 Well, well, I promise to be a little new to the majority of them, kind of new to me. So I just, I'm going to have to speed up that. Well, one of the things that I think we're new to, we're almost new to, and I'm new to Burlington. I've just looked here a year, but what I think we're trying to do with our steering committee is get beyond just having this be passive with that information, but trying to come up with ways that people can take action, you know, either individually or collectively on different topics. Yeah. And, you know, there's the whole issue of, you know, homelessness, housing, health of safety, it's sort of complicated and so interrelated, you know, hello. Hi there. Hi, Sarah. Right, I'm Mills. Nice to meet you. Hi, Nancy. Thank you for being here. Yeah, you bet. We're just saying to Sarah, usually the turnout's better. It's Charlie, basically. Yeah. Charlie and Sam. Yeah. All right. Okay. So, you know, hundreds and hundreds of viewers, right? So that's what happens. So don't drop your game. Right. Hundreds of people are going to see it. Oh, great. Sometimes what people do is they reduce it. They reduce their program by like 50% because they think no one's here. Yeah. When in fact. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have this at the last minute, just last week, we scheduled that candidate form on one of the ballot measures with another war. And that was just last night. So. We have a lot of time. I feel like you're two-timing us. Yeah. So, we'll see how many people we have online. But regardless, folks will watch the video. There's Jeff. Yeah. Hello, everybody. Hi. Everybody feel like it's been a long week. I think she's actually present here. Here we go. If you can hear us wave. I can hear you. Can you not hear me? All right. Just when you said, does anybody else feel like it's been a. A long week. We just, we just had a weird noise. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to mute myself right now. And. And just hang in here. As people. And that's why we're all laughing. Should there be sound? Well, that's kind of what I thought. I'm not sure. Maybe they turned off the sound in the room. I don't know. I'm not sure. We're experiencing technical difficulties. We should be back in just a few moments. Thanks, Sam. Oh, I cannot believe that we're going to have this big storm tomorrow. I did not anticipate that. I heard there was a storm and then I looked at the weather yesterday and there was no snow forecast until like in the late evening. So. Oh, but you know what? If I go to my, there's a winter storm. Morning. I'm going to go to. Bring up. Basic questions. Hmm. Well. Okay. Now we're ready. Okay. I will thank you everybody for joining in person and also online. And after recording of our warts mix, brilliant and MPA meeting. We have agenda we're going to run through, but before we get to that, I just wanted to call the order announcements and public forum. We do have one announcement from the Fletcher free library. They are doing a survey right now or their annual strategic plan. It's available until I believe early April to complete, but they asked us to encourage everyone to take a look, complete the survey is just takes five to 10 minutes. It provides really valuable input to the library. So please take a look. Before we move on to our primary forum. Are there any comments or questions that. Anyone from the public would like to make. Yes. Is it Lona. No, it's not Lona. So I, I'm actually living ward five, but I have an announcement for the city's dog task force. And this is the right time, right? Yes, that's great. Okay. Great. Thanks. So the city has a dog task force that was set up to. Address what seemed to be a growing number of. Dogs in Burlington to look at existing ordinances. There wasn't really the ordinances for dog parks was not very clear. There had been some that were temporary and just. To look through those and make sure there was sufficient space for off leash dogs. And to address some incidents and just overall look at the laws related to. Two dogs in Burlington and. Make sure that they are up to date. So the task force has been meeting for about a year and or nearly a year. And, and they have identified some potential locations for off leash dogs. And some of those are shared spaces. And some of those are shared. And some of those are shared. So there may not be fenced in public park areas. And, and so the subcommittee at this time would really love to hear from the public about those locations and what people think of them. And, and to make sure that they are the right spaces, both for the health of dogs and the health of people who use those spaces. So they're really encouraging people who use the parks who own the parks. And they're really encouraging people who use the parks. But maybe. Interested in these areas to take this array. The survey is available online on the. On the Burlington parks website. So if you go to the website, there's a red nice red bar at the top alert. Please take the off leash dog survey. And so we just encourage people to take it. It will be open until through mid-March. So try to get there soon. And if you have any questions that are accessible throughout the city. So thank you. Thank you very much as a dog owner. I appreciate that. Any other public comments or announcements they want to make? No, I just wanted to thank you. I just wanted to remind everyone. That we sponsored last night. With Ward five, a candidate forum. You can find it on. Ballot measure eight, which is all also known as prop zero. If that meeting was recorded. So if you were not able to attend. And you are. Interested in finding out more about that. You can find the recording on YouTube. So. Just wanted to make sure everybody's aware of