t advance that existing base of risk. There is not no risk. I did not mean to say that, but no additional risk is what you said, and you did quite rightly say that that was low risk overall. You have reached that view and you did express it with some strength, but just to be clear, you have not taken any advice from any external source on this. No, no, okay. You are absolutely right. I am not miscoating by saying that it does not go beyond the current risk at all, not a millimetre or not a fraction. Our assessment is that any current level of risk is not advanced by the provisions in this bill. It is set against an analysis of the ESA 2010 system of accounts. Okay. I am just taking on one final point. I think that you have answered this in part already, but let us assume that you are wrong. Let us assume that, like AWPR, the Scottish Government got it wrong, or it got it differently from the ONS. Let us not call it getting wrong, but a different view that would have consequences, because certainly the Scottish Government in advance of that did not seem to think that it was a risk and did not seem to think that it was going to happen. We have been bitten here before, which is why I think that the committee is taking this so seriously. But if it does happen and if reclassification does occur, have you done any work at all on the financial consequences? You heard what universities had to say today, but has the Scottish Government done any of its own work so far on what the financial consequences could be if you get it wrong? No, because it remains in our assessment a hypothetical event, so no, there has not been any work done on that. In fact, it would be a very complex area. That is why I referred early respectfully to what has been offered through the evidence. We might not agree that there are any costs, but at least we would do the service to the stakeholders of having a look at what they have said and to look at those opportunity costs. As I said, perhaps we would not agree that there is a reality, but we will look through those. But no, no specific tailored work on costs of that sort. As we said before, we have a full understanding of the financial implications of reclassification, as raised in the session earlier, because we have been through the college reclassification. In almost every instance, the financial implications are the same. It is perhaps the size is magnified with universities, so whilst we have not looked at the specific numbers, I would say that we have a clear understanding of what those financial implications would be across the sector because of our experience looking at the college reclassification. I mean, the Government are well versed at doing work like that, but I suppose that in case it sounds as if there is any dismissiveness, that work not being done is all based on the detailed risk assessment, and that is the point, I think, that it hangs on. If we thought there had been a need to, we would have, but the risk assessment suggests otherwise. I have one very final question. As a pure matter of detail, you have written to on the 13th of August, you have not responded yet. It is six pages long the letter, but you have done all the work. You have done a huge amount of analysis here. Just roughly when should University of Scotland expect to reply to that letter? As soon as possible we are working on it now, and I would not expect that it would wait too much longer. On the specific ONS point, I think, I said to an earlier question that the answer to that would be quite short because my memory of the letter is that it is looking for an absolute guarantee that reclassification would not happen. The answer would be compiled out of the points about risk analysis and assessment that I have made today. However, the overall letter, as soon as we possibly can, when we are half-way through more than half-way, I expect to be working through it. However, there is no purposeful delay. We will get that letter to them as soon as we possibly can. Forgive me for pressing it, but are we talking days, weeks or months? Weeks in the most, certainly not months. You have made clear your view that ONS will not give you a categorical opinion about whether the provisions would lead to reclassification or not. I understand that, although I think that Mr Brown has made the point well, it is worth asking him directly for their advice anyway. However, given that the job of ONS will be to make interpretation relation to European provisions on this in terms of the European accounting system, would there be the potential for you to have dialogue at a European level or to approach those responses before running that system about their view on the provisions here and whether that would risk reclassification? In my view, we have all we need at our disposal through the ESA guidance and treasuries guidance on that and the chance to engage with treasuries who have experts whose full-time job it is to advise on those issues. I do not think that there is the need, in practical terms, to invite a European conversation. Theoretically, we could open up a dialogue with any interested party, but I think that we have at our disposal what we need to make it. We have already used it, but we have at our disposal in the written form—in fact, I have it here with me—the indicators of control. I am guessing that you have puzzled that you are not an external advice at all given the fact that you have acknowledged as a risk, even if it is a low risk. The fact that University of Scotland made clear that it has legal advice that says there is a significantly increased risk of reclassification would make it quite clear that external advice would be a sensible thing to proceed with. If University of Scotland wants to share that advice, we would probably consider it. However, in terms of our internal assessment of risk that we felt is adequate, I would wonder what external advice would offer that would be different. Risk assessment is not an exact science. I suppose that external advice might be open to opinion. We might find external advice that has a very negative opinion, but we might say what worth would be external advice that seems to be lacking in objectivity in a pro-opinion. In some ways, we have looked at it in great level of detail in our opinion that risk is not advanced. After the experience of western peripheral route, which Mr Bram referred to, I think that the Scottish Government might be wise to take a belt and brace as an approach to minimise any potential for risk in this area and to look at external advice. The question that I want to pursue now is clearly the understanding from the evidence earlier, the chair of the review himself has said that the intentions of his review can be achieved without entertaining this possibility of a risk of reclassification without proceeding with the provisions that should be put forward in the bar that stands. You have talked about the potential to, if the risk was realised, to go back to legislation and review it at that point. If the bill can be proceeded with, if the intentions review can be progressed without the risk being there at all, why would you make that take that action now, prior to a problem arising, rather than having to address events once legislation is in place and what could be a very difficult and troublesome process? There are quite a few layers in your question, and I will try and answer the whole question. I do not know exactly, because I have not read it yet, what Professor von Prindinski has said in his written submission to the Education and Culture Committee. Having been in his company a recent meeting, I know that he remains very, very supportive of the bill. I think that that is fair to say. Now, he might be making a more technical point and to link that to the point about secondary legislation. I think that if there was any idea that modificating—I am speaking of ministers, obviously, I am not a minister, I am an official—but if there was any modification to secondary legislative powers that would not harm the bill's overall policy intention, then the Scottish Government would be open to that conversation and if it and so doing minimise its risk or the perception of risk, that could be beneficial. On the question of when to do that, I think that the progress of the bill through parliamentary consideration would be the time to think about that, because I am perhaps taking wrongly from your question that you think that it might be left till after the bill was enacted. In the process of the bill's consideration, the Scottish Government would look at the issue of the scope of those secondary powers. I think that if reclassification took place at that point, legislative changes would be considered. I am heartened to hear that what you are saying is that these matters will be considered before in the process of the bill. You are open to that dialogue and that is helpful. It is not in my gift to say what would happen, but given what has been said today, given what has been said in evidence, given the emphasis that is placed on sections that are in secondary powers, section 8 and so on, it is entirely legitimate that everyone has joined up dialogue on that. My final question, convener, is if the worst happens and if this legislation goes through as a process at the moment and does lead to reclassification, I think that Kerry Tewin said that this has been a difficult process for colleges in terms of organising the workarounds for them in terms of the reclassification issue. Would universities be compensated for the undoubted extra burden that should be placed on them by having to deal with the issues that creating those workarounds would actually create? I think that what we have tried to make clear is that there is no expectation that if there was something that triggered a reclassification decision—and the way that it works is that a reclassification decision would be triggered—that reclassification is not immediate. In the case of the colleges in England and Wales, they were given a time period in which to review the control mechanisms and to make changes to keep them outside the boundaries. That is what we were saying. It is a very low risk and, as we have said, it is a risk that we do not believe is changed by this legislation. That is a key point. It is a risk that already exists because of the nature of universities and their interaction with the Scottish Government. If there was to be a reclassification decision triggered by an ONS review that could well be triggered by a review of universities down south, which is the most likely scenario, we would then ask for a period to review the entire structure around universities to potentially make changes that would keep them out with that boundary. A helpful procedural explanation, but I suppose that we would want to reinforce that our view of the risk is that it is very low. Obviously, in having