 Okay, we are recording and streaming. Thank you. Welcome. It's Tuesday, June 2nd. And this is the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee, the Vermont General Assembly, and we are here today to talk with advocates in the housing and landlord community, as well as the, as well as legally on some of the issues that have been put before us in terms of what we're looking to do for a housing package using the Coronavirus Relief Fund and through the CARES Act. There are some limitations that we're still working against. But the administration has put a proposal forward to spend $42 million on rental assistance and $8 million on rehabilitation of apartments that are currently offline. What we'll hear from today specifically is on the $42 million rental assistance package. The folks we heard from Commissioner Hanford several times now over the last couple of weeks. And he's mentioned that they are unclear but open to hearing suggestions on how this program would be administered. And this is, and whether it happens through an RFP or is assigned, I suppose, as part of this process. But the folks from Vermont Legal Aid and the Vermont Landlord's Association have been working together again as they were during S333 on how they envisioned what this program might look like and how it might be functional in as short a time as possible. So I did want to start today with Jonathan Bond, who has been in our committee a couple times over the last couple of years. Jonathan's been the executive director at HFI, which is a, they own a number of mobile home parks across the state. And they shared a proposal with us. And I just wanted to hear, because we've heard through VHCB we've heard discussions that mobile home parks should be part of the solution moving forward. And I just wanted to hear from Jonathan about what HFI has been thinking about where they might fit in a, in a package that we're developing. Because certainly the package that we're going to be developing on the house side is more than just the $50 million that the administration has put forward because we need to address simple housing issues that are not simple at all. So with that Jonathan, if you could just give us a couple of minutes of reintroduction and and then just share with us what you're thinking in terms of what your series of mobile home parks can do and can be prepared for over the next few months or a couple of years. And we're just trying to hear where this might fit in, not just for the next few months but also for the next couple of years in terms of being more aggressive in terms of finding this kind of housing for folks. So the microphone is here so so folks once again I'll do the weekly. I'll do the weekly mute all unmute yourself when you. I guess when I call on you when your hands are raised through the participant section of the website. So Jonathan I'm going to unmute you I think everybody else knows that you can unmute yourself when again when you're called upon. Welcome Jonathan. Thank you for having me. Thank you to the chair and to the committee. It's good to see you all again digitally instead of in person this time. I'm here today to discuss the housing foundations proposal to supply a rapid safe and cost effective housing using seven parks that we have throughout the state. So just to provide a brief intro of what hfi is our mission at hfi is to provide to promote preserve and provide quality affordable housing in Vermont through developing owning operating and advocating such housing statewide. We accomplish our mission through a broad portfolio of 584 units of apartment style housing at 26 pretty and we are the largest mobile home on with a thousand six lot statewide scattered through 18 parks. And we also achieve a significant amount of our work with partnership through an MOU with Vermont State Housing Authority. In order to manage and help develop our portfolio. I'm here to provide a proposal of something that we've been working on since the onset of our collective lockdown and understanding that hfi has the ability to supply housing in a very rapid environment. Then what we would traditionally be able to the funding was provided. We could deploy a total of forty seven two bedroom manufactured units into existing vacancies that hfi has up to seven different communities gathered about the state. The seven inception of this project was originally designed to interface with what we had hoped to be a comprehensive plan of housing and services. Provided providing to homeless and housing insecure modern AHS and various other departments responsible appeared to have gone to different direction with different proposals for the merits that you're you're considering. It does not appear that it would support this type of project that we're proposing. However, our proposal is capable of standing on its own from a larger plan is scalable and if full funding was made available would produce permanent housing units at a fraction of the cost of traditional apartment style dwelling. And we would do so quickly. Our high end estimate for this total project would be about four point eight million dollars for forty seven units. And while the initial price tag would be high. This comes in at a per unit cost of one hundred and five thousand dollars traditional development price tags without any additional subsidies is close to two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand dollars per unit. So one hundred and five thousand dollars per unit is significantly less than that. And if our project was supported there would be in theory funding to made available to services and to potential subsidies of those units. Also unfit that it's project where to fund. We get that cost price down and that overall project would actually be less when we got the full estimates in these are based on initial estimates for proposal. If less funding becomes available and I mentioned that the project is significantly scalable less funding per would mean less units and the total per unit cost would go up slightly but our overall fixed costs for this project are extremely low. That's been something we've been focusing on is how we can supply the most housing the safest housing that we can provide at the lowest price and make sure that it's permanent. There are two specific challenges though that we have yet to overcome the biggest obstacle is obviously the funding traditional funding for multi rentals is not largely available and would not be quick enough to deploy these units for animal home park. An example would be for instance low income housing tax credits or other types of tax credits which we are insolgible to use mobile home parks. Which is reason why those mobile parks specific those up by nonprofits and cooperatives struggle to make it needed improvements in their parks from the problems that have been here inherited when we purchase them for private owners. That lack of funding stream has meant that we compete for very limited funding or we have to get very creative through traditional loans and bonding markets which has their own complications and would slow this project down. This project to be genuinely rapid and cost effective would need funding specifically designated for the project. Again that cost effectiveness comes if an entire project is funded and it would be more expensive on a per unit cost if anything less came in. But it is possible and the places we have we have a project where we could eliminate some of the parks that we were planning on filling vacancies in and that reduction in the number of different sites would have a reduction in the overall fixed costs of the project as well. Our second challenge though would be a lack of a specific and an opportunity to provide support services to vulnerable households that we'd be trying to offer these units to serve. I'd really like to see an outside service agency able to apply for designated RPF to offer these services and under this arrangement, HFI would prefer to master lease with a servicing agency. Binding both the servicing agency and HFI with the tenant at the same time to directly provide services to those tenants that they need to transition into permanent housing. Given the service providers to rent the units, the outlook of the tenants, we believe this would be a successful solution for a transition to new residents into this permanent housing. Long term, HFI would ideally like to transition anyone living in these units or the units themselves into permanently owner occupied units. Mobile home parks are most successful and most stable when they are filled with home owners to share common infrastructure on rented land. We are only offering this potential option to offer our mobile home as rentals to fill a very specific need tied with some sort of services. And that is critical for this to be successful. And the piece that we shouldn't be also servicing while supplying the housing should be a separate organization. But like I said, without a comprehensive proposal, there would be some challenges. So despite these challenges, you know, we'd be we'd be looking to still fill as a very cost effective and very quick deployment. We would likely be able to assess plan and deploy these units before the end of the year. I would be very skeptical to believe that a similar project with modular homes, non-hud certified homes could be as quick as this project. Simply because those homes would have to be built in factories, as I likely are not already available. And the deployment of modular permanent housing would require additional permitting. We are putting that for an existing mobile home. So that would be second with the proposals. The interest to learn more about the units we'd be looking to purchase and install would be hud certified in effect from our energy star rated. Generally speaking, we'd be targeting two bedroom units, though we are flexible and could have one or three up to three bedroom units based on the area and based on the need with the local servicing agencies committed to that. We feel that this proposal would be sufficient to supply the permanent housing and balancing those needs of limited resources and flexibility in the timeline. All seven communities were proposing or scattered throughout the state and they have at least two units that would be installed at the same time. This plan is a direct acknowledgement that we need to be able to consolidate any housing with services and making sure that there's more than one unit per community that we'd be adding to. Small cluster deployments would also have a measurable impact on the existing park residents who are continue to be highly vulnerable and COVID is no exception. To that existing social and health vulnerability that they're then having these new homes in their parks would have a measurably positive impact for the existing residents and surrounding communities. All of the laws we're proposing are currently empty or fluid and unsafe homes. So, in addition to the stability that they would add they would also have a significant improvement to the aesthetics of the apartment, the fringe benefit of the project. The project with the majority of grant funding and with limited debt, we could also keep this price of the rental significantly lower than any other traditional apartment. And when subsidies were to come available this would provide a better bang for the buck