 Good afternoon, the continuation of the House Appropriations Committee meeting. We are gathered on April 27th in the afternoon. We are gathered here now to continue discussion around housing and in particular, our emergency housing program. Folks will recall that when we had possession of the budget, we clearly knew as everybody clearly knew that we have an enormous challenge facing us with regard to the monumental effort that the state has been engaged in in terms of housing folks who do not have homes during the pandemic and the equally monumental challenge of what do we do to properly support Vermonters as we move out of the pandemic. We did not have any brilliant ideas about what to do. And so, as you said in the version of the budget that we had to the agency of human services, would you please convene a work group to put smart people who understand these programs together to come up with a proposal for how we should work together and we are joined by some of those smart people today. And I want to acknowledge the really hard work that folks have done. This really is a challenging program and people care passionately about getting it right. And that is everybody who has been sitting at the table as well as those of us on this committee and others who have been watching your work. I know it's been hard and really, so thank you. So we're joined here by Commissioner Brown, Mr. Pepinjer, who is senior advisor to DCF, Ms. Truckel who is the financial director for DCF and Ms. Truckel who is the staff attorney at Vermont legal aid and I believe all of you folks were part of that, of the effort that I've just tried to describe. We do not have anyone scheduled after you. We know that the Senate is considering inserting language in the budget that has been submitted with this work and so we need to understand what you're proposing and I don't know if we will get to it today, but we will also want to understand language that is likely to be proposed that we're likely to see when the budget comes back from the Senate. So with that as a long-winded introduction, Commissioner Brown, let me turn this over to you. Thank you. As you indicated, you know, this work group convened in accordance with the language that was in the budget passed by the house. That working group was led by Secretary Mike Smith and Deputy Secretary Jenny Samuelson. Also, the staff that you mentioned that are here today from the administration and also Sarah Phillips from the administration played a key role as well. And then Jeffrey, I think it's important to acknowledge all of the other community partners who participated on the work group and other members of the administration. And Jeffrey is just going to kind of walk us through that list just to give the committee a sense of the breadth and geographic, you know, representation we had on that work group. Thank you, Sean. For the record, my name is Jeffrey Pimpinger. I'm the commissioner to the commissioner for the department for children and families. A big thank you to our community partners who joined us in trying to determine a path forward in that GA working group. And those were, there was representation from Vermont legal aid, Chittin County homeless alliance, the Vermont coalition tent homelessness, the community action partnership and the network against domestic and sexual violence. I'm more specifically Tom Donahue from Brock participated along with Paul Dragon from the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, Kara Casey from the network against domestic and sexual violence, Michael Redman from the upper valley Haven, Rita Markley from COTS, Josh Davis from the groundworks collaborative in Brattleboro, and Jessica Radboard from Vermont legal aid who is kind enough to join us here today. And that group really dove in and tackled some really challenging issues. And we just thank them for their participation and collaboration. And that group did meet, I think for a series of eight meetings during the month of April for several hours at a time to meet and try to envision what the emergency housing program would look like to develop this plan for state fiscal year 22. As we walk through this plan, you know, there was a uniform agreement and most areas of the plan where there wasn't, we've noted it. And one of the areas you'll see that in the plan where Jessica has noted and Paul Dragon from CBOO noted some concerns and Jessica can elaborate on their thinking on that. But we do appreciate that for the most part there was unanimous consensus on this plan moving forward except for that one area that will highlight for the committee just so that you'll understand that one area. You know, so when we were approaching this, one of the areas that we looked at, you know, there's the funding piece that we've always historically had a resource limitation for the general assistance program, which over time led to some very restrictive eligibility categories. But also what's been a limiting factor in the past has been the availability of motel rooms. Pre-pandemic during the winter we regularly would run out of motel rooms when we were needing motel rooms between 250 to 300 rooms a night across the state. And many times we would run out with the pandemic and the tourist industry shutting down. We were able to utilize those motels who are no longer serving tourists and travelers to meet the need to where as right now we're almost utilizing 2,000 motel rooms across the state. We know from our work with those motels and continually trying to recruit new motels into the program because we are still running into some capacity issues right now in certain areas of the state and not meeting the full need. Just given we have no more motel capacity where we are now, that motels have told us they're going to start shifting as the economy opens up and start serving the tourists and traveling industry again. And we predict already between 250 and 350 motel rooms in the next couple months. And then we will see, we predict based on our conversations a steady decline into the winter where we're projecting now based on those conversations that will have about 650 motel rooms available on any given night for the emergency housing program which is substantially more than we've had historically but significantly less than what we have available now across the state. And so with those resource constraints informing the conversation, we really look to how do we take into the money, the house set aside in this budget in the motel rooms and how do we envision the program moving forward in 22. And so the first piece that we're proposing would be instituting new eligibility criteria on June 1 for new households coming into the program. And these categories will look somewhat similar to the historical categories. And in some ways they'll be new or expanded and also how the length of time we house people will look different as well. And so I'll walk the committee through these new eligibility criteria that we're proposing for June 1. As we had with the historical catastrophic, we still would be serving households who lost their housing due to natural disaster such as flood or a hurricane or a fire or some other catastrophic event. Also, historically we've served those who have lost their housing fleeing domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, stalking, human traffic or some other dangerous or life-threatening violence against a member that's caused them to flee their permanent housing or housing. That category would remain. Also, we're proposing to continue to serve families with children historically. If you had a family with a child under six, you were eligible for 28 days. And if you had a child over six, you were not eligible. We're proposing an expansion of this category. And that we will serve families with children of any age to age 19 if they're still in secondary school. And also what I would say is all of these categories that we'll mention today will be eligible for 84 days in a 12 month period. Historically, catastrophic were eligible for 84 days. And the vulnerable categories were eligible for 28. We're basically saying these new categories are all eligible for 84 days with a couple of exceptions, which will walk the committee through. And one of those first exceptions are families with kids after their 84 days if they've not been able to secure permanent housing. They will be able to ask for a 30-day extension if they are still engaged with services and case management and housing searches, that they will be able to continue to ask for 30-day extensions if there are family with children. So that is something, a significant shift from the prior program pre-pandemic. So we're expanding the families to all families with kids and also more than 28 days, 84 days with 30-day extensions as long as they're continuing to work towards their permanent housing goals. We recognize that it's harder to house families with children just because they need larger housing or apartments and those are even more scarce than smaller apartments and so it's taking them longer to find permanent housing and this recognizes those permanent housing limitations that they're facing in the market. Also, we're continuing the category of housing households with older vermonters age 60 or above. Historically, those were eligible for 28 days. Here, they will be eligible for 84 days. So that's an expansion in that category as well. Also, we're continuing the category of households with an individual with a disability, whether that is through, demonstrated through the receipt of SSI, SSDI or VA disabilities or some through, through some other means. Again, that historically was a 28-day benefit period for this category, pre-pandemic. We are now saying that will be eligible for up to 84 days and this is a category where we're going to be putting in that they can apply for an extension through the Economic Services Division. If it's a household with a disability who has a significant limitations in their activities of daily living, their ADLs and at that point, we would start working with our partners or hopefully beforehand with our partners at disabilities, aging and independent living and community partners to see if we need to start connecting them to some other type of care or residential care in the state to meet their needs. We do know during the pandemic that many congregate settings, community care homes, lower-level community care homes and other type of programs shut down and our hope is as we open back up that we'll be able to re-engage some of folks for housing back into those living situations, but we're going