a detailed conversation today, we know that there is an existing base of risk, but it itself is low. Some of the issues about reclassification have been raised in meetings 2012 and 2011. There is no work being taken forward. It is not as if we are dealing with a high-risk base already. Those risks are marginal and low. That is not my assessment of the cuff. It is just the experience of the last four, five or six years. Obviously, in the realm of higher education governance, I have heard the questions that there is a bigger world of reclassification issues, but they are not necessarily all the same, but they should be looked at and referenced to each other. The question that you asked about recompense is a few too many hypotheticals ahead in a sense that we do not think that there is a risk of reclassification spurred by the bill, so that is an issue that I take on board. I have not asked a question on it, but I do not think that that is a likely outcome given where we are today. John Trafford, Mark Ruskell. I am supposed to carry on the present theme. You have just said that there is very low risk fuel at the moment, leaving aside this bill of reclassification. The universities told us earlier on that they thought that we were in the amber area of risk. They said that from low amber, the bill would take us up to high amber or bright amber or something. I suppose that I would have preferred numbers myself, but we will go with the colours. Do you agree with the assessment of that? No, I respect the assessment, but I do not necessarily agree with it. I do agree with the colour that was used first, though, that the impact would obviously be red. That is not an impact that anyone wants to happen, but I think that the risk is excessive. If we must have colours, it is more of a green hue, but I would not be dismissive in others' view on that. We have to take seriously what people feel strongly about it, but they have expressed it today and in evidence. The greater risk, if there is a risk around reclassification and accepting that it is low, the greater risk would be in what is already the position rather than what the bill is doing. If it had to be undone or redone or reorganised, it would not be about the bill, it would be about the existing situation. I think that that is a fair point to make. The bill in itself does not add—I do not want to talk in absolutes about risk, but it does not add any risk or very negligible, but that is to be drawn in using words at all like that. It does not add risk. As for the substance of the risk, I would not want to overamplify that either. I cannot be complacent, but it is not as if it has been great. No one has raised in dialogue the existing risk in recent, not in this debate until now, until this point, in the past four to six weeks. As I said, there was no mention of O&S risk in the dialogue when the consultation was out when Professor von Prindinski's report and the very thorough review was conducted and a lot of those ideas were posited in that report. It is very heightened and has happened very recently. It has been suggested that we might go to some theoretical outside body to get a more definite ruling on reclassification and so on. I am just interested if such an organisation or body or individual exists, be that in Scotland or the UK. Assuming leaving a say to O&S, is there anybody that we could go to? We could go to six lawyers and get six opinions, I would imagine. I would agree with that completely. We have spent a lot of time over the last year or two within the Scottish Government working on reclassification issues. There have been off-the-cuff remarks made that they consider the Scottish Government to be now one of the leading experts on reclassification because of the time that senior finance colleagues have spent around this and ministers themselves. I do not know of any names that one would go to other than the Scottish Government finance and the SFT, who we have spoken to, that would potentially be more experienced in this matter other than the O&S and Eurostat themselves and potentially Treasury. I would agree with that assessment completely. The other suggestion has been that we are right to the O&S. Given that this is a sensitive issue, would writing to the O&S increase the risk of them doing an investigation or even reclassifying? If I think that I might have gone over the speed limit last night and I write to the police and say that I did 31 miles an hour, do you want to check on it? That might not be the best thing to do. I think that that is fair, but it is probably what has informed the work right back on this, because I have answered other questions about the internal versus the external nature of advice. If Governments of anywhere were to ask a body like that every time policy was taken forward, the answer might be along the lines of, I will need to think about it for a good while before I get back to you, and then a determination will not be forthcoming until you show me exactly what you want to do. I do not think that writing to the O&S as part of the development would be—obviously you can break convention—but it was not something that we thought was necessary, particularly based on the risk analysis that was a necessary action to take. Could it be a slight risk that it would damage our case? Yes, yes. It would certainly delay matters, because the way that they look at things is extremely excruciating and detailed. If we had written to them the way that the process is, we would not have received a response one way or the other, or we would have received a very on-stock response that said, we will not consider this until the legislation has gone through and the changes have been enacted, but, as you said, it would have raised a flag. That is helpful, thank you. I just wanted to add two other points to a different subject. Delegated powers has been mentioned, and I happen to be on the Delegated Powers Committee. Is it the fact that that is being raised by the universities? Is that something that maybe the Government would look at increasing the level of parliamentary input, so that maybe where there has been a negative procedure it might become an affirmative procedure, that kind of thing? Certainly yes to that, but I think that more fundamentally it would seem that the content of those secondary powers would be looked at in light of the evidence to both committees as well, and what has been said today, I cannot predict exactly what that would mean. Yes, certainly, if concerns have been raised, we will look thoroughly at the content, the impact, the intent. As I said, I would probably like to restate that the intent was to future-proof the legislation in some way, and certainly not being dismissive of people's views of risk, but good housekeeping. There is no intent to advance ministerial control with those secondary powers, but given that the issues that have been raised, then I am sure that the Government will look at them. I mean, it would certainly be perceived that if there was a negative procedure for some secondary powers, that would give the ministers a slightly more leeway than if it was an affirmative procedure. I think that I am right in saying that most of the, if not all of the, secondary powers which would give ministers the ability to change the legislation are all subject to the affirmative procedure. Thanks. It was said earlier on that it was not the Government's objective to, for example, appoint somebody, an individual to a university governing body. I wonder if you just clarify that. I mean, it wouldn't actually be possible for the Government to appoint somebody. I don't know on a point of law, but it would be completely undesirable. I mean, when the word objective might have suggested that there was some ambiguity, there is no ambiguity, the Government would not and never want to directly put someone on any governing structure in a university, including ministers. And I know that there's been some concerns or views expressed that, but that is not the tension and wouldn't be. So it's putting a process in place? It's just a process. It's the how, not the who, never the who. And it's not giving the Government the power to appoint an individual? No, in no way does the bill do that. In fact, nothing in the bill requires an HEI to ask Government permission for anything. Okay, thank you. Oscar made the point in his letter that there was a slight distinction between the four older universities and the more recent ones, in that part, one of the bill might become part of their constitution. Is that a concern or is that just technicality? I think Oscar go on to develop their argument that, although the constitutions would be altered by certain provisions in the bill, that it would not, in my word not theirs, jeopardise their charitable status, that's their conclusion on that. Okay, thank you. On my final point, I mean, the whole question of does the Government get involved in the process of governing bodies being appointed? Does that happen in other fields? Does Government get involved in the process of people being appointed? I wouldn't speak authoritatively than that, but they may do in public sector bodies, but universities are autonomous bodies, so they would never have any notion of being directly involved in the appointment process of individuals to governance structures. No, but actually putting the process in place, for example, with charities or outside organisations, it's maybe unfair to ask you. You said before that there's a precedence in the sense that the Government can call for proportion of a board to be of a certain nature and private companies even, so I think that there is precedent. We couldn't give you, we're not experts on the subjects, we couldn't give you examples, but there is definitely precedent. That's great. Thanks very much. Okay, thank you Mark. I only had one question, convener, and the deputy convener has asked it. So it wasn't about speeding, but no need, no need. Let's conclude questions from committee members. I've just got one or two e-points I want to raise just before we go, just because we haven't really touched on them and it's specific to the financial memorandum has published. It's in relation to a couple of pieces of evidence that have been received. The first one is from the Scotland Rural College, and basically what they've suggested in terms of the issue of estimated costs and savings in the FM and asking whether they're reasonable and accurate, they've said and I quote, the experience of SRUC in relation to changing articles of association indicates that the assumption in the FM of the timing cost required to amend HIE's governing instruments is not accurate and that significantly understates the resource requirement both to the Scottish Government and to the institutions involved. So how did you come to the assessment that you came of in terms of the costs of that? I think