of the subsidies be able to stretch them farther because the actual cost of the subsidy would be built in by having a lower rent. Given that the upfront cost of installing units could be could be paid for with the majority of forgivable or grant funding. That is a very quick overview of what the housing foundation can offer to provide a very cost effect the traffic before permanent housing. So welcome. Welcome questions a lot of tells we've worked out a few. There are open questions that I haven't had a discussion about. Yeah, sure. Very quickly on the seven facilities that you're talking about. Two questions in terms of the, the locations of those towns or those parks are they near enough to services or would they require transportation to go along with the housing and, and our mobile homes I mean you're talking about buying new or relatively new units. Are they constructed in an industrial enough way that they can, you know, put up with the wear and tear of some, depending on which, which part of the homeless population you house. Some of the housing may require some more deeper construction than than what I don't know what a modern mobile home looks like in terms of wear and tear so can you just share your thoughts on that. Yes, I think, given that I'm surprised and we'd be looking at it quickly deploying the housing, and eventually confirming is to permanent long term housing, it would be able to work with the wear and tear. Over 30 years as a rental, it would not be able to sustain that wear and tear in the same way that a traditional stick built home might be. That is something that we would be asking the manufacturers and dealers to provide us with the best available products making sure that we're not cutting corners on things like flooring and how the walls are constructed for instance. Energy star rating is not the same as high efficiency modular homes. But at the same time, still provide a significant amount of savings and we'd be comfortable including in the moment the utilities for that burden and being shifted the rent or to quickly deploy. So, the short answer is, is it would not be the same, but given the time horizon that we'd be looking at we could quickly and affordably deploy them and still provide significant savings. And just actually I'll go to, we have several questions here lined up representative Triana. Yes, thank you, Chair. You know just a little bit of a follow up you know as a Lister mobile homes to appreciate much faster than a stick house as as it was indicated by Jonathan but I found in hardware get evident evergreen is that when residents were giving given a decent place to live, which was had manageable costs of energy costs and such that they can't my experience and being there, campaigning over two different things was that people really appreciated being in a in a residence that had again energy efficiency and was was a decent place and I noticed that the care of the units was particularly better than it had been in the past where there are just a series of bumping mobile homes there so you know it's encouraging to see that in person when we do that. Just that's just a comment and a follow up on wear and tear, they still do mobile homes still do experience more wear and tear than a stick house but question is now are these lots readily available. Jonathan thanks for being here today it's a good to hear from you. So I'm going to directly answer your question and then I do want to circle back to the location because that's an important piece of regarding the servicing that that representative Stevens brought up so I'm talking the fact that these lots are available five of the books that proposing had an old mobile home that was built before 1976 that to be demolished for the city as a reference point previously six. There were no standards for mobile homes, and thus, and about a fifth of the overall Vermont stock of mobile homes is represented by these non standardized unsafe older homes with poor construction quality. And we wouldn't be replacing we would be replacing those or we'd be filling lots that are currently vacant and had previously had older homes that we've already demolished. So this is something that we would be deploying immediately regarding the depreciation I do want to add that that depreciation of a mobile home is as much tied to the mobile home park that it is cited in as the home itself. In the last 10 years, there's a lot of focus on the home, whereas the actual underlying infrastructure is a significantly more important piece, making sure it has solid water sewer, safe roads and trigger removal. And when those conditions are met you actually will find a mobile home will have some modest appreciation over the life. One of our parks in Bolton a few years ago, it was the case where the valuation of those homes up tax purposes as well the rest of the stick built homes in the community depreciated for tax purposes. So, it really is a matter of the park at HFI we've committed a significant amount of resources and investment into our parks to make sure that they can hold those values. There are a few parks here which these homes would dramatically improve anytime you can get rid of an old unsafe non standardized mobile home and replace it with something anything really built since 1994. And in this case we'd be looking at anything bill probably between 2006 to right out of the factory home. The standards are significantly safer than what they what they were traditionally. And an important piece of citing a mobile home actually foundation in 2016 I made very specific, very strong requirements on that foundation. The mobile home is probably cited on a foundation. Don't see the same problems that you're probably familiar of when you think of an old dilapidated mobile home. Likely those dilapidated mobile homes are not on a foundation or on some type of peer that's actually failed. Mobile homes that are on proper foundation, even those built before 1976 do remarkably better and so it's actually more important to make sure the foundation in this project we would be taking that into account using a new technology with Goliath peers to be able to supply cross resistant stable foundations that are adjustable over time to make sure that they maintain their resiliency. Regarding to the communities that we'd be looking to serve so in addition to making sure at least two homes would be supplied. Most of the communities that we're proposing are on major through ways. Route seven route for very close to highways or close to or have direct access. I will say mobile homes in general are built on the fringe of areas where there are services so things like public transportation haven't made it to a lot of mobile home parks. Which in the future should be something that we have a conversation about because they are dense housing in a rural environment and can be well served by public transportation expansion to be targeting our mobile home communities. But in the case of a few of our parks Milton Claredon. Bennington Hinesburg to all of those parks do have are on major thoroughfares and are close to both services and public transportation. Two parks that would have a little bit more trouble with the public transportation piece is Wind Hill and Weathersfield but we'd be looking to install up to eight homes. And that would be then working with a good service provider to be able to partner to make up for that lack of transportation by being able to cluster need and the ability to deliver services direct to people home with home in a row. Same would true for a park's brain tree where we have 13 blocks we could fill that are all really close to each other to maximize that service delivery. And in Claredon it's another 13 homes right outside of Rutland that we'd be able to cluster to cluster that so we have thought of that service piece there are going to be challenges. But I don't think those challenges are something that we couldn't overcome and working with a service provider given that money is available to provide services. I think we could target 47 households to be able to be successful in a scattered site where they have their own floor walls. They're not sharing walls that even may have a yard and a driveway themselves the ability to have more storage for their personal blinds that they may have to keep them safe to reduce sort of both the actual and perceived vulnerabilities they have. We think these sites could be successful locations for that. So just as a quick follow up your your cost estimate at 105 K per unit. Does that include removal and demolition of homes that are maybe on those sites. It does. It actually also includes a 10% contingency which we would want to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible and planning for that contingency. But obviously we would not have to tap into that contingency as needed and provide either additional homes or additional savings to the project or transfer those funds to servicing agencies be able to serve to provide to provide that that cost savings. And just just briefly, you know, many zoning laws and cities and towns right now require concrete slab for mobile homes to be put on as a result. And again, as what you say that if they are cited properly that they that the depreciation is considerably lower but oftentimes siding in the roofing that are used on these units are what deteriorates quickly in a situation where, you know, a family with children may be involved and such but so that's a little bit of a concern but as I said, the folks that were placed in Evergreen that that rent in Evergreen are taking pretty good care of their unit so that's the optimistic side. Thanks very much for your input. Regarding the foundations, it actually has more stringent requirements than any Vermont community or the state. And because the way that title 10 chapter 153 has written the existing lots we'd be following the HUD standards, because they're greater than most community standards and so it the permitting requirements for this project are significantly less than what they should be for any modular home that's being built because they are just regular permanent housing and should be going through permanent permanent construction permitting in those communities. Great. Thank you john. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to make sure I'm understanding. So are you are these brand new mobile homes that you're proposing. Our proposal is to put in new homes that have been manufactured and not lived in before. Depending on the fun availability and the desire we could be looking at homes that are new, but not right right from the factory so that have been built within the last 1012 years to be installed. And so it would depend on the character of the community and what we'd be targeting to install, but the way we budgeted the project was for new homes to comply with the top standards of both the HUD certified mobile homes, the foundation requirements and energy requirements. And in the administration proposal in the rehab model they're proposing there's $30,000 grants for units. Could that work in the mobile home community that the units existing which are derelict could actually be rehab to allow people to move in. No, we'd be looking to remove any of the older homes. They're unsafe and generally older and we want to be removing that stock. It doesn't provide any cost savings to fix them up in the short term. We would be paying for that for years to come. And so you would not get the same savings. So the $30,000 would probably be significantly more than what we would need to fix it up it'd be better just to put in a new home. Okay, thank you. Representative Wells. Thank you. Well, Representative Kalaki just asked one of my questions about the rehabbing but I still have to, and they both have to do with the kind of timeframe involved here. I understand it correctly you're talking about using existing lots and existing parks. So I'm just wondering what sort of with the permitting process involved here, especially if it involves a removal and demolition of an existing structure. What kind of timeframe is that typically would a new mobile home be rapidly installed with the 47 homes we would be working with the dealers that we'd be in the contract with a very fast but still reliable bidding process to tell us how quickly they could deploy the units. Originally, when we were conceiving this project, we were conceiving it as more of a holistic plug into a larger plan with both service providers and houses over 24 month time horizon. And I feel very strongly we could put in all 47 homes within that time horizon. So even funding if funding were to become available, or the proposal for us to be able to apply for funding to become available and package in such a way that when application would have access to local source financing in mid July with our construction process to start in August. So we likely could do a majority of the 47 homes. We could very quickly eliminate sites to concentrate for sites on those where we have more homes. So for instance, in Clarendon brain tree, Bennington and Weathersfield. Those are all places we have at least seven or more vacant lots that we could prioritize and we could prioritize our engineering and site rehabs to be able to accept the new mobile homes to be in just those parts to give us some both time savings and some cost effectiveness. We would be partnering with a developer who has said they need approximately 10 to 14 weeks total lead time for all 47 lots and all seven communities, but that they could be working in tandem while we could be doing the work for one park. Complete it install new homes while they're moving on to the next community, and it would be lined up in such a way that we'd be able to probably do. Like I said a large majority and actual number of what we could do before December 31 would be a harder, harder number to get to get to you. It would be something that we'd have to do and we actually receive funding and can put them put out put out official bids. And you just mentioned the reason why I asked obviously you know if you use a coronavirus relief funds there is a deadline at the end of the year to have bills paid. And so that there was really part, a huge part of my question. And so I thank you I think that that takes care of my concern. Thanks a lot. Jonathan, thank you for coming in. I mean, I do have a couple of quick questions pad size 14 by 70 is just generally is that an older size or an older conventional size or is that fit. What you need. Yeah, so it's actually on the larger side of lots of having a noble the 14 by 70 is a standard standard home usually between 22 to 72 to 68. Some of those lots are actually 16 by 80, but we were just looking to provide a clear picture of what we could produce quickly by standardizing across the board by at least a 14 by 70. And that that was a priority. We do have smaller lots available. We have another 39 lots that we're currently assessing. And we have a separate project that we were already engaged in planning using modular units. So those are, you know, homes built in a factory but not certified in any way. And our crane crane delivered to the site. That's the per unit cost of those smaller homes is significantly higher. And the bedroom count would be something like a one bedroom for a 14 by 40 unit, not a standard mobile home and because of the costs are higher, our ability to get those bills would take longer. And the installation we wouldn't be able to do it in the same time horizon. No, I appreciate that. No, and I appreciate that there you do have some significant challenges to to face both financially and from the making sure that you guys are not service providers, but that you need to be able to develop those relationships but those are I appreciate you coming in today. And committee, I think Jonathan's proposal talked a lot about other possibilities down the line. This proposal, if I'm not mistaken, the 47 homes was specific what was started out to be a particular proposal. And, you know, but again, thank you for sharing that with us as this as he represented Gonzalez has her name, her hand raised I want to give her that opportunity, go ahead, Deanna. Thank you Jonathan you just kind of addressed some of what I was about to ask about in terms of what you have looked at the different costs and the different variations of options around manufacturer homes and I just want to clarify one of my concerns with mobile homes, particularly in an emergency deployment as we're essentially doing here is that mobile homes and have a high toxic load and the off gassing has historically made a lot of people ill, in crisis situations and so it's concerning to me to just focus on that when the toxic load is very high and so appreciate that you've looked at other manufactured homes and and looking at at those different options and my question was really around if there were any additional investigations that you looked at of low toxic homes as opposed to these the mobile homes that are HUD certified. Yeah, so regarding the toxicity, you know, we collectively learned a significant amount of that actually after Katrina when the EPA deployed a variation on a mobile home that was deployed that had a high VOC is a volatile organic compounds and off gassing. That is one reason why we wouldn't probably install anything that was built before 2006 would be to limit that and the modern modern mobile homes are using in most cases, similar same materials that are stick built they're just generally thinner. And so that would be something of concern hours and something we would be monitoring. That said, these mobile homes, you know, are safe and are being purchased on the market with other folks who have been successfully living in them and have not. At least in Vermont, a new mobile home is not as big a concern as it once was a lot of that is historic. We've done some very significant negative experiences but something that we're helping to avoid. Yeah, and I appreciate that and the toxic load of modern building materials even the stick belts are pretty significant and so thinking of that as as part of the package that we need to consider. Thank you. These these homes are an alternative to limited unsafe and no housing. Absolutely. And we think that these units can be with services. The outcomes for the individuals could be significantly higher than at a cost effective measurement way that then then all other alternatives could be based to for us is already looking at modular units, as well as continuing to push federal standards to be strengthened that shouldn't be something that's oversaw overlooked because a lot of Vermont laws are based on those manufactured home standards that have set out and the definitions of what is a mobile home park is based on a manufactured home being installed in the park, not a modular home being installed in the park and so there's some significant challenges that our state has yet to overcome around those definitions. So I think there's there's room there. The addition is for us to be able to buy in essentially large quantities of units we have more power to to control some of that. Some of the materials that are used and there is some customization that we would be using we would not be purchasing the lowest end mobile home that's currently offered on the market. The energies are raising while from an energy savings perspective is minimal. It still does come with some significance to the improvements are going to be used for. Great. Thank you. All right, again, John, thank you for your time today. And won't be the last time we see you that's for sure. I. Go ahead. I appreciate your time today. And I just urge the committee to explore this proposal. More, it will both enhance the existing communities as well as rapid playhouse. So it has a lot of positive externality that we did again discuss and so something I look forward to finding about. Yeah, I mean, and just off the last thing I'll say is that what I appreciate is that the and while I'm concerned about how the services might be provided and access to services. I do appreciate that this is a focus on some of the smaller communities across the state that might get ignored. Otherwise, simply because of their size or their location. And so, they certainly appreciate each of us focus on on and acknowledging that there are homeless people in many, many, many towns in the state of Vermont, not just in the population centers. So thank you. You're free to stay and listen to this next chunk of time. If you do have six or seven other zoom calls lined up your email so feel free to sign off at your convenience. So thank you for coming in at pretty short notice. I appreciate that. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. I think we're going to change gears right away to the $42 million rental assistance proposal. And we have with us today. Jean Murray from legal aid Wendy Morgan from legal aid and angels kowski from the Vermont landlords association. And I would say let's just start with the way I have it down on the agenda is that with Jean and then Angela. And then we'll go from, we'll go from there, but so we'll start with Jean Murray welcome back. Yes, thank you. Thanks for inviting me here Jean Murray from Vermont legal aid. We've been working with the Vermont apartment owners Association for the last couple of weeks in consultation with the Vermont State Housing Authority to try to figure out what the program. There are certain details of what the program for providing rental housing stabilization funds back rent funds for for renters in Vermont, you may recall that we thought about the availability of these kind of funds back when we were moratorium bill and had worked into the calculation of rent escrow amounts when the courts get going again that we would expect people to apply for rental housing stabilization funds so we've been thinking about this for quite a long time. So, I wonder what you want me to do. The proposal is written out and, and because we did put a lot of detail in it it turns out to be four pages long, but it's in the committee documents under under my name as a witness dated today. And so I could, if you would want me to walk through the proposal. Or I could just hit. I think right now if you could go if you could give us more of the. I guess more of the 20,000 foot level rather than the rather than the granular stuff just to sort of give an idea of, you know, up until now, the conversations, the conversations we've had that this committee has had during this biennium were pretty similar to the proposal put forward last year that would increase the hop program that that exists for rental rarages that was personified or described as