that. We can include the link as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In the minutes from today's meeting. You're interested. Great. Any other announcements? Questions for the group before we dive in. Okay. We're missing introducing myself and my fellow steering committee members. I'm a member of the ward six MPA steering committee. I'm joined by Nancy Harkins. And of course we have Dale Azari, Nelson Martel, and I'm a member of the board of directors. And our goal is really just to make sure that we're helping to organize these conversations and to hopefully get input from everyone else in the community and kind of organized so we can address the topics that are important to all of us. On a monthly basis. So. Without further ado, I think we can jump into our form on housing and homelessness and we're joined by Brian pine. Who's our CEDAW director. And Sarah Russell. CEDAW special assistant to end homelessness. I'm a member of the board of directors. And I'm a member of the board of directors. And I'm a member of the board of directors. And I'm certainly towards six as well. So we really appreciate you taking the time to be here. From what I'm sure is a really busy schedule. Thank you. Thanks for having us. So the. Brian pine. CEDAW director that CEDAW stands for community and economic development office. And. My colleague. Sarah. Sarah Russell. I'll describe what Sarah's position is in just a minute as well. So I'm going to start with you. What our efforts entail. And some of the progress that we've made. And challenges that still. Are in front of us. In December of 21. The mayor. Announced a 10 point action plan to realize the. Promise of housing as a human right in Burlington. And the sort of overarching. Goals of that. Effort are essentially. We're trying to. Double the rate of housing production. Over the coming five next five years. And to. End homelessness. By 2025. And what we talk about ending homelessness, Sarah can speak with. Quite a bit more. Direct knowledge of, of these efforts, but that it is a, an effort that is. Intended to make sure that homelessness is. Non-recurring. And that. The goal is that we have enough support to move folks who are experiencing homelessness. From the precariousness and the lack of shelter and stability. And all of the issues that. Are connected to that. To whether it be permanent. Assisted housing, whether it be. Housing with services. Or in some cases really just a decent affordable place that folks. Are able to meet. To meet. The needs. And the whole. The whole spectrum. Of need. Being met. What I'd like to do is quickly. Highlight the information that we shared. With the council and the community at the end of November, just before Thanksgiving, we provided an update on the various initiatives that make up that 10 point plan. I thought it would be useful to. To touch on those briefly and then have Sarah talk. More detail. About some of these efforts. So. The goal was to invest at least 5 million of the ARPA funds. That's the recovery money that the city got. Into overall into affordable housing with at least. One million designated specifically for initiatives. To better serve the chronically homeless and another 4 million to build. Permanently affordable housing. We actually increased that allocation, if you will, in March of 21. The city proposed and the council approved just under 3 million. Of these ARPA funds recovery funds for a variety of. Efforts to. Address chronic homelessness in region strive towards that goal of. Of ending homelessness. And we'll talk a little bit about how those funds were allocated and some of the accomplishments. As well as we'll talk about the efforts to. Support and create new permanent housing. As part of the again, the continuum, if you will. It's important to note that. Folks have asked or suggested that. You know, shelter is one of the. Sort of. Band-aid approaches and we shouldn't really be doing shelter. We should just be doing housing. And sadly, in this today's situation with the number of folks experiencing homelessness, it really is a question. It's not actually an issue of either or it's really both. And we are. Trying to respond accordingly because the need is so significant. In terms of the numbers of the homeless population and the growth of that population during the pandemic. So the next initiative was to create a dedicated position within our office within CEDO focused on this issue, exclusively focused on homelessness. And that's the position that Sarah was hired for the special assistant and homelessness. To really ensure that we have a centralized, focused coordinated city effort around homelessness, and in some cases involved. Coordinating with other entities of city government and partner agencies in the state. And organizations that are working on the same overall goal. Sarah arrived in April of last year, so not quite a year yet. And quickly stepped into the position and assumed leadership role in a number of efforts that we'll talk about a little bit more. And, you know, certainly the, the effort that gets the most publicity has been the effort on Elwood Avenue, which is a shelter project in response to the incredible growth and the number of folks experiencing homelessness and the recognition that developing housing is the answer, but it takes years, literally years to identify land, to get permitting and develop, put together the funding and the financing to do, to create affordable housing. And in the meantime, we have a real obligation, we have a real, as a city to do something about folks who are sleeping outdoors. And so as the state programs and policies around sheltering folks in hotels and motels has changed and it's ed and it's flowed and it's seasonal and it's, you know, so