that Laura may have a perspective on this, but if I understand the question correctly, I'm not sure that the financial memorandum actually specifies an analysis of the costs of updating governing instruments in light of the bill's provisions, because updating governance as part of the compliance with the code of conduct and many other decisions that HIEs want to make is part of mainstream business. Any provisions that the bill would bring forward, should it be enacted, would be staggered in their implementation. All institutions are different. There are a lot of different numbers of staff, legal advisers, so it's really difficult to grasp on to any standard estimation of costs. If this is the item that they're homing in on, forgive me if I've misunderstood the question, it would be a long-term activity. There might be a spike if a new bill becomes an act, but we take what the SRUC says in their costs, but we found it very challenging to identify any standard costs in this area and to package them up, given the staggered nature of the time it would take to change ordinances and governing instruments after the bill became an act. However, if they're homing in on a slightly different issue, I apologise for giving the wrong answer. No, I think that your answer is fine. From another organisation, the Queen Margaret University, we have said that we would ask the committee to note that the process of securing privy counsel on the Scottish Government approval for a relatively straightforward amendment to the university's order of counsel to bring it into line with the Scottish Court is taking some 16 months. The process commenced in June 2014, and the amendment is due to commence in late September 2015. In terms of the changes that the bill would bring in, all sorts of legal advice would have to be sought administrative time, etc. What they're saying is that this has not been accounted for either in terms of the financial memorandum. No, and I think that I would point to the last answer that I made about the difficulty in isolating that for different organisations with different needs and adjustments to be made to get standard costs. What I would say is that in the consultation reform to the privy counsel process was an item. Ministers decided not to take that forward in the bill for many reasons, but I would probably cite deep complexity in the historical arrangements about how we've arrived at the current system, which has got some features that are regrettable about time taken and the detailed legal matters in the back and forth between legal advisers. As part of the announcement about the bill, ministers said that the privy counsel and a modernisation conversation about that would commence as a separate piece of work before any legislation was thought of in the future. Although it didn't directly relate to the issue of cost and time, there will be other activity to look at improving that to try and truncate those processes to save our institution's money in the long run. Okay, thanks very much. That's very helpful. Well, I'd like to thank you very much for your response to your questions. Is there any points that you would like to make further before we wind up? No? Nope? Okay, well thank you very much for that. This being the end of our public sessions, I'll just have a one minute, two minute recess to enable the official report of witnesses and members of the public to leave.


All right welcome everyone. This is the DIY. Thank you. I had this written down on my notes and then forgot them in my office this afternoon. Hasn't been busy at all. So this is an event that is hosted by the Rochester Area Housing Committee which is supported by the White River Valley Consortium which is supported by the White River Valley Working Communities Challenge Grant. The focus is really about how do we support our communities to create additional housing that is going to fit the needs that we're seeing. I work with Capstone Community Action. My name is Linda Anderson. I'm the Director for Family and Community Support Services there. And one of our major programs is Housing Counseling for folks that are homeless or about to be. A lot of folks think that Vermont doesn't have an issue of homelessness but they would be wrong. In 2022 it's something like 18.5% of our population was homeless. We have the per capita. We have the one of the lowest rental vacancies in the market in the country. So there really aren't many places to rent. Those that do exist are way above and beyond what people can pay. So we're really struggling and our employers are struggling. Our businesses are struggling and that's having impact on a lot of things and a lot of systems that we all rely on like our health care. We heard from Gifford at the listening tour just a few weeks ago people were talking about we want to see these services. Unfortunately housing is impacting our ability to bring those services in. A year and a half ago Dr. White was talking about the fact that there were over 300 nursing care level beds in the state that weren't open because there wasn't the staffing. So across the board and across our community housing has been having a huge impact. There is a National Low Income Housing Coalition. If anybody is interested in going to the website I do have some information here that you're welcome to take and look at. But just to give you an idea of the impact that we're seeing the cost of housing the state housing wage right now is 25.54 per hour. How many of our folks are making 25.54 an hour? I don't know too many people in our community are making that. We it's been estimated we need about 30,000 more units in the next 10 years or so to meet the need for housing in the state. So that is fair market rent is decided by HUD housing and urban development. They state that the fair market rent for a two bedroom unit is $1,328 a month and that's sort of the state average. So with housing and utility utilities for it to be 30% of your income which is what sort of the rule of thumb is a healthy housing market and a healthy housing budget you would pay no more than 30% of your rent for your housing expenses. In order to achieve that you'd have to make 25.54 an hour to accomplish that for housing to be 30% of your budget for a two bedroom apartment. And there's some more information here about that. It also breaks down by Addison and Windsor County so for example Addison it's $22.92 and in Windsor it's $21.71. So it's boosted by Chittenden County which is over $30 an hour. So it's definitely a struggle to make it especially with a minimum wage at 13 sorry somewhere here it says I think we're at 13, 18 an hour for minimum wage. They estimate that you would have to work 78 hours a week at minimum wage to be able to afford that two bedroom apartment. So big puzzle how do we solve homelessness we need to create housing. So that's what we're hoping to talk about today is one of the ways that we as a community can get creative in addressing this issue because it is impacting all of us throughout our communities. So how do we encourage folks and support folks to create additional housing units that are affordable that meet that need and that can bring some income in to support the home creators. So that's my introduction there. So thanks all thanks for coming on thanks for the intro Linda. My name is Sarah Danley I work for the White River Valley Consortium and one of the things I do as part of that is help support the Rochester area housing group which was really just interested in holding this event about how community members can become involved in creating housing. So we're going to go into a panel discussion then we'll have time for Q&A afterwards. So I will prompt you all with the prompts that I had previously sent you but why don't we just do a brief intro of the three each of you give a brief intro first so folks know who you are and then I'll start with Kevin after that. Do you want to do a brief intro? I'm Joe Honeyford I'm living South Royalton and I'm not really sure why I'm here so no I now buy uninhabited houses and I rehabilitate them and I put them back on the market. I'm Kevin Geiger I'm the director of planning for your Regional Planning Commission which is the two rivers out of Quichy Regional Commission and we work on several housing initiatives. I'm Dee Gish I live in the town of Sharon and we had a little housing project that I'll talk to you about later. Great so Kevin I'm hoping you can start I actually want to come back to you at the end with like other considerations but I'm hoping you can actually start by talking about ADUs because ADUs are there's a lot of attention and interest in ADUs so what is an ADU what's the basic premise why it's two rivers excited about it? Yeah so ADUs is is kind of a zoning term used to be called things like mother-in-law apartments or whatever but accessory dwelling units are a thing now in statute and you may hear a lot of talk about ADUs in California or other places but Vermont pretty much Vermont has made the door very wide open for ADUs. Every town now has to allow ADU no matter what your zoning says and every person who has a single family house can put an ADU on the same lot no matter what your zoning says. That is state law just just overwrote any local prohibitions against this type of things. Depending upon how much you've been paying attention to that that ADU provision has morphed over the last few years it used to be 30% of the size of your house it used to be that the owner had to live in the house and then you could rent the ADU now it's the owner just has to live somewhere on the lot so you can the owner can live in the ADU the owner can live in the house but it has to be an owner-occupied lot the ADU is now 30% of the house of the of the house house or 900 square feet whichever is greater and so if you have a 900 square foot house you get a 900 square foot ADU you don't have to have a 300 square foot ADU. If you have a 10,000 square foot house I suppose you get a 3,000 square foot ADU. If you have a 21,000 square foot house which exists then you can get a great big ADU and the ADU is not it used to be a one-bedroom basic studio and now it's not limited it can be a full fledged house out there so the zoning pain has gone away and however it still requires a permit if you have zoning Sharon doesn't have zoning Rawson doesn't have zoning so you can just go build an ADU there you don't get anything from the town my town proper we have zoning a lot of towns do rock gesture but you still need a state set right and so I'm gonna hit on those things a little bit yes I created so the some of the big things that come into play though are you still need a permit every permit is appealable and we have had people you know all the neighbor wants to build a little ADU and I'm kind of like used to looking out of that bit of yard that is my yard but I like looking at there oh