successful coming out of the report that was issued that that BLA that the legal that legal aid issue that I know that Angela participated in that as well as is the idea that if 70% of the evictions are related to back rent. How can we avoid them and this $42 million is addressing a potential need that no one could have anticipated a year and change ago so I'm just kind of curious as to maybe if you can start off the conversation with me how that how you approached such a such a need or such a potential need as opposed to what we were talking about. I mean just a year ago we were talking about well if we had an extra $900,000 or if we had $900,000 of the rental rich fund we would do wonders. This is clearly the need that was drawn up by the Boston Fed while I think that's probably the, the, the poll star of what the problem could be if there's actually 23,000 potential eviction situations in the state I don't I don't know if that number is accurate or not but it's a scary number. And that's where $42 million comes in so I just wanted if you can, I don't know if we need to know the details, the granular details of what you worked out because that's something that that if there were an RFP that perhaps that would be included in the program but I am interested in how we would sort of shape this from your perspective and from and from Vermont Landlord Association's perspective to make sure that if we were to put a program in place it would be in place. Quickly enough to actually help people over the next six months or so seven months for us. When we, we had a wrongly delayed had an earlier proposal and we thought that it's, we should start out by funding it for $50 million. And we had a number of theories that would calculate the need, the Federal Reserve in Boston calculated the need based on who is in jobs, based that were likely to not have a job. And how many, how many households are at risk so how many rental households are at risk how many homeowner households were at risk, and then showed that for the time being the first CARES Act funding reduced that number but didn't eliminate it so their number for who's who would need help as soon as that extra amount of unemployment insurance runs out is 8,000 households in Vermont, more than 8,000 households in Vermont. And so one of the things you have to acknowledge is any estimate of how many people are going to need help and exactly what the dollar amount of help that they're going to need is an estimate or a guess. And so one of the things about the way we conceived of this program is get it up and running right away. Deal with the people who are already behind in rent, because the purpose of the program would be to keep everybody from being evicted. I looked at some court statistics I think there's probably about 600 eviction cases pending right now that have been pending throughout the last three months that started before March, but as of March those folks in those households are at risk of eviction so this program would help people stay in the houses they have stay in the rental apartments they have stay in the rental mobile home lots that they have that landlords and tenants would both be able to apply for this program, because you know when you think about why did the Federal Reserve in Boston study the problem is if tenants are missing their payments, then landlords are missing their income, and then in turn landlords may not be able to make their payments this is a huge part of the economy. That is, is there to supply housing for everybody. And if we don't, we don't think, in a big way, we're, we're going to end up having some failures, tenants are going to be homeless landlords are not going to be able to be landlords anymore. So, one, one thought that we also had for what this back back rent money could be used for is it could also be used for first last and security for people who are currently homeless. One of the things we think that folks who are currently homeless could apply for this money for would be for some households rent till the end of the year, and believe me everybody's trying to quantify how many folks might need for the current homeless population, a recent inventory that was conducted by looking at people who have done coordinated entry would say that 300 of those households need first last and security and another 400 would need first last and security and then some rent through the end of the year. So, those would be included in this program. We think there should be different tenants are going to have different needs. They're going to be in different spots, depending on whether or not they're going to get their job back whether they're not going to their whole job back. You mentioned this is what I've distracted by you mentioned that last year, the housing opportunities program that aimed at giving back rent to people. It could be a very successful program but the population for that program where folks that were at the lowest of income at the 30% am I what we're proposing is not going to be limited by the tenants income it will be defined by the fact that rent hasn't been paid. The landlord agrees that that rent is owed and the tenant hasn't paid the rent so to fill in the gaps and pay the rent that hasn't been paid. And of course it would be available for folks at the lowest levels of income also. I just started to say that the idea would be the program would get up and running, and then we would see the subscription subscription levels to it. As I say everything about the estimate of who needs this help is somewhat of a guess. And so we were thinking that if it's a single program administrator that has the ability to process payments quickly. Could also give us a report fairly quickly. We were hoping by August give us a report of who's applied for the money and what the need seems to be, and then reevaluate the program to see whether or not it needs more money or perhaps it needs less money, because it would be answering the need of people who asked for help. So we expect, though, with the extended or enhanced unemployment benefits that it is not going to be very long before quite a few people are going to begin to need help because they won't be able to afford to pay the rent anymore. I agree with you that it needs to be quickly enacted because that production and income for a lot of people is right around the corner. So we would, the program that we have would have the grounds for termination of tenancy be existing as of March 1. And that people would be able to reapply. So if they apply and certify that they need the money and that the landlord certifies that he's going to agree not to evict for a certain period of time. A few months from now, if another occasion arose where the person was behind in rent again, they could apply again, certify again that they need the money, that the grants would be limited to fair market rent. In other words, if the landlord has asked the contract rent or the great upon rent is greater than the fair market rent in the area that the grant would only be limited to fair market rent and the landlord would need to agree to waive any agreed upon rent in excess of fair market rent. That the landlord would agree to waive late fees and and not increase the rent. That we hope the program would go quickly and decisions would be made within 10 working days and that there would be a certain amount of due process for applications that for some reason or another were denied. But I think that said that. Yeah, so Jean let me interrupt you right here for a second before I have two questions line up but just to be just to be clear for the committee so this proposed the proposal from VLA encompasses and I know there's more detail on the paper. But it would encompass a certain number of the way it's been presented to us by Commissioner Hanford was a further homelessness prevention. And, and, but VLA this proposal here is also trying to take some of that money and add a component that's that would help the currently homeless folks get situated. I don't I'm not going to ask for a number right this second but it but but that's what I heard you say is that some of this money should be put aside for first, last insecurity and a certain number of rental months for some for some of the homeless folks who would qualify for it. And that because we understand that some of the people who are being housed in motels right now, some of them don't need a lot of help they just need a boost to get out of the motel and find an apartment. So, it seemed to us as we were saying what this funding should be used for that it wouldn't. It doesn't make any sense to leave those people out and we hadn't seen any other proposals for funding to help those people out of Motel so we in that transition in the short term transition. The short term we certainly don't want to set people up for failure but one, like for instance, if this program funded somebody to get out of Motel and gave them rent to the end of December. They sort of flag that person as a homeless person so that when subsidies came up, they would be the person who is highest on the preference list for getting subsidies and simply because they've been housed in an apartment for the last few months didn't take away their homeless status, because it is somewhat heartbreaking to give people money and then say okay it's December 30, you don't have any more money. We're going to figure out things like that. Do you mind if we go ahead and go to questions for questions are great. All right, so I'm going to go to representative hang go first and try on. Thank you. Confused as to the money piece and I heard you say you know that it would be reevaluated, but how can we come up with a proposal if we're not really sure what you're asking for. We're asking for it to be funded sufficiently to supply back rent for people who need it as of the time that they apply. And when it. If 8,000 according to Boston Federal Reserve if 8,000 people need three months worth of rent and rent is $3,000 so you multiply. I'm not great at doing math in my head. You know that and it comes up to millions of dollars to make sure that people stay housed. I could work out playing out the math, but any, any estimation is just an estimation. We know that it's going to be a big number. We don't know how big am I answering your question. If we knew, prior to coming into this if we knew exactly what all the rents were across the state. If we knew all of that, if we knew we just didn't have the information we don't have the information about of the 18,000 households for instance that are paying more than 50% of their income for rent. How many of those 18,000 households were people whose jobs were at risk and have lost income because of COVID-19. In other words, we don't have that correlation that we can set out for you with provable numbers but we can estimate that at least a third of the 18,000 households who are already paying more than 50% of their income for rent, at least a third of them are going to need some kind of rental assistance because of the shutdown. So I guess you, you don't know, and I don't know how we can put a proposal forward by June 10. If we don't know, and we're not the experts to know. The money piece aside, I've seen a couple of other figures that have been in proposals, one of them 550,000 for legal services to prevent evictions and foreclosures, which would