there's, there's a range of challenges with the state response that we're trying to serve as a, as a bit of a stop gap for those folks who are falling through the cracks. Another initiative is to is to expand what's called coordinated system that essentially does essentially evaluation and prioritization of those folks who are experiencing homelessness and ensuring that they are linked up with housing as it becomes available based on their unique needs and their unique situation. There's a, Sarah will be able to report on some numbers that I think are promising in terms of placing folks in permanent housing. It's a county wide effort. And I think there's some real promise there. The next initiative is really to support the creation of 75 new homes specifically identified for formerly homeless residents and to ensure that those get, get the permitting and the financing that they need. And that involves partnering with organizations like Champlain Housing Trust, the community on temporary shelter and others who are, you know, the organizations that are primarily doing the development, but also to expand the involvement of the private sector to attempt to ensure that affordable housing is included in their developments by ordinance, but also that it goes, drives even deeper and reaches those who are hopefully exiting homelessness and moving into permanent housing in housing being created by, by the private sector as well as the affordable housing nonprofits. The specific effort around the shelter in Elmwood Avenue is something that has been in the news quite a bit. And I can just say that we are pretty, I'd say that so far the experience has been really positive. The need was questioned or I should say the desire of the population of folks who are experiencing homelessness to live in that location and in the type of structures that were created was questioned by some folks in the community. And we were pretty sure from talking with people who lived experienced, direct experience that that would be, that the Elmwood shelter was a solution that, or part of the solution that would be welcomed and would be much appreciated. And sadly the demand far exceeded the ability to house or to shelter folks. And so the 35 beds were filled through a process that Sarah was involved in. And there was at least that many, plus a few more that didn't actually, we're not able to be sheltered. So the need is clearly there, the desire. And that's, you know, both a success and in some ways admitting that we have a long ways to go to succeed really because of that. There's the development of housing in the region is an important, Burlington is an important part of that. And there's a building homes together campaign that we are part of and Burlington, if we are to take our share of that development over the coming few years would be building or seeing built 1,250 new homes in Burlington. And that is to be part of the county's effort of 5,000 new homes by 2026. And we're making some progress on that right now. There's 424 homes under construction at city place, which is finally under construction right now. And so we're optimistic that that will make a significant impact. But there are a number of other properties that are under development that might not make the news. And I'll just highlight what they are at 77 pine street. Nettie development is developing a 49 unit rental or I should say already developed a 49 unit rental property next to the bank. The name has changed so many times. I can't recall what the name of that bank is right now. But it's one of the banks on pine street right where it meets up with bank street. And just on the other side of that property where there was once the drive-through is now under construction, another 49 unit development. It's a magic number. Which I'll talk about in a minute. Also by Nettie construction and or Nettie development. And that includes the, both of those include the required affordable units. And in one case, there's a couple of units that they're essentially paying into the housing trust fund in lieu of creating the units on site. And so that's a part of the city's policy around. Inclusionary housing. And then just down the block a little bit on St. Paul, I'm sorry. I'm South Champ Lane. Just south of what is August 1st is a. 48 unit rental development going, going up right now. And that is expected to, I think, to be up and occupied by next summer is the goal for that. At Cambrian rise is another 135. Rental units being developed by Eric Farrell. Farrell real estate and SD Ireland is developing a separate parcel that includes about 80 rental units. And about almost 40 condos ownership units. Also at Cambrian rise. So all, all together there's. There's those, those units there. Add up to nearly 400 alone. And then there's the city place. 425 units. So we're making some significant improvements. So we're making some significant improvements. And then there's the city place, 425 units. So we're making some significant progress. Far more to do to really meet the need. We're, we're hovering in around a. 0.5% vacancy rate, which doesn't mean a whole lot until you do the math and say, we have about 11,000 rental housing units. So for every, for every 10,000. There's 50 units available in the market theoretically in that scenario. So we're, we're in that, we're in that neighborhood of 40 to 50 at any given time that might be available. Competition for those is so stiff that they're usually gone within hours when they're available. And the, the prices are far exceed what incomes are able to support. We have exceeding, we've increased the city's housing trust fund considerably with voter approval in 2020. But because of the pandemic. The administration chose not to enact that in the fiscal