they get up now I can appeal that permit or I can just threaten to appeal that permit I can tie that up in court for two or three years with very little effort and drive you crazy so one of the things we're suggesting to towns when they deal with these and we've gotten at least one talent I think now to to adopt it is those only need permits those like garden shits just do it as long as that's within the setback and you got your state septic permit and that type of thing off you go there is no permit therefore there's no appeal therefore they cancel it out which is kind of nice we do remind people and getting a local permit is one of those ways to remind people that there are other permits out there that if you have a three bedroom house and you've got a three bedroom system you need another state permit to expand your septic system to add on an ADU or if you have a three bedroom house and an unknown septic system which is much more the case you better go get a state permit if you're going to rent either of those you're going to need a state building permit which people don't often understand because you come into a town like Sharon Roylton and you may go do I need a permit and I go no off you go and they don't go oh yeah but you need this permit and you need this permit and you need this permit so we try to educate people in the world of permits out there and that's one of the things we're actually trying to build there are various ARP has a thing over there the state has some stuff other people have stuff but we're trying to build a little knowledge compendium around all the things that one might run into just so that it's at least easily available for people who get into this and want to do the various steps who to call and get through that so that's about 80 years great so we'll come back to you then with conspiracy for other types but thank you for doing the intro on 80 years and D we wanted to go to UNX to share a little bit about your projects okay sort of do you want to pull up those yeah so do you want me to sit over there or do you want me to totally up to you so sharing what you did what motivated you to do it how the process went okay just general your story of what you've been looking on sure well like like I mentioned before I live in the town of Sharon and I was happily working at Two Rivers out of Quiche and then this property came up right in the village there it'll come back up and it was for sale and the town of Sharon we felt I just felt like really needed a gathering place so my husband I had this great idea to open a cafe right so this was November of night 2019 we signed the contract for that house and then what happened so we're like okay a cafe is not a great idea and actually when we started looking into building requirements because we were going to have the cafe on the bottom and maybe rent an apartment upstairs but fire codes and it was getting a little crazy so we scrapped that idea and decided to create housing units instead which are also desperately needed like in so many places and it's right in the village so you can walk to the post office the town hall the schools it's a great location so we got started on building housing units and really COVID was a blessing in disguise for that project because we had secured a contractor and my husband is retired so he works side by side with our building contractor you can start just going through the slides so but it that house was built in 1851 I think so we really wanted to save a lot of the historic attributes of that of that project of that house but our contractor is like nothing square you probably have some rot I wouldn't recommend we wanted to save all the flooring and the base the bead board and he's like no so we listened to him and we gutted the place so I worked on it my husband worked pretty much full-time with the contractor we tore down lath and plaster we tore up all the floors there was a time when we were working in the attic I think yeah there we go so we could see from the attic down through to the basement it was terrifying but I was up there ripping out everything oh anyway so it was and it was COVID so we had nothing else to do you couldn't go anywhere and so it again it was a blessing in disguise and we got a really good interest mortgage interest rate which can't get any more and our contractor had secured supplies lumber and all the building materials before the prices spiked so it was again COVID was a blessing in disguise we roped our son into helping he's not happy in that picture ripping out walls and lath and plaster and here he is in the basement doing some ceiling work it was quite something so I can tell you stories about that we also found when we were digging up the floors we took out a couple staircases that were not code not up to code and we found this velvet box blue velvet box historic I'm like this is it we're gonna pay for it I can't wait to see the family jewels or whatever we open it up it's a lock of hair and some like buttons and stuff anyway the the neighbor it was an old historic family plot a farm and the neighbor still lived there so we're like I'm gonna give this to you okay she's like I don't think I want this one like no it really should stay as a story but anyway so we did a lot of the work ourselves and climate change is really an important consideration for us so we wanted to make it as energy efficient as possible we had applied for a village center designation tax grant or whatever they call it but they wanted us to keep a lot of the historic attributes including the leaded windows which we couldn't even open because they were like painted shut a couple times and very energy inefficient so we're like we're not going to take the grant because we want to make these improvements so we replaced 29 windows and did a lot of rock wool this is a part of the thing we wanted to create three units and one of the units didn't have enough upstairs space to really make it livable so we put in a dormer that was probably like the most expensive part of our project was putting in a new dormer and roofing and all that stuff so and also also this is we put in we replaced the old fuel I think it was an oil burner with a pellet stove which is amazingly efficient my husband cleans it out maybe twice a year and there's a little pile of ashes at the bottom of that thing so that was helpful too and it really looks and then we put in heat pump hot water heaters which again are amazingly efficient we did have to have to put in another an additional septic for the third unit and that's the water storage tank for all the units and we just recently because last year you may remember during the winter time we had a lot of power outages and this the village of Sharon historically would never really suffer power outages but we did several times a couple lasting several days and we have one tenant that's in their 80s and they actually came and stayed with us because we didn't want them to freeze so this year we just last week installed some tesla power walls so that we can keep the heat and the water on during a power outage they might have to light a candle to see but they will not freeze so this is our like i call it the submarine all the systems there look like that so again we we got really lucky with the timing i think and we also tried to keep a lot of the the charm of the historic place we kept the radiators we had them repainted but we were able to use the old radiators with the the pellet boiler system what else and painting was fun too we got to do some fun painting and we had to put in three two new kitchens three new bathrooms and again the prices we were able to sort secure some good pricing before all the inflation went and this is the unit that our 80 year old couple went it was important to us to make it elderly friendly it's not quite ada accessible we wish we would have given a little bit more space for the toilet it's kind of hard to get in and out of but we do have grab bars and made it one floor living so that was a big concern of ours because eventually i think when my husband and i get sick of living on top of the hill with an ice louge in the winter our driveway will move into that place so it was really again important for us and you know this is just one of my values i'd rather i wanted to invest in my community so i took money out of our retirement savings instead of keeping it with multinational corporations that don't give a rip about us i wanted to invest in my community so we invested in real estate and anyway it was just something that was important to us again so there's a barn in the back a huge barn so you can kind of see the corner of it over there so that might be our next adventure if we can find some more area for septic and water would be to convert the barn into some additional units now that we have some experience we don't have to rip out lath and plaster in the barn thankfully but we could start fresh but that was our experience so again we we applied for some grants the downtown village center tax credit that was helpful but again we didn't get the grant we did apply because you can get it for a couple of different things like aesthetics on the outside which i mentioned the windows they wanted to keep the letter windows so we didn't go for that but you can also get it to make your project up to code which is what we applied for because we had to get fire certification like kevin mentioned um an electric certification needed to up our electric stuff in the building so we did apply for that but i think generally those downtown village tax center grants are for a little bit larger project although they did like we they give you a ranking after you apply so you can see where you scored on the ranking and we were kind of up there because they i think they look at need of your particular town and i'm sure rochester grandfill handcock has a high need for housing in those grants and we also had a considered they had a program i'm not sure if they still do where they will assist people um with housing projects if you keep the rent below a minimum like a yeah help me out below i think it's maybe 80 percent of fair market something like that but when we did the math since we had to do such extensive renovations and our property taxes are kind of high in the town of sharen we couldn't make that work so we're not charging exorbitant rents or anything like that but we couldn't keep it below that fair that 80 percent of fair market value so that did not work for us but those grants are out there i just wish there were more grant opportunities for kind of do-it-yourself people that really their hearts in the right place they want to help their communities but it is super expensive so i'm not going to sugarcoat that but it it's an investment that my husband i felt that was right for our community and that's really why we did it do you how long did the process take