be an increase in staffing through the end of the year. And then how does that differ from 150,000 for the access to justice coalition proposal. So I'm, I'm like trying to pull numbers out of the air. Thank you for asking that. I'm talking about the 42 million that the governor proposed for rental relief. I think that might be 50 million. So that's a number that is separate from the number that Vermont legal aid has requested to be funded through September. I would have us increase staff temporary staff, seven attorneys and some support staff so that we could cover the whole state. I looked at the pending evictions statistics from the judiciary the other day, if there's nearly 600 cases pending that even to begin to address the ones that are on the court stock it that's 100 cases per attorney that we're asking for where we would reach out and contact those people and say here's a fund you can apply for it. Let me help you negotiate with your landlord. Let me help you get this done so that those folks are not going to be evicted in the meantime. Also the plan would be for legal aid attorneys to reach out and have no wrong door for people to contact us and say hey I'm having a hard time applying am I eligible for this. I'm rent even if I get the rent the landlord says he's going to kick me out anyway, and that we do things like negotiate with landlords, make sure that paperwork is is submitted and back people up so that they can make the best use of these back rent funds. So that $550,000 would just be from the coronavirus relief fund for the purpose of making sure that nobody gets evicted, as long as there's rental stabilization funding available. The $150,000 that was already requested by the Access to Justice Foundation was based on pre COVID considerations for and came from the Access to Justice report which identified a lot of unmet needs in this state. It wasn't necessarily specifically for housing, as my understanding is the ask included money for additional housing advocacy, but it also could be for other kinds of advocacy needed by Vermonters. So that they are able to access the justice system and the and get their cases heard whether it be family cases or debt collection cases or housing cases or foreclosure cases. So that was, that was the ask prior to COVID. And now we have a housing emergency and the coronavirus relief fund, and hopefully the be rent stabilization appropriated, and then legal aid could deploy folks fairly quickly to work on making sure that Vermonters could access it and not be evicted. Thank you. I guess I'm just seeing a lot of people are reaching for the same money. And that concerns me because there's only that pot of money. So I'm trying to figure out what what asks are out there for that $50 million. That's a lot of two housing assistance. So that that cleared up a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Trinna. And then Representative Trinna. Yes, thank you. Just clarification question. Now you gave us a figure of 700 individuals that would need first last security. 300 would need that and 400 would need extended rental payments through the end of the year. Now my question is, are those individuals part of the 2000 count that are presently housed in motels. Yeah, I wanted to. That's a preliminary inventory. So where I got those numbers is from our advocates that work with the continue of care and the continue of care sites have surveyed the folks who are in motels who have participated in coordinated entry already. And it is, I could be, I think I understood her to say that there were 300 that just needed first, last and security and another 400 that would need assistance beyond that. But that's really just a preliminary inventory number, but it is more concrete than anything we've had before. Okay. I was just wondering if that was part of the identified homeless that are currently housing motels. An estimate is about as good as we can get it right now, but that's a good picture of what's happened. Thank you. Yeah, and thank you. And I just want to point out that one of the witnesses that we're going to have on Wednesday on Thursday is someone who's been doing the coordinated entry. And the entry is a phrase that I, I, I'm supposed to know, I think, and I think I know what it is. But this is a function that we've heard about throughout the last three months where where coordinated entry into the system for each of these homeless folks has been a focus and so understanding where this 300 or 400 people. And this is what coordinated entry is supposed to be about, but we're going to get a primer on this on Thursday from someone from Capstone is going to make sure that we understand what we're talking about when we talk about coordinated entry, which should help us understand the broader context of the services needed. Representative walls, you're, you are unmuted according. No, there you go. Okay, there you go. And now thank you. A couple of questions I think first of all, thank you for coming in again Jean. And you mentioned back at the beginning your marks preference list. And I'm not really clear on who's on that list or how people are ranked are, for example, people are currently homeless at the top of that list. Could you clarify that please. This would be a better question for Dick Williams, who I is going to be talking later today, but all housing authorities in order to give out their housing choice vouchers and a couple of variations of housing choice vouchers. What happens is a person applies for it their application is process they're approved and they're put on a waiting list. And so where you would be on the waiting list. If you have a preference you get higher on the waiting list, and exactly the details of all the different kinds of preferences and vouchers that folks could line up for. I wonder if the from I said housing authority talked about that. Not just from I said housing authority has wait lists and preferences but all the different housing authorities around the state do so that's what I meant by preference that meeting a voucher because of your homeless status. I think puts you on a higher preference, but I would appreciate it if you would ask Mr Williams. Okay, well thank you and it would be nice to know that and then I've had another question you mentioned need needing more legal aid staff to negotiate with landlords. And I'm not really clear where the negotiations come in. Of course I don't know what the process is going to look like, but it sounded to me is if it would be very clear number. So much rent at so much a month is due. And the landlord and the tenant would agree that this is the number. And so I'm just wondering where what needs to be negotiated. Well, in order for the landlord to receive the money. The landlord would have to agree to drop eviction for a certain period of time. They would have to certify that that was being rented, didn't have any material defects or if it did to repair them within 30 days. And to wave rent in excess of FM ours and wave late fees and things like that. And sometimes those seem like they might appear to some landlords to be obstacles. But to help them understand the limits of those and that everything is all good. I would think most of those. I would think most of those items would be very clear in the application process. When you're applying as a tenant or landlord, I would think whoever's putting together the forms for this. You know, you have to help be outlined, you know, that you must do this, you must do that. So again, I'm not really clear where a lot of negotiating negotiation is, is needed. I'm anticipating a situation where the tenant applies for back rent, and then can't get the landlord to fill out the certification paper and says, I could, I could prevent eviction but the landlord saying no. So, talking to landlord and convincing them to say yes that getting some money is better than not having money. Yeah, so basically when there's a dispute. That's what you're looking at, or a hesitate a hesitancy to agree. Nice way of writing it. Thank you. All right, next up I have representative Kalaki and then Gonzalez. Good afternoon, Jean. Nice to see you. When I, when we were talking to Josh Hannaford last week. I said so in your proposal that can include an organization like legal aid to help with some of the intricacies and he said absolutely that would be built into the administrative costs. So in your proposal which seems very compelling to me, because it's a partnership with Angela's organization. Could it be that the money is housed at BSHA as you propose, and then Vermont legal aid is part of the administrative overhead to do this work that's in this proposal, and could all that live within the RFP for the $42 million in the administration. I'm not sure that Vermont legal aid ought to be a subcontractor of Vermont State Housing Authority. I thought that's what your proposal recommended on page three or four, you recommend that one entity be charged with administering the funds. And you make a different day. So I misunderstand. The entity, rather than a lot of entities around the state one statewide entity administering rent stabilization fund legal services. We've talked a lot committee has talked a lot about the social services that clients are going to need. And this would be legal services that clients are going to need tenants are going to need. And so it's not actually, we weren't thinking of it as part of the rent stabilization fund we were thinking about it, as the services that would help rent stabilization fund be given to people who need it. It would not be okay, I think for Vermont legal aid to be a subcontractor of my state housing authority, often because we have passed on behalf of tenants and clients. What would as with Vermont State Housing Authority is the decision maker in other words we've been adverse to them. Right, right. Okay. And the past before. All right, thank you. Representative Gonzalez. Just so that we're all clear if you can talk about the fair market value on further. Just explain that that metric since particularly in the urban areas we've got some very high rents. Right so fair market rent is essentially how it establishes it by surveying. I don't know how how it establishes they establish fair market rent and so when a person, the most familiar use of it is if a person is getting a housing choice voucher. They need to go out and find an apartment that is fair market rent or below. In other words, it's the highest standard that a voucher will pay. Fair market rents are different all across the state. In other words, in Chittenden County, they're quite a bit higher. The state average fair market rent I believe Josh Hanford said is about $984 but in Chittenden County, fair market rent is several hundred dollars higher than that for an apartment. So it allows the people who live in that county to if they get a voucher to be able to afford to live in the county because rents are higher there. Am I, it's a, it's a standard there's a graph. I could find the document and send it to you so you can see what they are across across the state. Yeah, that would be, that would be wonderful if you can include that that graph we've seen it in the past but have it in a little while and one of the things for me the last time I looked at that graph, it was out of sync with what the was in Chittenden County in Winooski and