year 21 and 22 budgets, but in 23. The trust fund went from previously about 200,000 a year to 565,000 from the tax revenue. And in addition, we have a pretty significant new infusion from a regulation on short-term rental. So you think of the Airbnb regulation, that's the, the fee that. The fee that the city is paying to. That is the amount that hosts are paying into paying to the city is going directly into the housing trust fund to support development of new affordable housing. That is a much higher number than we thought it might be. It's about $50,000 every month that's coming in since the ordinance went into effect. We didn't expect it would be that we thought it'd be about half of that. So we'll see what happens. It may level off as people get back into the business of using housing as housing and not as short-term rentals, but we're also seeing a little bit of money come in through payments in lieu that I mentioned earlier where a developer could pay into the housing trust fund. And those units get created by a nonprofit that's in the, in the business basically of creating permanently affordable housing. The last couple of items are more like more policies, land use policies. So really looking at the south end enterprise zone as a portion of it or discreet properties within it to be zoned for residential development that is currently not allowed. And these are the large surface parking lots that you would see on off lakeside avenue primarily with a few other additions to that. The next one I was going to mention is off the table right now and that's unfortunate, but it's the rezoning of Trinity campus for new housing for students, both graduate and undergraduate. That university has decided to postpone that indefinitely. It's off the table. The city council did not move forward on that. At the recommendation of the planning commission required that there be an agreement with the university and university has has indicated an unwillingness to enter into such an agreement. So at this point that is, that's not an active pursuit of the cities at this point. And lastly is a effort that is often called the missing middle, which is really zoning reforms that are intended to spur the creation of homes that are really throughout the city and throughout neighborhoods that both reflect the character of the neighborhood and it meet the need for what you might think of a sort of moderate income, middle income homes for young people, young professionals, but also for retirees or empty nesters really trying to acknowledge that we as a city have lots of opportunity within our existing neighborhoods to give people the opportunity to live in great neighborhoods if we just get more creative about how we apply our land use policies. And so that effort is also there's an effort underway support of that called the BTB neighborhood code, which Megan Puddle and her team are spearheading that really looks at how can we replicate the neighborhoods that we all recognize that we really like and what we love about those neighborhoods and really encourage development that will foster basically more neighborhoods that are basically more walkable, more dense, and that will help us address our acute housing shortage. So those are some of the efforts in support of the city's effort. Sarah has far more information about our efforts around homelessness specifically. You want to stop for questions or do you want me to jump in? I think we'll go right to Sarah and then we can jump into it. I don't know if anyone has any burning questions but we can jump into it. If not we can hold them. That sounds great. Let's dive in. Thank you. Brian mentioned in the there are a few priorities that fall within my city. One of them has been the Illinois community shelter. It is considered a semi non-congregate shelter. The reason it is non-congregate specifically is because there is a bathroom on site that is not within the shelter unit. People need to share bathrooms. There are six individual bathrooms. It is not stall style. That is the reason it is considered or defined as semi non-congregate. That is a best practice is to begin providing non-congregate shelter. I think that what we learned through the pandemic but also it is common sense that sharing a shelter space a large room with 30 plus other people is not ideal for a lot of reasons. Especially when there are public health concerns. It is also more sort of respectful to people to provide a little bit more privacy and dignity having their own space. Of the 30 shelter units that are on place over at Elmwood, there are five that are double occupancy. One of the things, there are a few reasons that we found barriers of our system for folks to access shelter. One of them is that when they are a couple or in one unit, we actually have a parent and an adult child in one unit together. Is that couples can't be together. Couples of the opposite identify gender can't share a shelter space in congregate shelter settings. A lot of times they will choose to stay together outside instead of accessing a shelter opportunity. One of the things that in reviewing the referral that came in was we found there were a real high number of couples who were sleeping in shelter. Which was something that was a little surprising to me actually. We very quickly filled those five double occupancy shelters over at Elmwood. We do have a max capacity of 35. There are five shelters right now that are not offerable because there are some wiring issues. Our capacity on site right now, we are hoping to get that figured out very quickly. Our capacity on site right now is 29 people on site at Elmwood. There are six bathroom and shower combo in one modular building on site. There is a really nice community sort of gathering