like when did you when did you finish and have tenants move in uh so we closed in may of 2020 and we had tenants uh by the end of the year 2020 yeah but again we had that it was COVID so there was nothing else to do so we were in there doing the work yeah so that the 80-year-old couple was our first tenants and then the the third unit was with the big dormer they moved in in july yes um we i was thinking we could do questions at the end if that works for folks i mean like one here or there for clarification is fine but maybe let's just do them mostly at the end anything else to you that was great yeah thank you so much you're welcome um next wanted to go to geo and one of the reasons i was interested in having geo on the panel specifically because you don't rent out and you don't have tenants um i think a lot of the conversation is focused on like the apartments that are rented out and there's a huge demand for ownership of houses as well and not everyone wants to be or should be a landlord too so it was really interesting hearing you speak about your work specifically because it is about selling homes not about being a landlord of apartments right so so i know quite a bit of people in here and that i'm no longer farming it's because i was doing this what i'm going to describe for you uh part-time in the winters when i was in my non-farm season and then um i decided i need to change in my life and i like doing it so i just went full time at it so what i do is i look around for i've learned now because i got burned on one place i need a house that you can't live in if i buy a house that someone can live in and rehab it while they're there it's too much money it's and then i can't i can't make my kind of money on it but if no one can live there it's perfect for me um so the last one i just did uh that just finished i it's under contract we closed in the 31st every single window in the house was broken it was a 1790 cape bones were good foundation was good roof was not leaking i don't know why it wasn't leaking but it was it didn't know how to leak i guess it but it was unbelievable and uh the people had left all their furnishings in the house our dump bill was $3,500 just hauling their stuff out and so when i showed this to my mother my mother goes just burn it down why would you even work with this um it's like no this is a great house it's going to be a great house when it's done and uh so that's what i do like it took me a year and a half just me um i think the only thing i hired out was the standing seam roof um but i i'm not a flipper i i uh because flippers are um opportunists they come in they'll do one or two things and then turn over the property i do everything if i see it's a problem i fix it even though i know that no one's ever going to go up in the attic and check the insulation i'm going to put i'm going to do it right because i'm like like i was going to live there so um so what i turned over what i'm going to turn over here in a week or so is this 1790 cape that has all the low ceilings and some exposed beams and old floors it's got all the those kind of charms but it's completely as tight as you can get a 1790 cape in terms of insulation i also have a heat pump water heater because i believe in that kind of stuff i have a heat pump for a heating system in the house um and if you don't know about those you need to do some research they work and they're energy efficient and don't let anybody tell you they don't work just do enough research because anybody in the fossil fuel business will tell you heat pumps don't heat your house but they do um so uh it's the one of we did one in that we acquired in Bethel um that we had to actually the back side of the house was all rotted out we had to jack it up put a new supporting piece in so sometimes it's a we can get into foundational stuff like that um i had to put a septic in the this one here i just did uh so it's it's it can be a variety of work but um if you get the place for the right price the one we just finished in Bethel not too long ago at one time i had four houses when i was living in three i was working on so i just finished the last one of those three and i can't find another one so right now i'm just subbing out as a as as a contractor but we when we told it up i had a partner on that one we made $95 an hour for every hour we worked there um and uh this next one the one i just did i won't make that kind of money but i'm gonna make really good money um the the secret is to what i do is i don't get paid for a year and a half so i have to have enough money so i had to put 90 000 into the house i have to have money to live on and money to put in the house and not make a dime so when it comes down to like can i rent the place i'm sure i can but now i don't get any money i need that money for the next place so i i need to i need to sell it i have to sell it because the business model works on that kind of framework um i'm also not interested in in renting too much because i've sort of poured my heart and soul into this place and it's beautiful i mean the floors are sanded and the dry wall is done and everything's you know and i don't worry about the imperfections of its 1790 house if the you know the doorframe isn't quite plumbing level that's okay people expect that in the 1790 house um i'm not gonna rent it and then five years later have a place that's even if they don't abuse it it's still lived in it's still i i got this beautiful thing i can sell so i just want to turn it over to the next person and like that was that was great um so it's it's it's the the one place i did buy i bought a place in stockbridge that um in reality i didn't do well on it i was a break i broke even so that's i consider that not doing well if i'm just breaking even um but it was it was livable and and i probably paid too much money for it and then by the time i did all my fixes had had i had the flipper mentality on that i probably would have done okay just did a few things that i had quickly identified and then they turn it over the other thing i've kind of learned to do is i don't i don't worry about kitchens or bathrooms i because there you can spend 25 000 on a kitchen and two years later they're going to tear it out and put in their dream kitchen so i give them a functional kitchen i go to the recover store and i buy cabinets or in my case when i left the farm i bought a house i redid the kitchen i took those that kitchen and put it in the next house um so you get a functional kitchen it all works everything's there but um i didn't spend a whole lot of money putting it in and so when they tear it out it's not going to break my heart um and and i've it doesn't really help i'm convinced on the sale of the house because no one no one's buying their dream kitchen their dream kitchen's in their head it's it's the house doesn't have it it's the same with bathrooms uh and then i i often sub out for people i got them some guys i know would stock that do high-end work and uh they'll hire me to tear out a kitchen and then i'll take that kitchen and put it in one of my houses so this house in Bethel good thing you have a truck this this house in Bethel that we sold for it was a it was a small house we sold it for like 190,000 it has 12,000 with the granite in it because i just tore it out of another house in woodstock and put it over here and it didn't cost me any i got paid to take out the kitchen and i got the kitchen and i put it in the next house um so um that's that's what i've been doing um and it's you see these places that's the other thing is you see these places they're everywhere and you see you're probably thinking of two or three places right now that house that sits on the corner there it's just falling apart no one's been in there for years so it's actually tough to acquire these places i don't know why families don't sell them but they don't sell them i don't know if they harbor the illusion that they're somehow going to get in there and fix it up i've seen places that i've cold uh contacted people and said you know i'll buy that house i'll fix it up and resell it and put it back on the market and there'll be a new family in there and there no that's that's grandpa's old place we're not going to sell it 10 years later the front half of the house is not collapsed off and and it's useless i don't know why that happens um so it's actually not as easy to identify these places when they come on the market as you would think um and they don't come on sometimes they come like i said they come on and spurts i had four three i was working on it one time and now i don't have any but there's not much happening in terms of the market do you get a protest on that i'll i'll go um so that's what i'm up to okay thanks to you kevin just wouldn't go back to you briefly before we close out the panel um yeah um the place we're working we're trying to work on in terms of capacity is um imagine d's tenant living at the 80 year old couple lives in the old house that's that's what you have uh so we have a lot of houses we're convinced that have seniors living them that aren't in senior friendly spaces and they don't want to be a landlord they don't know no mortgage they haven't paid on a mortgage for decades so they want to sell they don't want an adu because adus are typically rented but now every house in vermont you can duplex that's just state law so they could duplex that house get a short term construction loan duplex that house have somebody like geo do the work have a better unit now we have a second housing unit because they're not using a bunch of that house to begin with and we think that that is the slice that we want to concentrate on because there's a lot of built capacity out there it doesn't take nearly as much to do it from the ground up if we have a house out there and the person probably has equity to fund the project but they don't they want to get in they want to sell the other half and get back out and then they don't have another mortgage again you know they're at the as my mother says uh she doesn't buy green bananas you know they're at the green banana space of life and like you know we don't we don't we don't have a mortgage here we're moving on um but they want to live in there and we think that people that they should be living in there that there is big value in keeping those people in your communities they they have wisdom they perform roles in your town they do all sorts of things and what the number is who knows but if they have to move out of town you lose some value and so if we can keep them there and their health is really you know tied to that place they know the doctor they may be able to drive from there to the general store and back but they probably really shouldn't drive anywhere else um a whole bunch of things make them healthy by living in that particular spot and um and so that's where we're trying to build capacity