the rest of Chittenden County and so then I really appreciate the way that that your proposal is framing the needs of the landlord so that it really it seems like a really good partnership between landlord needs and tenant needs and meeting the need that folks experiencing homelessness or on the edge of experiencing homelessness and this issue of fair market rent I'm concerned about because the last time that I looked at the fair market rent it was out of sync with what the actual rents are in Chittenden County and so if that is a requirement that somebody is living in, or that a landlord is asking for fair market rents in order for a tenant to get the access to these funds then it will exclude people in Chittenden County, unless HUD has really redone their their numbers in a very recent time so that's that's just a concern that's popped up for me. I appreciate your question it gives me an opportunity to say when we were talking and coming up with this proposal rather than using the straight HUD calculated fair market rent. We wanted to use the Vermont State Housing Authority payment standards, Vermont State Housing Authority knows the variation in rents across the state and that rents in Chittenden County are higher so in some cases they the payment standard that they use is higher in Chittenden County than just regular HUD fair market rent in order to help their recipients be able to find apartments and the idea would be instead of to cap any of the grants for back rent at three months of the contract rent so for example in Chittenden County one bedroom apartment might go for $1700 a month, but fair market rent for a one bedroom apartment and I'm not going to say the right number here but let's say it's about $1300 a month. Rather than cap that at three months rent. Say the landlord can get fair market rent can get the lower number, but may be able to get it for more months than than just three months at 1700. That's, that was the our thought that if there was to be a limitation it should be fair market rent. That's helpful. Thank you. Oops. Representative Zock. Yeah, I don't have a question it was just a quick comment. Outside of committee I've heard legislators referring to economic recovery proposal, as if the numbers are fixed, and then I'm concerned because twice, at least twice in the course of this discussion people have cited the $50 million figure, as if that's a non negotiable unchangeable figure. And I just want to remind folks that it's not a fixed number that that number can be changed, and that we should not necessarily accept it as the frame by which we have our discussion. Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's flexibility in all the numbers that are here that the administration's proposal is a framework that they proposed. Thank you. Okay, I do want to be conscious of the time it's already 1222. And I want to move on to Angela Zuckowski, and then we still have Richard Williams to hear from before one o'clock. We were going to try to hear from David a little bit but we have him on the schedule for Thursday as well so Angela, please join us. Thank you for waiting. Not a problem. Thank you to our Stevens and the rest of the members of the committee. For the record, my name is Angela Zuckowski. I'm the director of the Vermont landlords Association. And we've been working with Montlegal aid through this process not only on S 333 but now also on this recovery package. We've put forward what I think is a pretty comprehensive look at a program or request for program. And what we've tried to do is balance balance the needs that we're all sort of using our best guesses as what is what the need is out there balancing that with the goal of keeping people housed trying to put forth a system or a process that is as simple as possible for people to access. And that goes with one of the recommendations with having this program housed with one agency and within one entity where you know various organizations like mine like legal aid like various capstone can know to go like this is where we go to access these funds. I think our thoughts were we have these five groups that we've identified. And the goal wasn't to allocate certain amounts of money to each of those groups but to identify those were groups that participate and apply in for funds with the rent issue for the Vermont state housing payment standards again we're trying to find that balance understanding that rents aren't the same around the state in some areas they are much higher than others and to try to provide help to as many households as possible without any one sort of area or group having some sort of windfall windfall here. The other thing is that is looking for a program that can be very quickly enacted and get up off the ground. That's part of the reason for recommending Vermont State Housing Authority as the potential provider here. They have the infrastructure. They have the systems in place. They're used to doing direct deposit payments they're used to dealing with tenants they're used to dealing with landlords. They have the ability for a lot of administrative functions such as sending 1099s at the end of the year for monies that have been paid out or providing tracking for the legislature of how these funds are being used. So we would ask or my organization would ask for the for the funding of the $42 million for this program. And as we've built into our request. There will be opportunities for reporting back. Are we using is this program using more money is it using less money than we anticipated and some of it can be reallocated somewhere else. So we've provided these discrete points in which the program can be looked at again as we collect more data and understand better what the need is. And the need, regardless of what the need is we're talking about the need over as the cash as the money as the CRF stands now we're talking about a problem that exists between now and December 30. I mean that's really, that's really kind of the. What I want to hear from from you is like if we can keep it to one agency. For these next seven months that that would facilitate this whole process in your opinion the way that you guys have worked together. Correct. Correct. I mean right now we have we know there's 600 evictions that could access and utilize this money. We know there's another 200 to 300 households. There's a population that could use this money to get into more permanent housing. And we also know that the federal supplement on the unemployment is going to expire at the end of July. So come August 1, and perhaps September 1, we are going to see a new batch of need of folks who maybe previously haven't had issues with rent. So the 600 number is that you say you know that there's 600 evictions that are in process that are currently stayed now under S 333 is that is that is that an accurate statement that that sounds accurate. I mean Jean indicated she had looked at the judiciary and had received that number from the judiciary. I don't have a reason to think that it's not accurate. Sure, but that's just a good piece of information for us to know. So, again, Angela, I so totally appreciate you working together on this issue and really making this very difficult conversation a lot easier by working in tandem and the same goes to Vermont legal aid and to view this problem as a problem that we need to address together, or as a unit because it's too easy to just put landlords and tenants in separate camps and they often are and some and they often need to be but this has been to witness again that the working together on this is really I can't really tell you how, how good it feels, no matter the problems we're going to foresee or that we don't foresee yet or that we're going to experience just to get to this point together I appreciate it I just really want to make sure that that you know that that it is appreciated and quite a change from what we experienced 1012 years ago or just what people think that happens between landlords and tenants and quickly does happen at times but this is to have to have you working together with with the other VLA on this is really important. Thank you. I, I have said for a number of years that the interests of landlords and tenants are not opposed, nor should they be opposed. This is a symbiotic relationship between these two parties. And the more we can promote communication and coordination and cooperation, I think the better off the entire community will be. Because our relationship break down. Yes. Do myself and legal aid agree on everything. No. But there is a need here for us to be cooperative and work together, given all of the circumstances and the situation. Thank you. Any further questions for Angela right now. I'm sure we'll see you again soon. Please, please feel free to hang out we have Richard Williams on deck now and and I guess just to address some of the conversation I want to make clear that, you know, I think I asked Richard to come on not as a, not as a. Well, for his experience and what it is like to issue rental assistance and to deal with these, these problems like I think, given the fact that we've all talked about the fact that there will be an RFP. And while there's a desire to have one organization in that organization may be the State Housing Authority that is not written in stone. But I think that Richard I wanted to bring you on to get your feedback on what you've heard, and also what you've heard over the last couple of weeks in terms of this program and what it's going to take in order to make it work for landlords and tenants. You know, how does this fit within. I mean, I, the one question I had was how does this fit in with any potential voucher program I mean sounds like this is the VLA proposal is not only just a homelessness prevention upstream prevention but also trying to make sure that there's money available. At least through the end of this year. So I just I'll pass the microphone to you and that's a lot to, that's a lot to bounce around but here we are. Thank you. Well thank you Chairman Stevens and committee members. It's always a pleasure to address you folks in certainly. We are in a different world right now and so yes, I just want to give you a little background as to who Vermont State Housing Authority is. I'm the executive director of one State Housing Authority and I have been with the agency for 46 years. So, as far as accountability goes we are a quasi state agency. Our board of commissioners which is seven commissioners are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. We do not receive any state appropriations to run our programs, our programs are all federally funded. However, we do administer some programs for the state of Vermont. We. We do do inspections for the Vermont rental subsidy program. And for the some of the hot, hot units through the agency of human services. There's about a million dollars it's appropriated through department of mental health. We're assisting currently 116 individuals and that what they call healthy subsidy plus care program with another 16 folks searching for housing at this time so we do not administer the Vermont rental subsidy program directly that is something that is done through the agency of human services. Vermont State Housing Authority has a relationship with more than 1697 landlords in the state of Vermont. And we make more than we make. We exceed 