to need to identify those households and also if we're not able to, we'll have the ability to extend their housing beyond 84 days if they have significant limitations in their ADLs. Also, we will continue to serve households that include a pregnant woman. Historically, that's been limited to someone who's in their third trimester of pregnancy. We are now expanding that category here to any trimester and again, it will be an expansion beyond 28 days to 84 days. That used to be a vulnerable category of people. That's been limited to 28. We're now expanding that to 84 days in this proposal. And then also, we will continue to house households that are facing certain evictions or loss of their housing, rental housing. One would be those who have lost it due to the pursuit of, you know, trying to rectify violations of the rental housing. I think that housing they were renting was not up to code and was creating a health hazard. And if they lose housing as a result of that work, they would be eligible for 84 days. And then also those that were physically barred entry into their living and rental unit through the intentional act of the landlord. And we do see that. And Jessica and her work can explain how that might be possible. And that would be eligible for up to 84 days as well. So those would be the new eligibility categories for new applicants coming into the system. On June 1st. And moving forward. I don't see any hands, but let me just. Take a pause here. That's, this is a natural breaking point. Representative Feltas. So I understand people who are currently being served your current households, they will stay as they are until June 30th. But then. On. And on July 1, those persons can apply. For these new criteria, will they be considered new households then at that point? Yes. At that point, they would. As you indicated, we would continue to house everyone that's in the program now. Up until June 1st. And then through June 30th. And then they would be eligible to reapply. And if they met these new eligibility categories, they would be eligible for the number of days for the category they fit into here, whether it's 84 days or if there are family with kids, they, they could be extended. And so we anticipate based on our analysis of the household, the number of households that we're serving that two thirds of the households that we're housing now will be eligible under these new criteria. And so that's just about 2000, between 1900 and 2000 households. I don't have the exact number right from me, but we do have that as of this morning. So you anticipate that following the application of this criteria. That there are about 2000 1900 to 2000 households who would fall into the new category. That's the total cohort of who we're housing now. We're anticipating about 1300 of those 12 to 1300 of those households will meet the new eligibility criteria and be eligible for 84 more days of housing. Okay. So, we in the past have heard numbers on the order of 25 to 2700 people being housed. So today we are, we're seeing again about 2000 folks. And about 60% of those 2000 would are likely to fit in this new criteria. So, yeah, I'll clarify. Thank you. So when I'm using the term households, I look at the number of rooms we're renting. And so as of this morning, we're renting approximately 1,938 motel rooms. And that that is serving approximately 2000. And just under 2,300 adults and about 1,413 kids. 2300 adults and plus 1,300 kids. 23 just under 2,300 adults and 413 kids. 413 kids. So in fact, we are on the order of serving 2700 people. But in terms of household, it's, it's like 1900. Okay. Thank you. Representative Yacoboni. Yes, thank you. Sean, this is great work. And it's light years ahead in terms of what we, the state used to provide the vast improvement. So what do you expect will happen to the some, the 40% of the people that won't be eligible for the new eligibility. Yes. So this plan includes ongoing funding for support services, housing case management services, but it also includes a sum of money to help folks transition out of motels and reestablish housing situations that look could look very different depending on, you know, the specifics of their own situation. So we're proposing a million dollars of CRF funding that we still have available. That was for our earlier housing plan that we were appropriated about 16 million. And so we would use a million of that for a rapid resolution. So that could help pay for a variety of expenses to help someone transition to another living situation. We're also proposing a three million dollar fund that we're calling essential payments. And that would also be CRF funds as well. And that would be a payment that we would pay to each individual as a transitioned out to help establish a themselves. We know that many of the individuals, particularly single adult households, which will make up able body single adult households, which will be the bulk of the 40% that will be impacted when this transition occurs. We're staying with family and friends. And so if we're able to provide some financial support to help them reestablishing connect and provide some financial support to reengage in those living situations, that's what those funds are helped to do. Also, we know that some of the individuals transitioned in from other systems of care that shut down during the pandemic, like sober houses or other treatment programs. And our goal is as we reopen and health and safety guidelines, allow them to reopen safely that for those that need to reengage with that, we will help them transition back to those services as well. Also, you know, we're housing some individuals that might need to go to a higher level of community care type of settings. You know, we had a lot of folks in community care, you know, informal settings that due to the virus ended up in our program. And we've been working with the Vermont chronic care initiative and their nurses and the department of aging, disabilities, aging and independent living to make sure we're connecting people to the right to the right living situation and services. And that work will continue. Some people will transition back to shelters. We believe 150 shelter beds will come back online. And the governor's housing proposal, the $249 million housing plan makes some immediate investments in expanding shelter capacity in the state. We believe that would immediately could create very quickly about 150 new beds. Also, there's an anticipation that we would bring 600 new units online with it, you know, within early in the year as well with that. And then more would come online in the outer years. We know from our work during the pandemic with the BHCB funding provided with the CRF funds by the legislature that many programs in the state were able to purchase other settings and quickly open them up as permanent housing like motels and other buildings. And our hope is as that happens as well. And that work is ongoing right now too. And so it could look different. But I want to, you know, be clear and Jessica can weigh in here as well as there will be people that we are not successful housing. And that is the hope that if we provide funding that they might be able to either, you know, pay for their own housing in a motel or in a campground or some other setting. And I will point out that this plan contemplates a lot of things. And I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Again, having an adverse weather policy similar to years past when the weather conditions meet criteria, the rules are relaxed and anyone who's homeless during the winter, during cold weather has a safe place to go as well. And we anticipate running that this year as well. That's a part of this plan. Thank you. I think that's a good point. So the commissioner is saying that if we provide funding for people living in a motel, the commissioner raised his hands, like I'm guessing he's clear. He has additional comments. Repping. Thank you. Madam chair. If I could just add on to what the commissioner was saying, I think another way to. Another way to look at this is also that. Motels are not the destination. And that's emergency housing, right? The purpose of that is to ensure short-term housing for vulnerable populations, experiencing homelessness and housing security. So as we're housing folks, we should be working to get them to a different positive exit when and wherever possible. But that may be a permanent housing situation. It may be being able to resolve back to family or friends who may be a home share or a room share. And then especially as we see the number of motel rooms decrease over time and our in that capacity is limited, we need to be focused on getting people into other settings as safely and stably as possible. Representative Harrison. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner, thank you again for meeting with the Rutland delegation this morning. Going through some of the criteria changes a second time, I'm actually starting to get it a little bit. So sometimes as my committee mates will attest it, my brain works a little slow sometimes, but I'm looking at a couple of things. You mentioned you expect when all of a sudden done this summer that about a third of those that are currently on the program won't meet the eligibility. Two of the higher profile motels in Rutland, you gave us some numbers. I thought it was a much more dramatic reduction for those two motels, but maybe there were some other factors at play. You are correct. And that was just analyzing those two hotels and just the way sometimes we house families and individuals could impact that, but you are correct when I gave you numbers this morning, it was analyzing these criteria to who we're housing in those. And there it was a greater number, but if we looked at some of the other hotels, which we'll do as we discussed, it could be less because that might be where we're housing more families with kids who would still be, because we have very few families with kids in some of the motels we discussed this morning. And so that could impact the numbers the other way for some of the other motels in your community. Okay. Yeah. I guess I leaped to a conclusion that maybe that were typical and I guess they're not. One of our Rutland colleagues had asked about out of state guess you didn't think it was a big part of those in the motel program. But you were prohibited from court rulings to discriminate one way or another if someone came in from out of state. My question is more, and I appreciate the hard work that I'm sure went into coming up with this plan with all the interested stakeholders. I'm