space for people with private offices where they can meet with case managers on site or have private meeting space. There is a kitchen there, meals can be dropped off. One of the things that we wanted to do was to really embed services and supports into the shelter. So it was not to just have people, I think that there is some shelters that are simply emergency shelter and that is their role. That is an important piece of our system. However, we were pretty very convinced from the beginning that we wanted the Elmwood shelter to encompass a real diverse range of services and supports right on site. A lot of times people will access shelter in one part of the city and have to travel to another part of the city to meet with their case manager and support them. It is hard to get around to navigate the buses. A lot of shelters you cannot stay at during the day. You are carrying a lot of belongings and stuff with you around and that even more really reinforced our ideas around having services on site at Elmwood. We built some great partnerships that I am looking forward to. We have agreements in place with the safe harbor clinic which is part of the health care project from the community health center and they are visiting the site once a month to provide medical and mental health treatment. Also connection to foot care, dental care and vaccinations. They can actually do right on site. They are also working with the Shampai Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. They are delivering meals on site every day for folks. In addition to providing some support service out of eating the food shelf. They are providing some services from their outreach team as well. They are also providing support for people who are interested who live or stay at the shelter. And last but certainly not least we have built a partnership with Vermontress for criminal justice reform. They have a pilot program around contingency management which provides incentive coaching over prevention and fentanyl testing. Which is a real innovative harm reduction program that they are piloting right now with support from the city and support from the state and department of corrections as well. We feel like we have built a real robust support system for people who are staying at the shelter. And I am pleased to say that we have had one person moved out of the shelter this weekend into permanent housing. We are experiencing our first turnover of a unit. Going back to our referral list to identify the next person. We are also working with people who are working in Chittenden County not just in Burlington but also in the outline areas. Howard center has outreach workers that are embedded in the police departments. We worked with them to identify folks to refer to the shelter as a shelter. We prioritized people which is a mandate at the state funding for this project but we prioritized people who were un-sheltered first. When we say un-sheltered, people who are camping or living in a place that is not meant for human habitation. It is not meant to be a trailer or car or something like a garage. That is what that definition means. Very quickly when we were reviewing that referral list we received about 80 referrals for the shelter. I think there were probably about 50 out of that 80 who were un-sheltered. We were, as Brian said, able to approve or accept 35 of those people as well with support from the referral team. Something that is different is that the shelter is a low barrier model which is desperately what is needed. Which means that people can't access other forms of shelter because of certain shelter requirements. That could mean that they are currently using drugs or alcohol. For some shelters they need to be able to use the shelter. It is a recovery that you are not drinking or not to be influenced. With the un-sheltered co-inciding with the mayor's template plan housing is a human right. We knew that we needed to lower that barrier for people to be able to move in. We didn't want people to be in danger to themselves or other people. Other than that the group was very lenient with allowing folks in and have seen huge success. Certainly there are some mucks with individual people but for the most part the guests who are staying there are really happy. I can't believe that I get to stay here. I have never stayed in a place that is so nice. The reality is this is a 8x8 small unit but thinking that would mean so much to someone is really pretty profound. I think a huge positive approach to these particular units is that there is a lock on the door and being able to have a sense of security especially for women who are camping outside to have a sense of security at night to be able to lock the door and secure your belongings for anyone is really huge. I have never been in a place where there is a lock on the door and she had a horrible infection in her foot. I am not a doctor but it did not look good. She said I don't have anybody to watch my stuff until tomorrow. The last time I left my stuff was when everything was stolen from her and it took her weeks to get those things back. She was going to wait it out until she could find somebody to watch her stuff. When I go to the doctor or bring my kids to the doctor I am never thinking maybe I shouldn't go to that sick call visit with my child today because somebody will break into my house and I don't want to go to that sick call but it is not something that is on the forefront of my mind or prevents me from accessing medical care. That is really where we are at with the shelter. The last thing I will say is we do have a community meeting coming up with an established community where we can talk to the public and businesses and to guests of the shelter to come together and build community