50 million dollars a year in what we call housing assistance payments, which is the subsidy amount that we pay directly to the landlord. We make those payments on the first business day of the month. And we have in place systems and processes that allow us to make those payments would short lead times. And we know how sensitive it is for you know folks to access housing so our programs are flexible so if that means mid month the check has to be cut. You know to get some into housing because a landlord maybe in Chittin County is not willing to wait. We have people standing in line wanting that housing were flexible. We can get those payments out. And in our target group obviously are very low income families and individuals that are at 30% or less of income. So I heard a lot of questions today that was proposed and and and I can probably answer some of those. This, this particular program we're talking about, we have an interest. We know that, and that there probably be competition for this money through some type of public process through, you know, an RP process or no profit notice of funding availability. And I'm thinking on, you know, what the rules of the game or I guess is that we would be interested in probably applying for those funds. We, my concern has been all along is that we're a little behind what some other states are doing, and some some other states have already stood up their programs and you know as in Vermont. In the process, I'm not into all the details but my understanding the governor, you know, spent has spent a properly about half of this 1.25 billion dollars and the other half you folks are going to decide on how how that money gets spent here in the state. Other states, Governor has had total control over that so they have stood up their programs and they're already up in place and running. A lot of good examples out there have held not to stand up a program I think because some are so restrictive that I just see it would take a, you know, we wouldn't be would not be able to get the money out quickly. In some states, Arizona one was one that I was looking at. They require some type of photo ID. They require, you know, bank statements prior to coven 19 current bank statements. You know, I think that is is pretty restrictive and I think the programs that legal aid has in the apartment owners association is proposing is is is much more flexible. But it does have a cap as as Jean mentioned is proposal would be to use what we call Vermont State Housing Authority voucher payment standards. And I think to answer some of the questions I had heard that concerns that those rents may not be sufficient enough. They are not at market rate. They are based on 40% of the medium income HUD is established as that is a the level of funding that it does under the housing choice voucher program. But housing authorities have the ability to exceed what we call fair market rents. We have some authority to go above that. So, for example, in Browington was mentioned for a one bedroom apartment in Browington under our standards, we're able to pay 1134 dollars. As compared to say Washington County, which is 911 dollars so you can see the difference there that is recognized between the two areas. We're currently, you know, assisting, you know, over, you know, 4,000 low income households with the housing choice voucher program. Vermont State Housing Authority actually operates the program statewide. There's a difference to local public housing authorities there of which there are eight and those are located in in more of the larger cities or towns here in Vermont. Those are local. They have their own. They're considered municipalities and as a therefore their commissioners are pointed through their local government. They run separate, you know, autonomous programs. We have no oversight over local housing authorities. You've heard some questions about preferences. They establish their own preferences based on what their need of their community is. Another question is, you know, the use of some of the funds for, you know, helping folks in motels transition out of the motels. We're, we're still waiting to actually see a plan to come out agency human services, how they're planning on dealing with it but what is what is starting to happen now which is concerning to me is that we're starting to get almost directly from folks in motels homeless folks in motels, you know, contacting my agency frantically saying we need to be out of the hotel in a week or two. Can you help us out can you help, you know, can you provide us you know housing. That's not how I thought this was going to work. So I'm hoping that those those issues can be maybe changed because I think we really do need some type of navigator to help folks transition out of motels and I don't think that proper way to do that is having them call the agency and applying directly I think. I understand and we talked about the coordinated entry you're going to get some more information about that later this week but you know, my understanding everybody had a name that was homeless, and we knew where they were. And that's probably the first time that's ever happened in the history of the homeless population is that we know where folks are we know who they are. And as many have already said that you know this is the first time that we have temporarily ended homelessness in the state of Vermont and that's something we should be very proud of. And, and my, you know, accolades to the to the to the governor and and to agency of human services for for doing that. And without a lot of pressure. I mean, they stepped up and and we took folks out of congregate facilities and or we took them off the street or, or out of the encampments and provided a roof over their head, which is a great thing for us to do now. Now we have an opportunity to start transitioning those folks back. We do have a preference for homeless are housing choice voucher wait list is closed, but we will be opening it to to start receiving applications from folks in motels. And what's available is what we call turnover vouchers. We turn over anywhere from 35 to 50 vouchers a month in the past. And with a preference, they go to the top of the wait list. Some people say maybe that's not fair to other other folks that are just low income could be working or. But don't don't have a preference those people stay on the wait list longer so we do make choices and the choices to really to help the most needy. Those folks would be be on a wait list and as a voucher comes up. They could be issued the voucher. The thoughts behind the first month last month and security positive that Vermont legal aid and the permanent owners ink has put forward. It could also access people to other housing units that already have subsidy in place that already have project based vouchers. If they had had access to this money this was available to them that would allow them to access these units. But the one thing I think we need to not forget is that you know many of these folks will need services. I've heard testimony that maybe a third of them would need, you know, continuous types of support. Another third might need, you know, support, you know, for 12 to 18 months and maybe others would need short term support, you know, for 12 months or whatever but, you know, a roof over the head obviously if you're homeless is very important but also we want to, I'm very cautious about setting people up for failure. And so I just want to make sure that there is coordinated support support services. You know, you've heard testimony in the past, we keep using the three legged stool. You know rental subsidies obviously very important here. It allows people to get access to the housing units, but the service portion of it, you know, we'll keep them in the housing. That's the last thing we need to do is keep turning people's lives over. And especially for anyone, but especially for households with, with children. That's probably the worst thing that we can do. So this isn't a, you know, the idea behind the, the 42 million dollars is, is that, you know, we know what the homeless population is right now and we want to prevent anybody further, you know, becoming homeless because of, you know, loss of income, or other COVID-19 reasons. And the rent stabilization type program is, although we don't know how many people will be applying quite frankly. So, you know, if it's, you know, Commissioner Hanford suggested maybe 13,000, 13,500. That's, if you use a thousand dollars a month or whatever for three months, you know, that's 40,000, 40 million 500,000 dollars. Gene's 8,000 is 24 million dollars. So that's that's sort of the gambit. But the idea behind, you know, some of our conversations is that, you know, there could be, you know, reporting to the legislature and the administration. And it's some appropriate time on what is being spent. And, you know, adjustments could be made, you know, before 1230, 2040. So. Richard, a question on the vouchers and the project based vouchers versus the others, the individual vouchers. You know, we can we use the Vermont State vouchers as project based? I mean, project based vouchers are stable for, they're stable for obviously the landlords because it's based on, it would be based on the unit itself and not necessarily the individual tenant. And it may lessen some of the workload or the paperwork on behalf of the tenant, but is to have we ever used the Vermont State voucher program for project based and, and are there any other vouchers that you're aware of that are coming from the federal government through any kind of CRF money, either project based or individual because obviously the more that comes from the federal government the less it is for us ongoing. So I answer your first question Vermont rental subsidy program has never been used to my knowledge in a project based subsidy unit. I think the concern over that has been committing funds forward through their appropriations. So the project based vouchers if we can we have the opportunity to make a project based voucher which is unit specific in that the term can be can be anywhere from five years to 20 years. We have provided project based vouchers federal project based vouchers to many of the new low income housing tax credit projects that have been developed around the state either through nonprofits or for profits. That helps that helps that tax credit project attract capital dollars to the project. And, you know, you know basically guarantees that someone that's going to be income eligible will be in that unit, and that's, you know, and that's one of the requirements obviously of the low income housing tax credit program is that people under certain income be housed. And sometimes without that subsidy is difficult in certain areas of Vermont to attract someone that kind of fits in the mold of having just the right amount of income to you know, without any public supports to be able to afford the rent in a tax credit project. As far as the, the only, you know, we have just received, you know, it's just a small number it's 24 units of what they call mainstream housing. And that's for an individual or or a member of the household that is under the age of 62 and has some type of disability so we just received 24 of those and that was based that was a, you know, based upon the current coronavirus relief fund under the cares