sure it wasn't an easy conversation because everybody's coming at it from a little different vantage point. But I'm curious as to how this program going forward compares with our neighboring states. Is it less generous than what you might find in other Northern New England, New York states or is it more generous? Yeah, I just didn't know if there's any standards out there that most states strive to. I would certainly look to others from our team presenting today to weigh in here as well. But I know like New Hampshire does not have a program similar to what Vermont runs here. And other states I think use more of a shelter based system as well but I would defer to my colleagues here as well to see if they have more information. But I know we're one of few states in the nation that runs a program of this type that uses motels primarily as a source. I know California Institute did something similar during the pandemic and some other states did too but that wasn't something I think they used as a model pre-pandemic as Vermont has and Vermont will continue to do in 22. Jeffrey or Jessica, I know Jessica you have some experience from some of your other work in this area as well. Yeah, so in Massachusetts there's a right to shelter for families with children. I know in New York City I used to work in a homeless shelter there and there's a right to shelter for everyone in New York City. I think, don't quote me on this, for families statewide in New York, I'm not sure in that. In DC there's also a right to shelter for families and for everyone, once the temperature goes below I think 32 degrees. And just last week there was a decision in a court case in Los Angeles County that seems to give everyone a right to shelter within six months, 12 months. It's 110 pages long and I confess I haven't read the whole thing yet. And I may be missing a few areas but those are the big ones that I know it's framed as an entitlement program as a right. Thank you. Commissioner, we're gonna have a hard time getting through this but I have a question too. You, this new policy goes into effect June 1st. Are you assuming that the state of emergency, what is this proposal's relationship to the state of emergency? And if we're still under a state of emergency, what is the consequence to this proposal, if any? So this proposal does somewhat track the framework the governor laid out several weeks ago in terms of the reopening. And I know today that was discussed at the press conference that we've met the criteria for the next phase and with the anticipation that at the end of June that there would be a significant lifting of the state of emergency in some way, shape or form. And so this really tracks with that with us going to new eligibility criteria on June 1st and then at the end of June for everyone else in terms of applying. Obviously, our commitment here when we were working with the work group is that this is the plan for 22 and that as we've adjusted during the pandemic and implemented and promulgated some new emergency rules to address situations on the ground that this would be our set plan for all of 22 with the exception that we recognize that the pandemic is not going away and if we need to respond to change circumstances in terms of the pandemic that we would retain the flexibility to respond in emergency to increase eligibility or services but we wouldn't constrict it any further in 22 that this would be the program we would run unless we have to respond to a further public health emergency in the pandemic. So this is assuming that we're going to see the continual reopening of Vermont but if we had to go back into a lockdown where congregate housing is once again problematic then we rethink where we are. Correct, correct. Okay, well, okay. And done a very nice job of outlining who is covered. Could you paint a picture of who is not covered by these new standards? I kind of alluded to it in an earlier answer where able-bodied single adult adults are not will not be most likely eligible moving forward under these proposals unless they meet some of the eviction criteria. Okay. And of that number, so and evidently about 30 to 40% of the current population you are housing falls into that category in my- Probably yes, yes. Okay, great. Thank you. So let Ms. Radford. I just wanted to add something on that another category that's excluded and this is the one where CBOO and legal aid raised some concerns. So starting on June one for new applicants we're going, the proposal includes a return to a rule that says that if a household caused their own loss of housing or voluntarily left housing that they're not able to access the GA program for a period of 90 days. So I always think of the example of a mom who gets evicted for smoking in her non-smoking apartment. And under that rule, she would be denied the GA program benefits. And so she could end up on the street. And that seems like very punitive for that sort of thing, especially for her kids who did absolutely nothing wrong. So I think that you're moving us to the next section of what we were moving through here from commissioner. I think we've interrupted you with our, I interrupted you when you were getting ready to talk about income limit self-pay. Yes, yeah. And I think we do wanna focus on kind of the, we will get to the area that Jessica just touched on as well. So historically there, the income limits in the GA program were more closely aligned with the reach up program limits. And that was around 60% of the FPL. So it was, you needed to be really, really low income to meet the income threshold. We are now aligning, moving forward, the income threshold for this program in line with the LIHEAP and the three squares program at 185% of the FPL. And then also we'll be requiring, reinstituting a requirement that if households have income, just as they would normally, whether they had a rental assistance voucher or order we're paying rent, we are gonna ask that households with income contribute 30% of their income. Historically that was gross. Now we're saying let's move to net. And then we're also going to look at the calculation of what available income they have left after we do the 30%. And if it equals less than two motel room nights a month, we're gonna exclude it as income and let them keep that given that's a pretty small amount of income. It'd be like $160. The average motel room is in, wasn't around $88 that has crept up a little bit recently with hotels raising their rates. I think we're around $97 a night right now on average across the state, but we will be reinstituting so that some households will be asked to contribute to the cost of their housing under this proposal. Chris. Could you, I'm sorry, it would help me understand this maybe if you gave an example. So say we're housing someone who's homeless, who's working and they're earning 175% of the FPL. So they're eligible, they meet one of the categories and they have, and I don't know the exact income limits in my head, but say we do the calculation and they have 30% of their income, net income is $400, we would have asked them to contribute that $400 a month towards the cost of their stay in a motel. And what goes into the calculation of their net income? We would be taking off expenses like we do in some of our other program calculations when we calculate their benefit, we give them credits for certain expenses and others. So there's a calculation that we would do. I can imagine that's complicated. Yes. So could tell me what some of the things are that go into that calculation or maybe you could subsequently provide us. We could provide you that list, but just as an example, we're housing a large number of older Vermonters and Vermonters with a disability and they tend to have higher medical expenses on going medical or out-of-pocket expenses and we allow those type of deductions to come off your income. They might need to pay for certain medical expenses out-of-pocket that they pick up at a pharmacy on a regular basis. And so we allow them credits off their income for that type of expense. They may have a service animal and we allow them to deduct the care and cost of their service animal as well. Many of the folks that we're serving might have a service animal. And so those are the type of expenses that we would deduct off their gross income to get to the net income. Okay. SNAP benefits or well. Those would not count as income. That would not count as income. Okay. It would be interesting to see. Sure. A little sheet of, yeah. Thank you. Representative Jessup. I'm just curious, how does child support figure in? I will have to get back. I'm not an expert. I used to work in the child support program many lifetimes ago, but we'll need to get back to you on that because I don't know that it's a specific answer to that question, Representative Jessup, but we can get that for you. I believe Jessica does. Okay. That was the sort of impetus between me, pushing for net income because I've had some cases where child support was a big issue and it's my understanding that it is deducted. Child support payments, sorry. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Just FYI, we may be, we will be losing Ms. Truckel at 3.30. Thank you for sitting with us. We haven't even gotten to the money pieces of this. And so if people can think of money questions before she has to leave us, or we can always come back to you later or email you our questions, but thank you for being here, Ms. Truckel. Rep Jessup. Yeah, I could just pop out a few questions that relate to money and if we get to them, we get to them and if not, because it may just help other people think too. So I'm looking at the chart and I'm thinking that the numbers that are here are based on implementation of the governor's housing proposal too. I'm trying to understand the assumptions about numbers that are moving out or is it not fair to link the two? And then the other question I have is on the box that refers back to the base budget. I was looking over at B325 for the GOVs recommend. And that's a, if I add together some of the numbers that would have been backed out and I know you've helped me with this a number of times, it's roughly 6.2 million. So is that a fair number to put in that box? And it is, I just have to say that is really quite a difference, isn't it? Compared to this chart we're looking at here. Yes, and I would let Sarah jump in here but you are correct that while they're not, we're not relying on funding of the governor's proposal specifically in this plan, but they are connected that we are relying on that plan to build out some additional shelter capacity and some new units, but that's not accounted for in these numbers here in the chart. But I could have Sarah walk you through that I think as you identified, we are proposing the emergency housing budget that's normally GF being moved over to OEO to continue to fund some of the programs that are funded and supported by the Housing Opportunity Program. If not, we will run into a supplanting issue and I would let Sarah Truckel elaborate on that a little bit. That's correct. So representative Jessup, the pieces we backed out of would need to go back to the GOV REC where the 4 million moves to OEO and the 1.6 moves to OEO and those components as proposed in the FY22 budget. And that ensures that we don't have a general fund budget within the emergency housing program so that that way we are using the federal funds, the ERAP funds to fund this program next year and we're gonna use our base budget to fund the expanded community based shelter and temporary impermanent shelter capacity within the state. Okay. So the reason I'm also thinking about this, you know, let's say that the shelter capacity, we have an expectation that that will be 150 beds if I'm not mistaken. And let's say that comes in at some other number between then we would have to account for that in this chart, right? Because these numbers are based on those assumptions in terms of our split, right? Because we have a declining number of hotel rooms. And again, I fully appreciate all the pressures and I commend, I'm just, since I'm watching the clock I just wanted to get in the money issues. So let's say, you know, the shelters come in at 100 rather than 150. Let's say the planned housing units of 600 come in at 400. What are the implications then for these costs? And would that be, I know it's really hard to predict but would that be something we'd be revisiting at budget adjustment? So we built the caseload projections for the ERAP program based on kind of two components. One was the current caseload and who we anticipate being eligible under the new eligibility programs, as well as the data that we have around adverse weather conditions and the number of nights that households typically are in during adverse weather conditions. And then we also crossed it against an anticipated motel capacity. So while we always have adjusted this budget and budget adjustment based on caseload, there is the issue this year of motel capacity and the 650 motel rooms that we are anticipating going into the, I guess winter season with is Commissioner Brown can elaborate but double the current capacity that we've historically operated under. So I think what you'll see from this budget is that even in the event of those circumstances we're still gonna be up against that capacity of just how many rooms are available. And we really factor that into our analysis as well. I'm not trying to belive it that but so I totally get the point. We can't manufacture hotel rooms but those cost pressures, anyway, I'll leave it at that. Anyway, I'll leave it at that. Yeah, thank you. If I may add on to what Sarah Druckle was saying, I think as I hear your question, Representative Jesser, it has to do with the governor's housing proposal and those funds and where and how they might align with what we have in front of us in terms of the GA work group, right? There were two work groups that came out of the legislation that you worked on. One was on GA and one was on housing. And I think it's important to keep in mind that even though the projections as Sarah explained to them are based on our own caseload and our understanding of eligibility and going forward based on the conversations we've had with the work group, et cetera. I think it's really critical for folks to understand that if we do not have places to put people, to transition people into permanent housing or expanded shelter capacity, that's gonna be a problem, right? That doesn't necessarily have to do with the eligibility projections because we're still gonna have 84 days, right? We're changing the criteria back to a time limited and narrower scope of who might be eligible for emergency housing. Throughout the pandemic, we have worked very closely with our colleagues over at ACCD and our community partners in both housing and hand services to try and come up with a coordinated approach here. And I think that that's part of the very real landscape that we're finding ourselves in in this part. Just adding on to that. The community pride is when we got together, we sort of built a map for what new housing do we think is gonna be at the end of the road for people because as much as people appreciate having their GA hotel room, they really wanna get into an apartment. And so when we were building that, we were looking at how many people do we think are gonna be left with nothing? We were sort of banking on getting those extra 150 to 200 motel rooms. And I did see that on the Senate side, it looks like $12 million was approved to build that new shelter space. We were also banking on getting those 600 new units which as Jeffrey knows because I sent him a rather panicked email this morning quite fine in the Senate appropriations language. It looks like the $90 million specifically for permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness wasn't in there. And someone please correct me if I was wrong on that. And so when we're looking at how many people are gonna be left with literally nothing because there are gonna be people who end up just getting a cash payment so that they can buy a tent and a sleeping bag. If we add 600 to the number that we were already anticipating this is a really hard thing to take. Yeah. I think this is part of what we're trying to get our minds around. We haven't had the opportunity that you all have had for the past. Not sure it's an opportunity or the challenge that you guys have had. So thank you. Commissioner, take us back to where we interrupted you. And one guess is we're going to ask you all back, particularly as we get down into the money. So sorry Sarah, but there's more time with us. Yeah. We're happy to come back and dive deeper into the finances behind it for sure. The next piece that we focused on was the period of ineligibility. So historically, if someone was asked to leave a motel due to behavior of it could be a very small infraction or a larger infraction, there was a period of ineligibility imposed. During the pandemic, we shortened and modified that period of ineligibility and just understanding it was a public health response but also felt like we needed some mechanism to give in some of the behaviors we were seeing in the motels. And we're kind of building upon that work of how we modified it in the pandemic and further refining it here where we're still saying there'll be a period of ineligibility for the majority of the households. However, we're exempting children from that period of ineligibility. So we don't wanna harm kids. And so families with kids who are being housed won't be serving a period of ineligibility. If they've asked to leave a motel, we will move them to another motel in that community if we're able to. But for all other individuals there'll be a period of ineligibility if it falls into the new categories that we're creating here. So we're breaking it up now into major violations and minor violations. And minor violations, we won't impose a period of ineligibility. That would be if someone's just being loud or disruptive. If they were using illegal substances, smoking in a non-designated room, cigarettes or marijuana, minor theft or unintentional damages to room. One of the issues we're seeing during the pandemic are that we're housing some individuals with some hoarding tendencies. And so in the cleanliness of their room is becoming an issue. We're working with motels to kind of support guests struggling with that. And so for those folks, we're not gonna impose a period of ineligibility, but if they're asked to leave, we will move them. We will then for major violations be imposing a period of ineligibility. So if they're asked to leave for one of these categories, initially they wouldn't be ineligible to be housed for 15 days, then after that period, they could come back into the program if they still were homeless. And then for each subsequent offense, it would be a 30 day period of ineligibility. And those would be violent criminal behavior. If they attempted to some violent criminal behavior, a major theft from the hotel or a guest creating a safety hazard, particularly concerning for us. We've seen some guests disabling smoke detectors in rooms and then in the hotel. And that creates a real fire hazard. And so we've asked like the fire marshal, the state fire marshal to increase inspections just because of our concern here. Also threatening other guests or motels guests on the sale or distribution of legal substances or the intentional destruction of property. And so this is a new way of us moving forward with the period of ineligibility from what it was pre-pandemic to what it was during the pandemic. Now it's being refined and modified even further moving forward under this plan, as I described. As Jessica indicated, one of the areas where there was not unanimous agreement was historically pre-pandemic. If someone caused their own homelessness for left permanent housing voluntarily, they were ineligible to be housed for up to a six month period. During the pandemic, we waived that requirement because it was a public health response. We are now gonna be moving forward with this condition again. But we've agreed almost unanimously except for two members of the committee to lower that to three months. And I think I would let Jessica jump in here. This is where we did not have unanimous agreement where Jessica Radboard and Paul Dragon felt like even a three month period of ineligibility was too long. And I think she's touched on that a little bit but I think she'd like to elaborate a little more. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty much what I said before, right? It's 90 days is a really long time for someone to be left without housing. I'm hoping that on the voluntarily leaving housing we'll find some flexibility from the department because what we see a lot of the times is people are a little bit confused about what their rights are. And so they think because their landlord said, I'm trying to sell the property, you really need to go that they need to go. And they think maybe I can go stay with a family member. I don't know if it doesn't pan out so well. And, but aside from that rate, there are gonna be eviction cases that we just can't win. And I think leaving people with nothing for 90 days especially if they fall in one of those vulnerable categories it's gonna be eligible seems overly punitive. And I fully confess that I have a tender place in my heart for those cases involving kids where the kid didn't do anything wrong. And so leaving them in a car for 90 days because the parent broke a rule in the place where they'd been living seems pretty harsh. Thank you. We under, I'm sure understand that concern. Commissioner, do you wanna keep walking us through this? Sure. So as we indicated on July 1st, the original cohort would need to reapply. But then moving on during the pandemic the state emergency operations command coordinated the mass feeding program where we're delivering meals to all the occupants and hotels that's being funded by FEMA money. That program will wind down at the beginning of July. We recognize that food insecurity will still be an issue for some of the guests in the hotel but with the other avenues opening up and other support systems opening back up that there will be some opportunity for people to get meals in other ways. Also, many hotels do not allow like microwaves or toaster ovens or other heating appliances in the motel rooms. And so we recognize that but we will work with motels to see for those that don't have a centralized area in a common area that has some ability to prepare food we're gonna see if we could get them to install something for the hotels we're still using. But that meal system is planned to wind down in July. Does wind down mean end? Yes, yes. July 1st? In early July, we don't know the exact timing we're recognizing they'll be provided in July. We're not sure if it's the 1st or the timing of that but some of that's tied to FEMA funding and whatnot and the state emergency operations command who's been coordinating much of that. Thank you. And then as we indicated, we do plan to have the adverse weather conditions policy in place in the winter, very similar. We don't expect to make any changes to what it's historically been. And that's historically when we've run into motel capacity particularly during the ski season which we anticipate will happen this year as well. And we anticipate, as we've done in prior years working with community providers to stand up extreme cold weather shelters on those particularly holiday weekends when room like President's Day or Martin Luther King weekend tend to be for some reason very cold and very popular for skiing and we run out of capacity and that's when we've worked with providers to open up these emergency shelters that we pop up just to make sure we can meet the need. I mean, we envision that happening as well. And as we indicated, we do plan on providing financial supports to people as they no longer become eligible in this program and we'll be transitioning out, our $3 million of essential payments. If we provided that to every household that we're housing now, it would equal about a $1,500 payment per household. But it depends on how many will be eligible for that payment. I think this is a piece that the work group is still working on how this will be structured. I know we've all, I think agreed that we wanna provide some sort of financial literacy information to households before they transition out and are receiving these funds just to make sure that they know how to manage a lump sum of money like this and that we can assist them opening a bank account because some do not have bank accounts. And so that we wanna provide some sort of level of financial support to households as they transition out as well in this area. And so those are the details we're still working out. And I would point out that this is just the start of the work group in developing this plan. We will need to promulgate rules to implement this emergency housing plan. And that's the work of the work group moving forward right now. Also, there's some other policy issues the group is working to tackle as well in terms of the motel program and providing supports. One of those areas is enhancing mental health services to people that were housing and motels and how do we continue to expand what we've tried to establish during the pandemic because we're serving a lot of households struggling with mental health issues. And we wanna make sure that we're connecting folks and providing services to folks. And so there's some areas that the work group needs that wants to continue working on. And then also the work group will also work through the summer and meet on what 23 will look like. And we would issue a proposal to the legislature in early November, around November 1st to give members time to review it and digest it in anticipation of next year's legislative session. Okay. This is a very important part of the proposal. I think before I dive in with some of my questions, I say Jessup has hand up, but I think I'd like to get to the end and see the budget. It's hard to sit and listen for a long time. So let's wrap Jessup, take your question and commissioner, if you'll just get us to the end of the document, I think then we'll come back for other questions. No, I can wait, Madam Chair. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I think I would go back to the budget chart included in that and just kind of walk through some other pieces included there. And I know we can come back and delve into that as representative Jessup indicated before, I think in prior pandemic years, we spent about 6 million GF on average on motels a year in addition to the community investments that were made through the office of economic opportunity. This plan anticipates spending just under 30 million on motels, so still about a program five times bigger than it historically has been, but smaller than what has been operating during the pandemic. We're proposing using three sources of federal funding for those costs. First, we would continue to draw down FEMA until we're no longer eligible and we're out of the state of emergency. Also, we're proposing using emergency rental assistance payments from the first e-wrap stimulus package and then also from the second e-wrap stimulus package. I will point out that using the e-wrap funds do come with some limitations in terms of how we use those funds and how we need to provide documentation to support our use of funds this way for the federal government. And as you'll see, and I don't mean to jump around the chart, but those requirements will be extensive. And so we're proposing 17 new limited service positions in DCF to help support this plan moving forward. I would point out that we created 20 temp positions in ESD to administer the eligibility of the GA program during the pandemic because we just simply worked staffed for a program that grew times 10 during the pandemic. And so we used FEMA money to pay for 20 temp positions, but those have our limitations of how many hours they can work in a year. And so we're proposing one to help with hiring and retention to move those from temp positions to limited service positions. And so that's 16 of the positions here. And then also, given the financial reporting requirements of using the e-wrap funds and some of the FEMA funds, one of those positions will be for our business office as well. And so that we're proposing using e-wrap admin of just about two and a quarter million dollars to fund those positions next year to do this work. Just given the substantial requirements, we're also looking to leverage four million of the e-wrap funds for motel based services, case management. And that would be on top of those other funds that we provide through the housing opportunity program. So these would be on top of that. Also, we're looking to continue in the motels where we'll have large numbers providing onsite security as we've done during the pandemic. And we have some leftover CRF money as I indicated before. And we would use that for security. And then we talked about the four million in CRF support payments to transition folks out. The other we're in two on one handles are after hours, emergency housing calls and placements. And they've certainly experienced an uptick in calls. And so to help cover that, we need an appropriation of a quarter million dollars to cover their costs for next year above and beyond their base contract. And we are proposing to use CRF funds that we still have available to do that as well. And so when you outside of the base money that we're moving to OEO from the ESDGA, the GF, we're proposing using just under 41 million dollars to support this housing plan of various federal funding sources. Thank you. Representative Shine. Thanks. And thanks for this presentation, all of you. I appreciate it and all the hard work you've done. I'm curious about the 17 positions and two and a quarter million dollars. I just did divided one by the other and came up with a little over $132,000 each. What am I missing? Is that really what it's gonna cost per person for a year? When you average out their pay grade, so what they receive in compensation and then given their limited service, they come with benefits. And so when you add in the cost of those benefits, they do and then some office space and equipment and other costs, they do approach that price point. Thank you. Commissioner, a concern that I have. So one, again, compliments to the working group, really hard, significant work that you've done. I think you've made tremendous progress over where we were. So kudos and thank you. A concern that I have is both, I guess it's two-fold. So for folks who are continuing to be housed through these programs, I am concerned that they have sufficient services placed around them so that they will be able to successfully move on to the next part of their lives. I am not at all equating not having a home with mental health challenges or substance use disorders or a variety of other issues, but I think it's also fair to say that a portion of the population is unhoused because of those sorts of challenges. I don't see us putting, can you describe what services we are putting around the population that needs them so that they will successfully move on or don't get unhoused because of their behaviors? I think in terms of the unhoused to the behavior, I think that was a lot and Jessica, please jump in here. I think that was in recognizing that we are serving folks struggling with mental health and substance abuse challenges which impact their behavior at times. And many of those fall into that minor category and recognizing not imposing a period of inelidability was recognizing that we don't wanna penalize people