and welcome guests into the neighborhood and have them feel part of the neighborhood and also to problem-solve and chat about challenges and the community. That meeting is on March 13 at 5 o'clock and is in the gathering space at the shelter. I hope we have enough room for everyone but I think that will be a good time to talk together. Thank you. The shelter is a piece of the work that we do and certainly a safe place and a safe bridge for folks to be while they are waiting to move into permanent housing. Part of my position as Brian mentioned is around coordinated entry in the community. There is equity and access to housing resources for people who are experiencing homelessness. Communities that receive any kind of funding for homelessness must have what is called a continuum of care and that is our county homeless alliance. Communities across the country can be stakeholders. We come together on a monthly basis to review current data around folks who are homeless and talk about trends that we are seeing to identify new initiatives and new direction for work to learn about the individual efforts that each of the community agencies needs. Those meetings are open to the public as well. We have two community meetings every year that we work hard to bring people into the community. Our next one is in May. Keep your eyes up. The various message we had this morning and the data we are seeing reflects that we have 584 households in Chittenden County who are experiencing homelessness. Of those 64 are families. 191 are chronic which means long-term homeless. 35 are veterans and we look at those specific subpopulations of people. To Brian's earlier point around the need for expanded affordable housing we track progress for individual households in terms of face-to-face and phase three is the spot where households get where they are ready for housing. All they need is a unit and a rental subsidy and we have 95 households in Chittenden County which speaks to the fact that we don't have housing for them to move into. The very last thing I wanted to mention is people have heard a lot about the transitional housing program on the state level and that is scheduled to end this month. There is a top as long as the budget adjustment is approved that program could potentially extend until June 30. Right now in Chittenden County we have 218 households that are in that hotel program and we have an additional 126 households who are accessing emergency shelter in Chittenden County in addition to that 218 through the adverse weather conditions program which is a real last eligibility for people but it is crucial for us to continue to advocate for extension of that program even though it is not perfect for sure we can have people in motels forever but the idea of turning over 300 households out in 29 days is pretty terrifying for us. That is where they are. Thank you both Brian and Sarah for all the work you are doing and for sharing this information with us. We appreciate it. We have our next agenda item coming up shortly by doing a pause and I have an opportunity for questions briefly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. One comment I wanted to make is Brian you mentioned how it is a regional issue and one thing I am really positive about is how Burlington is expanding our transportation links between our neighboring communities and we have a nice asset the Winooski bridge the south building a bridge over the interstate to connect to their huge housing developments in their center city and we are upgrading the Colchester link so it is not a it used to be terrible to go across on a bike so that is a wonderful development for us. We had several meetings a few years ago about ADUs and did anything ever come of that were they built? It seemed like one issue I saw was if you are inviting people to live as connected to your home it would be nice if there was some way of managing the situation as has been done with elder care is there a way to gain more units through ADUs? The accessory dwelling unit is a tool that has been used elsewhere to some extent and to some success our challenges honestly in Vermont and in Burlington are that I will be blunt to say we get in our own way we have code requirements that make it extremely difficult to make an ADU possible we have permitting requirements we have sprinklers we have really self-imposed hurdles that make it challenging so not a lot of ADUs have been built in communities where ADUs have been successful there is a dedicated staff person working for the municipality at least one who just helps people get through the process because that is what is needed we don't have that capacity here we also have requirements that make it financially so the ADU is still an unrealized potential Looks like we have a question from Zoom Romy. Thanks for having me first and foremost I actually live in ward 8 but I am keenly interested in something I heard regarding the homeless community program I was wondering is this a support program and does that pertain to the new homeless shelter program that was just recently opened the program that I was describing at the beginning of my presentation was regarding the community shelter which is the new shelter that opened around Helmwood Avenue does that answer your question? Yes I am interested in the community is welcome to join in this program where can I find out so I can come to these meetings and see what I can do to support there is a community group that is being established the first meeting of that community group is on March 13 from 5 to 6.30 it is at the Helmwood Avenue it is at Helmwood Avenue it is required for 9-1-1 it is called New Hope Lane would this information be sent as an e-mail to folks who want to come in and all that stuff