us to pay them. That'll be something that we do and in that act there's some money that we might be able to get to help us do that. But I'm mostly to sort of say keep it up. Thanks very much. Keep a sense of humor going, you know, share resources, share ideas. Certainly somebody just cut their hair, own hair and share it with everybody. That kind of, you know, some people are doing those kinds of things. Yeah, that happened at our house. There was a lot of hair on the floor, not naming names. Yeah, necessarily pretty subtle though it looked all right. It looked okay, you know, just still it's not something I would do. Michael, thank you so much for your time. And it's always just great to see you and I really appreciate. Can you just recap for us how many units what what's the sort of extent of Champlain Housing Trust? Well, so how we count this is always a little different. But we have like 40 people who are commercial property commercial renters, leases for us. So like the food shelf and legal aid and the little vet store out on North Champlain Street, so range of folks. And so there's those there's about 300 so folks living in group homes and hunger housing and, you know, beacon apartments and harbor place, those kinds of things. And then 22, 2300 apartments, you know, regular straight old apartments of different kinds, you know, some that are highly subsidized, some that are sort of sort of below market rate like at Dorset Commons and so fairly wide range of apartments. So it's, you know, 100 plus people really working now. So it's a decent number of folks and that goes from people are helping buy homes and helping folks doing homes and their work is slow now. Making loans, counseling and education network is increasing and property management with maintenance workers or property managers and people doing compliance stuff and then a whole finance department that is sort of backstopping everything and a handful of folks like us to try to keep it all working and at this all in the same direction. So that's pretty significant. I'm going to let you get back to it, Michael. Okay. Thank you. Have fun. Thank you very much. Thanks. Love to everybody. Okay. Bye.