act that came through. On top of that we have were awarded in in competed for another 50 so we have about 74 units that we want to try to target to the to the homeless population coming out of the motels. As far as the future funding in the cares act, you know, we received funding public housing authorities receive funding, you know, in anticipation that people are losing a losing jobs and loss of revenue. And what that allowed us to do is to adjust the portion of the amount of money that is being subsidized to the landlord so basically, you know, more money to the landlord, because of less income to the tenant, you know, so their rent goes down in the portion to the payment that's being made to the private landlord goes up. You know, your money's built into that. We are, you know, currently working where a congressional folks to all the congressional staff is to there's a there's a shortage of actual funding to support the full number of vouchers that are allocated to my agency, or to other local public housing authorities. For example, it's based on budget. So as appropriations get cut in Washington and as locally fair market rents go up. We're given a certain amount of dollars and we have to manage, you know, the, the, the number of units with that amount of money that we're given. So we may be allocated 4200 units under the housing choice voucher program, but we can only support about 3,700 of those. So there's about 500 units what we call on the shelf that we can't use because we don't have the funding to support that so we're working with the congressional delegation to try to get some language put into either the 2021 appropriation bill or in in a bill that may be working its way through Congress. As you know, the, the House, probably a couple of weeks ago passed a bill called the heroes act. That would fund additional vouchers. It may be temporary, it might be only for two years, whatever, there's significant amount of money in there that could be that would, and what that portion would be coming to Vermont I couldn't tell you what that is but I'm sure there's a formula of someplace and you know it's it's sort of like the coronavirus relief fund, you know, you know, certain states got, you know, the 1.25 billion dollars so there would be some type of allocation but generally what that would mean is more vouchers coming into Vermont, and we could help more people. And, but right now the leadership in the Senate to us Senate is, you know, is, you know, making overtures that that bill is dead on arrival. And they don't intend to take that bill up. They may pass their own bill at some point in time, but they want to see how the first rounds of money are being spent. But we're looking at maybe late July or August at the earliest before that before the Senate could possibly take up a bill. So I don't know if that answered all your questions. Richard, yes, unfortunately, in some ways, representative Kalaki and I just want to be conscious of the time is 1251 on my computer. And I do have a couple of notes just before we go. So go ahead, John. Thank you for coming back. I want to make sure I understand is your agency going to apply to the RFP to the administration for this $42 million if that's the number. Yes, yes, we plan to plan. And will you be applied with the proposal that Jean and Angela brought forward today. We certainly I think we'd probably be looking to see what a CCD puts forth. And, you know, as an RFP or no fun, we would be responding to that to that specific. And in your proposal, you talked about that supportive services are essential. Would you add that into your RFP proposal. I don't think that there's adequate funds probably to do that. I think that we need to hear from agency or human services is what what their plan is to spend their, their, the monies that they will be receiving and how they plan on supporting services to these, these families, but we would definitely be working, you know, and coordinating with these entities as well. But you feel that that would need significant additional dollars. I think we've testified in the past as well as, you know, other service providers, you know, that there's inadequate bunnies currently to to fund the services that are needed for the homeless. And so I think basically what I'm trying to echo here is that we can't forget that we need to make sure that we have adequate services to keep these folks housed and and to make sure there's some type of transition, you know, into permanent housing and, and we don't want to be going through another eviction because the support system's not there. But could you then apply and say you actually need $65 million to do this or whatever the number would be that would be the right number. Well, I have, like I said, I'm not a authority on this representative but my understanding is that you know and I thought that the commissioner Hanford had testified on this too is that I think initially that there was hope that both ACCD and and agency human services were going to come out with their housing proposals. Roughly around the same time. Right. So, I, you know, they, ACCD put out this portion of that. We're still waiting to see what is going to come out of human services. Okay, thank you. Thanks for that. Sure. I'm not sure I answered your question. No, you did. Absolutely. Thank you. It stays like today that I miss being in person. A little bit more time. You get to see my long beard. I have hesitating, making any mention of your long beard. I want to take a minute. I got a request from Wendy to make a response on she had an answer different answer for Tommy. For representative walls on on the role that VLA would be playing legal aid would be playing. Wendy, I can you and you yourself. There you go. Hi, Wendy Morgan from Vermont legal aid. Thank you. I, I just want to say first of all, thank you for taking this up. And, and hearing that June 10th at noon is a hard deadline. I makes my heart beat a little faster and I'm sure it does for you too. And I, and I think the, the comments about it. First of all, that it has to be flexible and that you, you all are going to have to look at what you think is the right amount of money to do any of the things that you want to have done. I mean, obviously there's a lot of different requests for housing related money to come in, including actual physical housing, like Jonathan was talking about and the registry that you've heard about and legal aid is another and whether or not it's specifically in the administration chunk of what the administration put forward with the 42 million or not. I think that Jean is right that our request would be a separate request but I wanted to explain a little bit more not that it's different but a little bit more about how, why that money might be useful because we would totally support having as many cases get resolved before going to court as possible. And part of our proposal for 550,000 was to cover pre filing cases and to assist people getting into the system. But even if none of that is needed there are already 600 cases approximately right now that needs settlement and we know from the report that legal aid did a year and a half ago that having representation for the tenants as well as the landlord helps move cases forward and to a good resolution either that the person stays and there's a good relationship between the landlord and tenant and that's been rejuvenated let's say, or that the person is going to move and there's going to be a smoother transition so I just, I wanted to point that out. So that was, that was for my comments for today. Thank you very much for your time and thought about all of these housing issues and the Coronavirus fund. Great. Thank you, Wendy. And just wrapping up, I got a text earlier through the meeting from leadership asking us to recent to move our schedule on Friday from 12 to 12 from 12 to two to one to three, just like we did this past week. It's enough on the floor apparently that will take us to one o'clock on on Friday and rather than us sitting here waiting and tapping our fingers and waiting for the floor action to close. I appreciate leadership reaching out and asking us to just go ahead and shift us to one to three on Friday. So that's it for today. So we will on Thursday we will we will meet from 1030 to 1230. We will hear from representative capstone community action on what coordinated entry system really is and how it works and how it's working during this crisis, and what the intent is. I also invited Mary molten in from Washington County mental health we had Mary in recently. And I've asked her to come in to describe the services that people receive, especially in keeping them in their home, whether they were homeless or not but specifically if they're homeless. What's service, what do we talk what are we talking about when we're talking about services and I don't want us to forget that this is an incredibly difficult population to provide services to. And how necessary and we've heard just just now from Richard just as the third leg of the stool of what they mean to keeping people in a stable housing environment. I just wanted us to get a primer on that again, a reminder of what services we're talking about rather than at this point in the year when we tend to go oh it's just services it's just services. It's a reminder of what they'll be representative Trana. Yes, one of the pieces that you had sent out to us did have somewhat of a breakdown as to what services and who would be in need or eligible for them so. And that's that's a central Vermont. That's a central Vermont response and I which I thought was very thoughtful but again it's a central it's a one county response. I think Mary can talk about that she participated in that conversation and I'm sure that the needs are statewide but but you're right that's kind of what that's kind of what inspired me to just invite her into describe what the services are so. It was a good idea it was very wordy for one county but the other thing I only other thing I wanted to mention you closing was that you know, I like Jonathan's plan, I think that the expeditious nature of it was was encouraging, but I am disturbed that, you know, we looked into this week and found that California County, for instance, to look into my area and into the Northeast Kingdom is has a higher or disproportionate number of children, family with children in their homeless population. We have no shelters, and we do see an opportunity to have some mobile homes put into place and hard work for a little bit more cost than he was talking about but five, five units that could house five families. And again, in an expeditious fashion that I would have to put my two cents in. Well, and that may end up being part of what if there's again an agency like VHCB has been talking about having, you know, putting requesting $20 plus million out of the CRF funds for capital purposes. You know, maybe these folks are participating in part of that process just as if it were a housing bond again where they're where the money's available and they're requesting it but again let's, we'll pick up that conversation the next time we speak. Thanks. Thank you everybody. We will see you next time. And, or well will what maybe we'll see you this afternoon right this afternoon so thanks for this work today and we'll be in touch. And Ron I'll catch up with you.