Sam you are hiding behind the computer screen is posted on the wards 2 and 3 Sam was it also posted on the first form? We can include it in our follow-up posting I will get the details from Sarah and we will include that in our minutes Thank you I had a question I read recently that Vermont is actually doing very well we are second only to California in the rate of housed that we have I may not be getting the details there are two figures that recently came up and those are regarding from the 2021 and the 2022 we did the 2023 last month in January I believe the report you are referring to we have the lowest rate per capita according to the 2022 of people who are un-sheltered I don't believe that information is entirely true because we have a large number of un-sheltered that are not necessarily engaged in our system but we are really good at sheltering people in Vermont the second part of that report we have the highest rate of homelessness per capita which is not where we want to be that just came out and was really troubling and concerning for us I think we are reserving a little bit of judgment until we see the 2023 and that account occurs in the whole country on one day in January every community in the country does a point in time count I would note that we had to stand up a cold weather shelter a few weeks ago at the beginning of February it was devastatingly cold people could have easily died outside Sarah stood it up and did a phenomenal job and organized all the resources all the people more importantly as a community we have a lot of individuals unduplicated individuals and the saddest statistic to me is a very small fraction of those folks were in consideration to be staying at the Elmwood shelter so that is an additional number on top of the 80 folks who were deemed eligible to stay at Elmwood living outside or who were connected to the system to be referred to Elmwood but the end of a very long weekend where I got about 10 hours of sleep over 3 days was like the real gut punch we have a huge number of people who are unsheltered and quite unwell and not connected to our system so we still have quite a bit of work to do so those folks might not have necessarily been counted within that point in time count but we have a significant sector of the unsheltered population thank you any other questions on this topic okay well again thank you for coming in especially in that our next item on the agenda is Montpelier priorities we are going to take a look at Montpelier and Stone if you want to share any updates that you have for the group we welcome that you are going to kick things off can you all hear me sorry I am not in a place where I can easily turn my camera on right now I just wanted to give an update about mainly what we are doing on education committee a lot of our conversations have been centered around two topics one of those being mental health in schools we had a joint committee meeting today with the committee on healthcare it is a mammoth issue the topic of mental health and figuring out the best means to both fund and address the issue of mental health in our schools one of the big things we are running up against are workforce issues one of the bills I put through that I am hopeful will pass as an occupational therapy compact bill I am an OT we work in mental health settings it is just reciprocity between states taking some of the barriers down to getting OTs to work in the state including in our schools working in mental health the other big issue we have been diving into is school construction funding there has been a moratorium on school construction funding since 2007-2008 that is totally separate from PCB testing and funding related to that issue we have been working with Mike Pichek and doing a lot of research with other states notably Rhode Island they have a model that works really well that ensures not only we are addressing issues with repairs but also making sure we are maintaining the buildings we have those are the two issues I wanted to touch on mental health and school construction PCB testing right now there are 325 schools give or take about 40 we are still waiting on survey results to come in we are still early in the game I wanted to communicate that two of the schools came back with troubling findings one of those is Burlington high school but we received testimony this week early in the game when it comes to PCB testing but pushing through with school construction funding and those conversations we are looking to get back to questions if anyone has any thank you initial questions if we can come back to them I will have to hear from representative it is okay I will have to hop off if anybody has questions okay you are free thank you so much I can get to an NPA meeting in person in the near future we should mention representative Stevan and they got caught up in meetings in Montpelier and we are not able to join thank you so much thank you so then you are just stuck with the two of us I am going to be brief are Brian and Sarah still there we are so Sarah I don't know you yet but sounds like you are doing a great job and I really want to thank Sarah I think Brian has done such good work in the area of housing and Brian has spent a lifetime working on this issue and so much of what exists now can be attributed to Brian and others who have worked with the city for decades to try to help so I want to say thank you so much for the work you have done and your overview was really helpful and it will help shape some of the conversations we are having here I serve on the appropriations committee which is like living in a cave or under a rock for months because kind of dissecting taking apart the budget and putting it back together with all of the input from the policy