who are struggling with those, the substance abuse or mental health issues. Also through the pandemic, we have really worked to engage with our mental health. Morning Fox was also the deputy commissioner from mental health was a part of this working group and we've met with him in the DAs throughout the pandemic trying to expand services to folks who are housing in motels, who are struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues. We'd been successful in some areas of the state of connecting those services to people in the motels. One of the areas of concern for us that we're seeing with many of our providers in many different areas as well are their inability to hire and retain staff right now and that's impacting their ability to deliver services whether it's mental health, substance abuse, case management, housing, navigation, you name it. Our providers are struggling to retain staff and I just got in know if you wanna jump in here as well. Yeah, I mean, I think we haven't in the work group fully had the opportunity to dig into what this $4 million of services is going to get us because we've been so focused on trying to figure out those eligibility rules. I mean, my dream honestly, and I don't know $4 million is gonna get us there would be at the motels where we have 100 plus households that we could have sort of wraparound services, just not necessarily a case manager filling out housing applications, but just someone there to sort of mind the store and make sure everybody gets along and make sure their basic needs are met 24 seven as opposed to just during the day which we do have in some motels, but not all of them. I think a lot of the calls to please happen after hours. One of the tricky things though that Sean identified is some people do have a higher level of needs specifically, not just a sort of case manager on site but more of an MSW level person who's got the specific skills to work with people who are experiencing a not quite mental health crisis because we wanna catch people before they're in crisis but people with some challenging mental health disability related behaviors and with active substance use disorder and folks in recovery. And I know there are some interesting models that are being explored around the state like in Chinden County, there's a partnership. I think it's funded with ADAP dollars with turning point that's happening where there are substance use disorder recovery coaches who are often people with lived experience themselves who are providing services to folks. So there's a lot of different needs that people have. Some folks might just need help filling out some applications and figuring out how to talk to landlords about the BRAP rental assistance program or the other folks have a higher level of needs and it's really tricky to do it all. I might add on if I may that a couple of things. One is that there are certainly communities around the state where there are more services embedded on site in motels and that has proven to be a really helpful and really important piece. There are other communities where we don't have that, where it has been a struggle to get community providers to engage in that same way. And then we have in between. I think I would just echo also what Jessica said about individual situations are individual. I think that it's really important to come at the services conversation with not a one size fits all approach, right? And I appreciate your point, Madam Chair, that there are lots of factors that go into somebody's life situation, which may include trauma or substance use or mental health issues. That it's not, people are not homeless, right? That is those sorts of, the supports and services go toward a lot of underlying things or converging things. And then the final thing I might offer in this context is just respectfully reminding the committee that pre-pandemic we didn't have services in this way connected to the GA Motel Voucher Program. That was a motel voucher for a set duration of grant with the hope and some effort, but largely I hope people would be connected to this. And we've worked really hard with community partners over the years to shift that dynamic. And I think we've done that dramatically more so during the pandemic. And that's part of the thought of what is, what does the GA Motel Voucher Program, what is emergency housing? What is the program of last resort in the state look like going forward, right? This is FY22 as a transition year. We need to be thinking forward about, what are we doing now that sets that up for success? What are we doing intentionally now that is sustainable over the long term? And I think that becomes a part of that conversation, which also ties back into that point earlier regarding ARPA and the housing that we, right now, we talked about three legs of the stool, I'm sure you've heard this many, many times, right? And that's a really, we cannot forget that, right? We cannot lose sight of that at this moment in time. That we need rental assistance, which we have more of now than we've ever had, services, which we've had more of now than we've ever had. And housing stock, well, we need units, right? And I think that when we think about that altogether, that's, it's really important to remember as part of a system. Thank you, Mr. Pepinger. And I appreciate that we are in a vastly improved place over where we were before. And so I'm thinking of what we should aspire to be doing rather than how do we return to where we were in wanting this to be successful. I know you all also have to, as we do, think about how are we gonna pay for this after the money goes away? And that's a huge challenge too. But let's, we will continue to work on sorting that. I really am concerned that we put a sufficient amount of the source of services around people in a way that works for them. And I'm not sure we're there. And I appreciate that you all haven't had the opportunity to dig in on this. But I need to know more and to make sure that we're properly funding what needs to be done. And we have a two to three week period to accomplish that. So I think this is going to be, I'm just looking at our budget horizon. So this is an area I wanna dig in on more. And also think about how to use other partners in this process. So we talked about, and boy, we get it, the limitations of the mental health services or the ability to provide some of that around the state. I think everybody in our room knows about that. We've talked about it a lot. I wonder about using the caps as more of a resource in terms of the guide. And I believe that you are, I think some of them are housing providers and are thinking about issues of financial literacy and those sorts of things. But I'm curious if there's an opportunity to use them as kind of the navigators in this process. But I don't wanna try to design a program here, but I'm just saying, I think we need to do more or flesh this out more. I, we've got a couple of committee member hands up, representative Harrison. Thank you. Commissioner, did I understand you before saying that the Senate put your full proposal or party proposal in the budget that they're advancing? So our understanding based on following the committee conversation, some of the, like the web reports and other information that haven't been posted yet, but our understanding is, is they essentially take in the housing plan and the proposed legislation that we submitted to implement it into their version of the budget that came out, that's coming out of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Okay, and what would happen if that all went away and we couldn't reach agreement and the language was not put in there? What would happen to the budget next year? Well, at a base level, the legislature gave us continuing authority to waive and vary our program in response to the pandemic. So for the short time, we would have the ability to continue to do things differently. However, we wouldn't have much of the funding available outside of the budget to support the spending once the FEMA money this summer goes away. Cause right now we're primarily FEMA is paying all of, you know, now that they're paying a hundred percent, they're covering all of the costs of the motel program right now for the most part, except for services. Okay, thank you. The last part, following up on the chair and what you just said, commissioner, what happens a year from now? Are there other federal funds that will be available or will we have to figure out a way to fund this if the program stays about the same through the general fund? Yeah, I, you know, at this point, you know, the working group has been tasked to meet and to put together a proposal of what the 23 program will look like. So that work still needs to happen. And so that would inform some of those budget conversations but we know the FEMA money is scheduled to go away once the state of emergency is over. The ERAP programs, you know, have a 12 month limit for assistance for a household and that would include the cost of the motels. So whether we're paying it to keep someone a motel or if they find a place and then they get rental assistance, that's limited to 12 months. We're still waiting for treasury guidance on the second ERAP funding to see if it goes beyond the 12 months or if it's just a combined. So that will dictate how long we can use ERAP funds for as well. And so they're certainly depending on the size of the scope of the program and the nature of the program and federal funding, there could be some base pressures here, but we just, it's just too early to indicate what those would look like. Okay, thank you. Representative Harrison, we don't get to go home if there's not a budget. So there will be one, one way or another and I'm counting on us. I am home. You don't get to get out of that chair unless there's a budget. Representative Yakovani. Thank you. And I just want to augment the chair's comments around the supported services that so many of these families need. I don't want to be redundant. I wonder if we know how many of the households with children have open cases with family services or some type of involvement. And if that's been escalating over the last year or if just from the get-go, they've had involvement and it's been sustained. And I mentioned that in part to see whether there's any federal 4E reimbursement opportunities to help augment what might be going on here. Second concern, not a concern, but just a question. I shouldn't make an assumption, but the 17 staff, what I imagined when I heard you talk about the rental assistance program and administering it