for those home creators who who are probably the owners but i part of the issue we think is a big psychological hurdle of going oh i actually don't need all this house and oh i actually you know am not able to paint and fix this thing up anymore but how can somebody bring some capacity to those folks because there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those houses out there and the other issue becomes who's going to do the work because um right now this guy in he pays me $50 an hour to work for him so when i look at this chart here and you're saying not many people make that kind of money it's like you can this that's the kind of work you got to do and now in the industry where we see a lot of our folks no one's going into the 2550 yeah no one goes into the trades everybody i see it's my age and we're all 18 now yeah i got offered a construction job the other day i was walking by they can eat for it right now after all the flooding so i i think we just go into any questions from you all yeah go ahead uh geo uh have you accessed any of these grants or low interest loans through some of these programs through the state yeah because i'm selling that i haven't seen anything that applies to me maybe these guys know of something uh that i do go to efficiency vermont and like i get money off the the the heat pump things i get money some money it's not much money for the insulation um all total it might have been three or four thousand dollars if i you know and if i've rented then i'd be eligible for these kind of things right and in that situation i kind of walked in maybe at the beginning with this renting is there's there's a certain price that you have to rent to there's certain clientele excuse me i tell you have to rent to is that corrupt so there are different programs the a lot of the incentives right now are trying to um create opportunities that allow folks that are homeless at the moment um create space for them so they're looking at homeless preferences they're looking at maintaining rents within i think it was 80 percent of fair market rent um don't quote me on that um but we i think the uh the information was in the for sure that we had um the other thing to keep in mind is that there have been an increasing number of subsidies that have been put out there short term and long term and what we're seeing is that people can't use them um section eight that was sort of the gold standard the landlord gets a guaranteed amount of money every month hopefully their tenants can come up with a balance of it but we're seeing only about 25 percent of those um vouchers that are being given out section eight and the shorter term um 18 month vouchers that help people get to a place of stability and get on their feet only about 25 percent are being used 75 percent are going back so we're seeing a lot of people that are really disheartened and because it's basically a joke what is the point of going through all of these efforts to try to get this when i can't find a unit that's going to qualify so that's been a big struggle as well indeed did you say you had to use some budge center credits that didn't impose income restrictions or we we were not awarded that grant but we did apply for it so i have a um question about the designated village um i know that i just read weightsfield had um revamped a lot of things including their designated village because villages change over time and i'm feeling like particularly in rochester the village designated village is small compared with what the reality of people that consider that they live in the village meaning that they could walk to different to the services um they're they're not going to be able to take advantage of any tax credits because the village is small so is or the is that ever changed or we looked at or how does that happen yeah it's it's it's getting looked at right now it's it gets very arcane very fast even for people like me who try to pay attention to it um because there's designated villages it's downtown there's growth centers there's neighborhood development areas all have different things the but suffice it to say that that problem is a problem everywhere and that those boundaries are very small and so the legislature will do one of two things i think this year it'll either stop making all these things and say there's there's just one we're only gonna have one name for all this stuff um they may say we want to make these things bigger right now those fringe areas would be a neighborhood development area and you'd go for that designation um which is actually in some ways even better for permitting wise and whatnot does that qualify for the tax credit though yeah yeah i know that maybe that's what weightsfield did they had three or four different areas um but i know that you know if an incentive's gonna work it has to be able to reach those houses you were speaking about that maybe are occupied by one person or that you still can walk to town but it's not right along route 100 right and this it's a process towns have to apply you have to have it in your plan you have to map map and you have to do some things again um my policy take on all this which i keep throwing out to anybody who'll listen is is i think it's we should use the ice cream truck model which is ding ding ding all the ice cream truck comes along and they go ice cream and you go out and get the ice cream why do all this stuff we could just go every village in front there's the circle there's a circle we got we got villages all over the region my region that aren't designated because somebody hasn't done some paperwork why are we waiting why that looks like a village me there you go there you go oh where's the edge of this make them bigger just do the stuff fast and easy and the the big issue is those tax credits have a limit in the state that's pretty paltry have no limit um get that get this stuff done so who would do that this life board or no the legend this is really a legislator stuff this is really good that to do a lot of this stuff and a lot of it actually doesn't cost the state any money to do i mean there's things that will cost money but i don't think it's don't cost so the state designates the village yes yeah and the state can change the village the state could it it goes through um a board and it's a pretty tight boundary like you know Hartford for example you think well there's a lot of downtown Hartford no the Hartford downtown is very small um same thing in Randolph but our village could get this neighborhood development area another ring around there's another ring around right and that's something that the state does or a select board asked for the uh the planning commission would actually work on it uh and then yeah the select board would do some stuff we usually help towns and then you go to the state and you get a process there but let's try to make these things easy easy do you know the boundaries for Rochester and Joseph Village pretty much i mean it basically is back of a Huntington house north of town not you okay right across from the um fire station basically okay and it comes and it only goes up to um the the house after the parsonage and then it goes across the street to the Huntington house area and then it goes down to where the Catholic Church is but it doesn't go up any of the hills at all for up like Kennedy Drive or even down to where like Ethan Studio is i think it includes the health center the what i think it includes the health center the health center i think so they're all if you just google Village Center Vermont you'll get them trying to pull it up right now if i can and it's on the two rivers side yeah um but it's small and i think that you know if the neighborhood designation is a way to go certainly that would be helpful and maybe that's what i read that Waitsville did yeah that's that's probably what they did and people refer to those NDAs which they always makes me think of non-disclosure agreement um but that's that's what it's called in the trade 80 is NDAs we have acronyms for everything i got a question for D um did you when you decided to do this project did you have any master plan like the you know your rate of return when you know when you were going to when you're finished how much it's going to cost and how long is it going to take you to recoup that i know you're you know you're in in favor of community right um and that's what it takes a lot i'm part of Rochester here i thought i did what Gio did 30 years ago and you know working after work to to create housing that i am now reaping a benefit too but i never did any of that i just worked my ass off you know after work and weekends but you know doing it yourself makes a huge difference huge um but i wish i had done that kind of concept of like well how long is it going to take to finish this i just didn't have it together back then you know and i was wondering if you had that i that concept of like well i'm going to make i'm going to do this work and in 10 years it'll pay off or 12 or 15 or whatever no yeah i mean we did get um a few estimates for construction costs um and it was pretty i mean i i think when you get an estimate they make it as as close as possible and it worked out um but it wasn't it's not going to be a a money maker per se unless we were to sell it um but we we intend to live there eventually and um continued yes yes and to do the work yourself made sense right if we would have gotten like the tax credit award that would have helped a lot um i think that was about $30,000 which would have helped with the code compliance like the plumbing and the virus safety and everything like that that would have helped a lot i also have a question for gio um do you think the market uh in the last few years has is is detrimental to your model uh the one we sold the Bethel certainly wasn't because the we we sold that at the right time right but now i'm talking there's there's so few properties on the market there's so few that there's still people out there buying them even though the interest rates are higher um yeah i didn't it it took me i mean i i went swinging for the fences on the first price i put on the house i just put up it's like i'm gonna see if i get 345 for it and i people looked at it but they didn't they didn't they didn't bite so then i just two weeks later it's lowered the price i mean i got my profit margins were good enough that i could just do that and um so it took me 50 days to sell it to get it under contract yeah so it's and only because if i had put a more realistic price on right away i would have probably had it sold in five or six days so um yeah i i pretty much did what you are doing like 20 to 30 years ago i worked as a contractor and when i would renovate they would like wow i want a new bathroom so i'd pull the bathroom out store it in a barn and now one of them is up in this apartment a kitchen kitchenette uh and