committees is a really big job and it is my first year on this committee I handle my portfolio includes housing substance use mental health and the legislative budget and as it relates to housing because this has been a focus of the conversation we have a budget adjustment agreement with the senate and it does extend the voucher system to folks who are in emergency housing through for most of that group through June 30th we have a budget adjustment agreement with the senate to limit the voucher I can go into the different groups people living with disabilities people who are 60 and over people who are pregnant folks with disabilities housing dispute with a landlord all of those will be able to stay through June 30th for those who don't fit into those groups they will be able to stay with vouchers through May 31st and we committed also 5 million dollars to repairing rehabilitating apartments and the dwelling units offline and need repair 25 million to new housing construction and go to the Vermont house conservation board and 2.5 million to expanding shelter capacity and 9 million dollars which will enable the VHFA to subsidize the development of starter homes and the senate also passed a large housing bill just last week and it includes significant appropriations for the kinds of things I just talked about but also zoning changes and it establishes a new revolving loan fund to develop affordable rental properties they would not be permanently built but I think we need to be building a lot of different kinds of housing for different folks and 20 million more for rehabbing offline properties or establishing accessory dwelling units and the house needs to vote on it which it will do before we leave for the town meeting break and I think that we are going to there are other things that the legislature is going to take up in this session including more zoning issues the balance between low income development and incentivizing middle income housing the issue of no cause eviction has come up in one committee specialized housing for specific populations older vermoners transitional housing for individuals leaving long term treatment for substance use overall I would say I am now pulling back from housing the committee has heard significant testimony related to a range of budget pressures or needs first and foremost pertaining including state workers nurses child care workers impact of years of flat funding agencies that are in our communities that provide a lot of mental health and substance use services has really taken its toll and vacancy rates are really high and so there is a call to raise reimbursement rates for those agencies so that they can then pay people what they need to be paid we've heard a lot of testimony about the mental health needs of young people in our schools and the difficulty that schools are having in addressing those needs and and we have had two public hearings that have solicited impact input from the public as it relates to the budget and we heard a lot about many of the things that I have already named but also dementia care coordination at the state level that was really difficult testimony to hear just how at sea people feel when somebody in their family has been diagnosed with dementia and there are a lot of I think a lot of agencies are hurting right now either because the reimbursement rates are really low or because they have had to raise salaries in order to keep people or hire them so at any rate it's a fascinating range of issues that the committee gets exposed to and at any rate we expect to put together a budget by the 27th of March and send it over to the senate if we can get it through the house thank you very much for that update looks like we have a question from Romeo yes I just wanted to thank really Sarah for her work with the homeless program as I understand and for somebody who interacts with the homeless communities as on a day-to-day basis because I do work at the transit center I am the transit supervisor and I do see what they really go through with these folks and it just breaks my heart see what they go through really and I am hoping these folks get housed and the city builds more accommodations for them, at least something to get them started and help them get jobs and such so thank you for what you are doing in what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. I was curious if there's any discussion. Oh sure, Meg McGovern Ward 6. I'm curious if there's been any discussion about changing the appeal process so that approved zoning decisions for new developments won't be delayed by frivolous loss. Yeah, I think that I am I have not been privy to the conversations as they've evolved, but that is definitely on the agenda in both the house and the Senate. Great, thank you. Sure. Any other questions or priorities we could talk about? I am still at the state house and I desperately need to get some dinner. So if there aren't any other questions, I hate to take my leave, but I think I need to eat. It's perfect timing. We're wrapping up ourselves. Yes, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for coming down with us. Sure. Thanks for having us. Okay, bye. Thank you. And that concludes our MP meeting as well. So thank you everyone for being here again. Thank you to Sarah and Brian for being here. And we do have we would love input on future topics that you'd love to have explored. We include a survey in the front porch forum posts every month. If anyone's interested, we can send it to you. We'll include it in the minutes. It's a good place to submit anonymously topics you want to talk about, whether it's this month, next month, you know, down the road, we would love to have you. So please do. Otherwise, thank you everyone for joining us tonight.