in such a fashion to make sure there's eligible expenses was more administrative work to assure compliance with the feds to make sure we can use the RAP-1E that way. And less, I'll use the word service coordination, but less direct services that people need. And finally, I'm leading up to the need for richer services I think are more substantial. I've often felt that went, and this is an assumption, so shame on me, but I've often felt that when people manifest behaviors that are unacceptable to us, often that's the result of untreated trauma, substance abuse, mental health, they're driven by some often with medical needs that I'm always hesitant to punish but would rather treat those, I know you would do if you could, probably. So that makes me think when the chair said, community action caps. I thought of, could we, should we redirect some of the 2.25 million to our caps and try to get both done? Try to develop a relationship with the staff and at our community action and the array of services they provide for enduring relationships, and I may be naive, but could we still satisfy your administrative requirements around the rental assistance program? May not cost 132,000 per FTE. We may be able to buy more. And then I do worry, and you mentioned this, Sean, whether our mental health agencies can even staff up for this and don't know how to crack that one. And finally, and this will sound convoluted, but I'm just trying to reach when Jessica mentioned MSWs. I have been thinking about swapping ARPA dollars out with other general funds elsewhere in AHS to create general fund to do some Medicaid match on this, cover medical social workers and a level of services in combination of what's going on at the caps, et cetera. So it's a pretty substantive compliment of support services. Those are just some thoughts, and I know you can't, there's so little time from June one, which I guess my final, Mike, all of that, what would happen if you said, okay, we need more time to set this up? It's not June one, but July one or August one. And you continue to use FEMA in the breach here. Is that a possibility? Are you accelerating the timeframe? That's not a criticism for financial reasons or programmatic reasons or both? I think there's a combination of factors driving the timing of our plan. One is just the capacity of the program and motel rooms and what we're learning and needing to make sure we have a program that aligns with that as well. And then also with some of the reopening of the other services allowing us to move people to other housing situations as well as we come out of the state of emergency. So there's a bunch of different factors playing together in terms of the timing of this plan. And the FEMA funding is there, but then we'll be able to transition to ERAP. But then, if we start using ERAP sooner, depending on the timing, then that could impact the 12 months for households. And so there are a lot of moving pieces here that we would need to step back and analyze if we change from this plan. A lot of work went into this plan and the financing of it and understanding the interplay there. And so we would need to be very thoughtful if we start, you know, plug and play different pieces of it because there's a lot of inner play of the different components of the plan and how they complement and support each other. And so then that would be our concern there. In terms of the community action agencies, we've been able to dip some other funding sources that have come to OEO and other federal funds to provide enhanced funding and for them to for positions. Many of our partners that we work with and some of this 4 million would go to them as well because many of our caps are like, what's really been a model in the state during the pandemic is the work that CBOEO has done up at the Holiday Inn in South Burlington where they are essentially doing what GroundWorks is doing in Brattleboro where they've essentially taken over the hotel and have staff there 24 seven coordinating services for the hundreds of guests, you know, over a hundred guests that are staying there. That's really been a great model for us to look to what's happening in Brattleboro and Burlington. Unfortunately, that's one of the facilities we're losing early, you know, is there they want to take it back and renovate and reopen for business. We were fortunate to be able to master lease it during the pandemic, but that's coming to a close in June and that's unfortunate. Yeah. Thank you, Sean. If I may add on to what Commissioner said, I think that's a really important point that circles back to something that he said very early on this afternoon around the capacity of motels, right? Because regardless of how much money we have available, at some point we are going to run out of that capacity. We could have all the money to place people on the hotel that we want, but if we don't literally have those motel rooms and our money that 650 that we are projecting will be at October is still double what we have historically had in the deep of winter. And those are times when we would run out of motel capacity in various communities around the state and just hope that not one more person needs shelter on a really cold night. So I think that that's another parameter that's outside of the money conversation and outside of the resources conversation. Yeah. Thank you. And I'd like to come back to that before we adjourn here today, but let me rep Fagans had his hand up for a while. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner, I want to kind of put together the two conversations, the one that you had this morning, hard conversations not been asked yet, but the one you had this morning with the Rutland delegation and then the one that you've had here. And so this morning on the Rutland delegation, you were asked by someone about precluding individuals from other states coming here to be able to access this program. And as you said, we cannot do that. That is not constitutionally capable of being done. You told us today that as far as surrounding states, we're the best of all the states in the area as far as housing people that are homeless. So if we continue to have that type of availability for folks that are homeless in the greater Northeast area, once we begin to actually house people in permanent housing and get them out of the hotels, what is to preclude other people from just coming into the state because, hey, go to Vermont and they'll give you a hotel room for 84 days. And we don't solve anything. We actually just make the problem worse. That's my question. So just to put context, and I think I answered it in the Senate and I'll kind of answer it the same way. I would say that 90% of the households that were housing in the program today were in Vermont at the start of the pandemic and 10% came to Vermont during the pandemic. Of that, 10%, I would say half had some connection to Vermont that brought them back, whether it was they'd been away for a long time or they had family or friends, but that's what brought them here. And then just as we've seen with the housing market and people moving into the state who are more affluent and buying up all of the homes, some people came here because of our pandemic response and I would say that would make up the other half of that 10%. So in terms of numbers, it's not a significant number, but we've always had people leaving the state and coming into the state and we see it in all of our benefit programs to be honest with you. The Supreme Court's been very clear and Jessica's the expert in this area and I would defer to her, but everyone has a right to travel, even folks of a lower income. And so just as we have people leaving because of the high cost of living here, some people move in because of the quality of life here, whether you're high income or low income. And so I think that's something Vermont's always seen and will continue to see moving forward in his population. Okay, thank you. The other question that I had is, are we overpaying for hotel rooms based upon what they would go for on the open market? We traditionally have been able to negotiate lower rates because we provide a bulk set of business for them and that they can count on. And so at the start of the pandemic, we were on average $88 a night, but as hotels have started opening, their rates have started to creep up a little bit. I think we're now at around 97. Many of those hotel rooms might have gone in the low 120s, 130 before the pandemic. So I think on average, but I think in some of that seasonal, like in the fall, the rates we pay might spike due to homecoming with the colleges and leaf peeping season. We see a similar thing during the height of the ski season where it's demand sometimes drive the rates and that we get our best deal during the off season. I think during the pandemic, we've been able to enjoy, keep the rates at a relatively stable, but they're starting to fluctuate up a little bit right now. And the reason why I ask is that if you go online today and try to book the quality in in July, which is open right now for booking, it's $85 a night. And I think we're paying them what, 90 right now? Mud season? Yeah, the one thing I would copy on that is that the state of Vermont does not pay damages. And so sometimes they add on a little bit to the room rate. So like if you come as a private, you give them a credit card number. And if you damage the room, they charge your card for state of Vermont does not pay for damages. And so sometimes they increase our rates a little bit. I'm learning things all the time, which is a good thing. So thank you very much. So the other portion of this plan that I think that we should touch upon is the assumption or the attempt to build enough beds to take the pressure off of the hotels. You've been clear, and I think we all totally understand the challenges of having sufficient beds. I certainly remember the conversations in here in the past when we've supported some emergency shelters because of the fact that we've been able to build enough beds to take the pressure off of the hotels. Because there were not sufficient beds. The fear that is there is that this aggressive plan to build more space is not gonna work. I mean, just the likelihood of, I mean, I was so impressed with what we were able, with everything you all have done, but that also includes the number of housing units that were stood up over the past year. And we're talking now about standing up even more in this year. I don't know what to say other than, what are we gonna do if that doesn't work? And that's not a fair question, but it's