i did you know you basically do it on a shoestring because i was way over my head and i bought that building you know like but you just that's what that's what you do and there's no real model it's just hard work you know like um i i i think that honestly um in rochester uh there is there's a number of young builders i am part of this housing committee and i've tried one of those young builders right i am not one of those but i am mentoring them and i reached out to all of them and and basically i said this is an opportunity to do adu construction and if if someone were to say i'm your guy because there's a number of people that are interested and i really firmly believe that um it's uh it's just a it's a good model for the next 10 or 15 years because there is tax credits there is grants available um you know what i found by is by doing it myself i never got any of those grants or credits but because number one i wasn't that smart at that point but to research and to get the you know get the information but basically um when you do it yourself there's a lot of uh like oh no well that we can't help you like even efficiency vermont i mean i'm still working on these buildings you know energy efficiency i d di y the spray foam oh you gotta hire a contractor you know i'm like okay so that that bothers me that little that's section of this complex how we're going to get housing uh bothers me a great deal that you can't just do it yourself you have to hire a contractor um and basically put the money out then you can get it back but you have to have that money to start you know in this you could do this what i'm doing because i'm buying the right places for the right prices i would still make money if i subcontracted out everything i wouldn't make nearly the money i'm making i'm not even close to the money i'm making but i at the end of the day i would still have a profit um if i contracted out everything else because most contractors aren't making like i said that place we sold in Bethel $95 an hour like that's a hell of a profit margin so i could easily pay somebody 30 40 an hour to do stuff for me so are you registered with efficiency vermont to be able to be one of their qualified people that you can do the work yourself no you hire those people parts out if you are looking to get the rebates from them yeah but a lot of this i don't i'm not a spray foam kind of guy because it off gases so i don't use that um so a lot of this stuff that they might require a contractor to do um like i had there was two things on this last house the standing seam roof which i'm not equipped to do and um i had the guy install the the heat pump compressors i did all the duct work all the insulation all i ran all the wiring i did all that he just put those in because he could get the the like dima saying he could get the money from the state i couldn't so he could get that discount for doing that so that was i could do what he was doing but then i wouldn't get that that money did you accomplish your first one do you forgive me if this is too personal you don't have to answer but you said i have to have 18 months where i don't make anything and i also have to have the money to buy the property first so how did you do that first one it it makes sense how you do the next one and the next one once you've sold one you have money to buy one and you have money to live on while you're working on it but how do you do the first one if somebody's trying to get into what you're doing so i was i was doing is why i had a farm and a vegetable farm which actually makes money as opposed to a dairy farm which doesn't very true so i wasn't it's not a terribly lucrative profession but i was making money that way and so that i was that was an off-season job that i was doing so then i had some money coming in uh when i sold my farm that was okay and and one of the things that uh someone mentioned in here is i call it like it's a deferred investment the house i bought now um i just spent six months working on it to fix fix it all up and it wasn't so much because we needed to have that work done right away but now that that work is done say it's not a dream house for us because you know when we age out when i'm 80 there's too many steps in there it's not going to be a good house but i fixed it up now we can sell it so i've i've i've made the money it's i'm not going to see that money for 20 years but i'm going to see it so we did the same thing with the farm the farm was really run down just a it was literally falling down and fixed it all up made it really nice and so when i sold it we sold it for considerably more than we bought it for and sold it as a working operation so that was my nest egg that's where my so went and bought a house cash the rest of it into my business i'm hearing that that's another neither of you had to go borrow money at seven percent to do your projects right yeah right now and it's a nice place to be in that's why i can if i keep the rundown house comes available not too many people can buy those because you you have to have the assets to right to to buy it and do it you said you were talking earlier about minimums i think what you're saying minimum size like the 21 000 square foot home with you so can you can you say that again go through that again i just don't think i caught that correctly so in vermont everybody who has a house yeah is allowed by right to go get a zoning permit if you have a zoning um and if you don't it's even easier to build an ad you on that property which is inside a attached or detached accessory dwelling unit that's up to 30 percent of the square footage of the main okay and then the other way yeah it had to be 30 no and then towns can we have many towns that go 50 percent or 1200 square feet it's but it's 30 percent or 900 square feet now whichever is greater so everybody gets 900 square feet for an ad which is just fine i mean yeah about the size of my house like it's like a the smallest space you've seen there isn't like for it it would probably be like just a little studio studio um yeah i mean i mean we're thinking because we live in the well we don't live in the village i guess i want to work in the village i mean i want to work so i definitely and so we have a heated room over our garage with our kids have stayed in for years we don't have any like plumbing or connections to town water town sewer which is what we would have so we're trying to think about like if we put a small addition on that would be the kitchen bathroom with the plumbing and stuff ad use i know that you have to have um places to cook and sanitary facilities yeah so that's what we would be looking at yeah yeah yeah and the important thing is if you rent versus yourself um because i don't know if you had to get into it i mean you probably had for plumbing but you didn't say if you have a staircase in my house is not code compliant so i couldn't rent my house with my staircase in it yeah um but you know so if you're renting anything railing stairs everything is everything has to meet code and in vermont we do not require single-family houses to meet code so that's important for people understand from the get go i'm i'm doing the space are you going to rent it or are you going to sell it because different rules are going to apply and oh i don't want to sell i'm going to rent it now all of a sudden oh i'm doing five different things that i hadn't planned on doing yeah this would be nice digress windows and you knew it what if the intention was neither to rent it or sell it it was to provide housing for my children in the future where it's like actually one of you know if you have enough land put a little little house there for them you know knowing that like in our house when we age out we went to that section of the house you know and you know like the oldest you know would take but there'll be little dwellings there with the intention not to sell them it's just part of with that the adu that that might be an adu it might be only one of them you like an adu yeah right now in vermont you can only get one as a minimum but again towns i have several towns that say you get two or we don't care how many two but the same percentage wise it worked out it's like no they're smaller properties yeah as opposed to one larger one yeah and in zoning you get into whether it would be subdividable so i'll put a house over there but i'm not going to subdivide and sell the house i'm just building another house on my lot but it's subdividable and so that's often fine you're going to be doing the septic and everything out there i urge everybody to do them code compliant just because if you start that way it's not that much of a pain to deal with them later it's subdividable as well because it can get really difficult at you know settling in a state if someone has three or four extras places for their kids you know the parents are gone and and if then you can't meet the rules with all the different outbuildings and different houses it can get pretty messy so if the subdivision or the potential for a clean subdivision it's kind of thought about ahead of time it makes it a lot easier later on yeah that's where we see you know a teeny amount of bringing capacity to the table there are a lot of in rock jester there are many double lots out there that are available if i'm seeing with some of the young kids today where it's they would love nothing more than to stand vermont and to stay local they can get the job but they just cannot live anywhere and it's you know they want to have their own place where it's like well where yeah yeah and i talk what i'm talking to communities nationally what we have is we have a baby boomlet you know with the baby boomers and then there's another little secondary hump so we have about 35 million people that are settling down now they're tired of you know whatever and they want to stop someplace put their kids in school and they're going to choose here diluth or somewhere and i say diluth and people laugh trust me diluth is on the list um that's one of the top places to go the uh and and we need those people and if they decide somewhere else that's where they're staying and then we're going to lose out you know everybody getting older is not a long-term plan right or right now just seems horrible in the sense that kids are going to school they can go to university here in vermont right but realistically they're going to have to venture now away and it'll just compound the issues that were you know really just simply from housing so these the ad use that you're talking about um do they have um funding or rebates or is there any incentives for people to seek out these um ad use they're for rent or vermont housing improvement uh program fiat uh i think is one of the main ones that's out there right now that's up to 50 000 dollars per unit for repairs need to bring vacant rental units up to vermont rental housing