certainly on my mind. And it's certainly on our mind as well. And I think that's the planning that's still gonna go on on our end and with the work group is contingency planning on how do we continue to meet a growing need with a decreased motel capacity and then also the timing of new units and how many come online. I think we're gonna have to get creative. Like in the winter, it'll be emergencies to pop up shelters. I think we're still in our work trying to explore and be as creative as we can, just as we were in the pandemic. I think it's critical that we continue thinking in that way that even though the pandemic's over, we still need to be thinking in a pandemic mindset of like, how can we meet this challenge? Like just as we did in the pandemic, that it's, while the virus might be abating a bit, we might be in a better spot, we still have these immense social challenges and conditions that we need to address and how do we do that? How can we do that? How can we partner with all of our community agencies that do this work to support them and also as well and bring ideas to the table, whether we're getting all the, procuring all these little tiny houses or something and putting them in. I think those are the things we need to, we're thinking about, how do we meet that need? Yeah. No, I understand that and it's mind boggling it's mind boggling what we have to yet accomplish. And I just, the notion that we're going back to the way it was just, we cannot think that way. And I think if anything, the pandemic has exposed how vulnerable we are to these sorts of challenges, but then throw on the huge distress that the pandemic has created and we're just years away from recovering as a society from this, it seems to me. And yeah, it's not how do we solve it in FY 22 and then we continue on. It's a 10 year problem, I think. Rep Jess up then, Fagan. Yeah, I don't want to repeat what you say. I agree with everything you've just said, Madam Chair. And I think the way that I'm looking at it is trying to get at issues upstream because despite all the wonderful work, despite the federal resources, the clock will keep ticking. And I think in terms of mental health, I think the pandemic has not only shown it in the GA program, look what's going on in the school budgets, looks at what's going on with kids. I mean, you can point to any number of systems across the state. So the focus on some of those supportive systems, which has already been said, is a place that I personally would like to put some energy. And maybe it's things like, what are we doing with renegotiation? And this is an idea that I've heard brothers express with the 1115 waiver. Can there be some creative thinking with those investments, et cetera? Yeah, okay. Thank you, Rep Fagan. Thank you. So commissioner, this morning we had VHCB on and I talked about breaking down barriers between different organizations. And he said that he's got parts of working groups. And I know that part of AHS was working with them and it didn't dawn on me at the time, but certainly it does when we're talking about emergency housing. The ability to work across agency, et cetera. Early in the process, such that if there needs to be a temporary workaround to and I'll use Act 250 as an example in order to get shovels in the ground early, quicker. Someone mentioned this morning, he did. He mentioned the old college of St. Joseph, the provider. Or no, was it C, yes. And in order to get a shovel in the ground in an Act 250 permit process, you're looking at a year. And that puts us a year closer to not being able to use those funds. So just the point that I wanted to make as part of working groups that are doing work to build infrastructure that the state of Vermont sorely needs. It also needs to look at, are there any regulatory burdens that need to be overcome on a temporary basis in order to get this done? Yeah, I think you make a great point, Representative Fagan. And I believe in the governor's proposal of his ARPA allocation for some of the different projects and the transformative investments he wants to make is he touches on that where some of these projects that we don't want to delay and jeopardize the funding that there'd be some sort of exception process for some of the permitting if they're built in certain ways and certain areas of communities that we want to encourage growth. And I think those are the things that we would support just knowing the timing is urgent here for some of these investments. I appreciate that because it's not just running out of time to spend those funds but the longer that you take to spend those funds the longer people are gonna be living in hotels and other situations where we would prefer not to have them. So thank you. So that is an interesting note to end on. I was, this conversation lies clearly in the jurisdiction of appropriations but it also belongs to the Housing and General Affairs Committee, the Human Services Committee and I would suggest also the Health Care Committee. Ref Fagan, if you wanna do permit reform then we also need to talk to the Natural Resources Committee and we may not want to make this too big of a problem. But committee, we will certainly continue to have a conversation but I know that the folks from DCF have testified in a couple of other committees and we need to think about how to draw these conversations together given our collaborative approach to developing the budget. And we're going to be doing that over the next few days figuring out how to have a productive conversation because in fact we do just have two to three weeks to figure out where we're landing for the time being and how to set ourselves up for the future or for the next six months until we're back here. A while ago, Ms. Radboard, you had raised your hand and let me just offer you a chance for a few concluding remarks and I'll turn to others for that too. I just wanted to answer a couple of questions that came up that I thought I might be able to add something in on. So under ARPA in the statute, even though we don't have guidance from Treasury yet, you can actually go up to 18 months. I do get nervous because if someone's going to try to lease up with a private landlord, boy, they want to see at least 12 months of rental assistance given that people are unlikely to increase their income enough to cover their rent on their own. For FEMA, my understanding is that under the Stafford Act, so long as we have our state of emergency and FEMA looking over our shoulder thinks non-congregate shelter is still required, they'll still reimburse at the 100% cost share but we don't actually know when all of that's going to end at this point. So far as family services involvement goes, I've heard Erin Olican who's the head of the Reach Up program say that I think there are 200 Reach Up families that were in the motels out of, I mean, that's like more than 80%. I'm not sure how many of them had FSD involvement. I can tell you that for one of my clients, Wendy Morgan presented information on her story in House General. She's a person with a disability and was receiving services from a chronic care initiative nurse. Her son also has a disability and was having a really, really hard time in their family services involvement. She was in a motel for about five months. Soon as she got into her permanently affordable apartment, mind you, all of it kind of melted away, right? Like she's so much better able to manage her disability and her son is doing way, way better. And so I think some of those service needs, they don't necessarily totally go away, but they really get minimized when people get into a stable place. So creating those stable places is so important. And I think someone else might have covered it. I just wanted to flag, so the services in here are separate from the service dollars that are funded through the Office of Economic Opportunity, which go to a lot of the housing case managers who help people find apartments. It's my understanding that these service dollars are somewhere for the wraparound services in the motels to make sure that the people there, but I could be a little bit wrong on that, but there are other funding streams. There are definitely some gaps though that we need to fill in. Just wanted to add those things. Thank you. And thank you for your work on this. Commissioner, turn it back to you if you wanna have any concluding remarks. Thank you. I would really appreciate the time with the committee today and your questions. Always very thoughtful. And I also, you know, as you indicated there's several weeks to go of the Senate and the House working through their different versions of the budget and this will be one piece of it in conference committee, you know, and we, you know, move forward with this working group and I thought did some really good work and came up with a good proposal. We just wanna make sure as the negotiations get more intense between the House and the Senate and conference committee that we try to honor the work and the commitments we've made between the administration and our partners in that working group as the proposal gets fleshed out by the legislature and to make sure that we're communicating and aligned just given that we work really hard over a series of eight meetings to come to a consensus and it's a proposal that we put together that we all agree on that we make sure that we have the time and the opportunity and I know things get very intense and quick but that we wanted to the best of our ability to honor that work and that working group moving forward as we try to finalize, you know, what 22 looks like, you know, with the legislature and the working group and then the work throughout the summer. Yeah, thank you. That was very nicely done commissioner as somebody who's participating in working groups. It is important to honor the process. I don't think, and we certainly will need to, we will all continue working together on this. It's a group effort and we don't have several weeks and in fact, if we're going to have a gang of people working on this, I think we have more on the order of two plus weeks. So there's not a lot of time. I'm, we're getting to the end. Committee members, I didn't see any other questions from you. Thank you very much for a long intense conversation. We, I'm going to let you go. We're scheduled for an informational meeting at nine o'clock in the morning. Commissioner, before I say goodbye to you, I had a question that I just wanted to ask, but I just, so I think we're done with our hearing this afternoon and committee will meet again at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.