health code like idelines new units to existing building or create ad use um so if you search up vermont housing improvement program they do have a faq and the rent requirements are that they are at or below fair market rent oh so not even 80 percent but i looked online today and they're not taking applications at this time not at the moment but they will open it back up again well yeah okay it's just one round of funding yeah because they limit the amount of the grant money that goes in there you know and i think they put five million in there that sounds like a big number until you go that's a hundred units yeah so yeah the veha program for um winsor county including rochester is administered by windham and winsor housing trust who has a veha person uh the rochester housing committee put together a brochure on resources if you've seen that and we have his name in that as well so he would be he would be someone to contact hancock and granville since they're in different counties technically are administered by um a different one that isn't going to western vermont neighborhood neighborhoods of western vermont um the person from windham winsor did say that if he gets calls from hancock and granville he can like triage you know he's not he's not going to like ignore it refuse to pick up the phone from anyone but from the county winsor so yeah so when you're um with the this program that you're just talking about and you're saying that you need to rent that care market um have fair market rent does that just mean like literally in the news you were advertising and that's what the rent is or do you have to specifically take people that are involved in a program through it just said fair market rent so it's whatever had dictates is fair market rent for your county is what you would have to rent at or below okay so it's not specifically getting anybody from section eight or any right now there may be other programs that have funding and the programs have changed sort of over the last few years as the legislature has changed changed their programming and the different like vermont street housing authority had some programs there's definitely just some research about what's out there there are some or have been some programs that had those preferences and you would work with different coordinated entry systems to see if somebody was on the court entry list that's a whole homeless management system that exists in the state um you would and it prioritizes who is recommended for different units based on their priority on the priority on the list where they fall based on their situation but not all of the programs connect to that yeah sometimes there are mo us that require that um we have those with different uh housing authorities and things sometimes but okay a lot of different programs with a lot of different rules yeah okay well that's good to know that there are so many options out there and if they're like a Montpeliers uh adu program that Montpelier kicked in 30 000 dollars per adu to people who did it uh wood stock is doing 10 000 dollars um so they're other places and I encourage communities to to look at the community of being part of that because you go why should we spend money to do whatever and you go because then those people work in town and they do things in town and they go buy food at the grocery store and maybe they're a plow driver and you know i'll it's just the business problem it takes money to make money all sorts of reasons why you might want to do that and why it's you know you think 10 000 dollars or something that's a big a big bit of money if you do an adu and it's for a family member and you choose not to rent it then does can you still get the subsidy or must you rent it I think it has to be a part of the rental market we have is just for rent yeah so you could you could rent to your adult child right you have rent to a family I know it said you could rent to a family member but you have to collect rent that could be I don't know I haven't seen that piece that kids are gonna pay I don't really have programs where we can't pay landlords who are family members but those I'm not sure what this program has yet and I think it's grant stabilized for five years is the latest version of pd is there a um what's is there a single factor driving this or is this being driven by just that housing shortage in general for multiple groups of people in that mix versus a housing housing shortage used to mention homelessness you know housing shortage to solve that problem because some of the stuff you're talking about isn't going to solve the homeless issue by no means I mean geo's homes are not being sold to someone who's homeless but there's a trickle down effect but is there a single thing that's driving that or is it multiple things I think the issue of homelessness right now is really driving is the impetus behind this 18 percent of our population was homeless last year um and that's a whole brand we have doctors that are calling in that don't have a place to live that are living in hotels we have you know we had heard that the burger king down in New Hampshire their their employees are living in their parking lot in a car there are people that are employed that are living in their vehicles they are living in the hotel system and they are homeless they're literally homeless and because there is nowhere to go and the the result is we have 18 percent of our population that is unhoused and there is a the trickle down like this the house I hopefully will sell in the next week is actually it's a it's a young couple he's from Chelsea she's from Sharon they got a young family so they're from honors um so they own another house in Chelsea they need they need to that they're selling yeah so that's going to be a smaller more less expensive house yeah and so it's there's there's your trickle down that somebody else is now somebody else got into the market these guys upscaled so that really is what's written what's causing the government to put all this money into the housing market we are in big trouble I have a question for Kevin yeah and that is um the effect of Airbnb because I think some of those units take what could be livable spaces um off the market and in can towns I know they can write ordinances that can prevent airbnbs but do you think it's a huge problem in our region or not so much I think it varies by town um so the towns that people would want to go in and potentially you know if you're in Stowe or whatever um it's a huge problem if you're in Woodstock if you're in Barnard or Bridgewater or maybe surrounding there my town Pomford a little bit maybe so but I think it's really for the destination towns where people want to go there I think it'll it'll spread out a little bit more Rochester why not um but yes so you can regulate short term rentals towns can regulate short term rentals even if you don't have zoning you can pass your own stand alone short term rental ordinance um around how that actually how many how long they do as an owner does the owner have to live on site of a variety of things out there um that you know but I don't think short term rentals are driving the housing crisis in Granville I think you might be surprised Kevin I'm going to push back a little bit on you okay I totally agree I mean I think that the fact of the matter is as the housing committee member we have identified that the there is something like 53 Airbnb's um and in Rochester yeah in Rochester yeah and um as a business owner we can't find help there is a help wanted sign in almost every business in town those two things we've identified that there is a there's a major problem that there is no place for the worker bees to live and it it's been a an issue for three years um our school teachers can't find our professor can't I have to I have two partners yeah that's that's a push I was going to so to right to so we had um we had an in-law apartment an ADU I guess in the modern part surveillance that my in-laws actually lived in for 16 years and then they left and we rented it out and there was a group of law school students who weren't around for the summer and my wife approached them and said can we put this on Airbnb because they're they still have to pay rent even though they're not there because they were going to come back and live the next season and it's all furnished because of all the stuff and they said yeah we'll we'll just split the money half and half you guys do the work we made double the money that we would have gotten rent double I mean so there's a lot of people doing it and and if it's like you said Dean if it's just taking 50 units out that's an even though it's not in maybe in wood stock and a handover in stow it's taking hundreds of units out but 50 units in Rochester it's a big deal yeah yeah so I could see a lot in certain towns I think what is also driving is it's is it's driving up the price because a house that you live in is a different value than a house that you can rent out and and you know turn over that money in um that's a taxation issue that I think the legislature could solve like that um if they wanted to the there are other issues out there back to your question my take on it is we treat houses like money so let's not be surprised that people treat houses like money um and the money does not care if any of you have a place to live and it never did it just worked for a while and I use it with homeless um all of us are homeless or pre-homeless those are the two categories we exist in and we should all think about it that way um what happened for a long time is a bunch of us could afford houses and so we thought it worked because it worked for us there were always people that didn't work for now some of us are falling into that category and we go oh the system's broken you go no you're well just welcome to the bus folks there are always people on that side and so it's the exact same system it's exact same drivers and to me again through tax policies and other things if we decide we want houses for people to live in or we want houses to make money on we could treat those as different things you want to do this fine but we're going to put boxes around that um but this is really what we want houses for and that's that's a different that's not a zoning thing in the that's a different kind of construct down there when the pandemic blew up on us because people came in and they started buying up houses and they came in and they started renting and they pay a year's worth of rent so if you have somebody that's working a service sector job and might struggle to pay you month to month and you have somebody from out of state that needs a place to go and they're going to give you 12 months upfront you're taking the person out of state so that was sort of the beginning of where started blowing up and where became a very public issue for us and then we have seen people that um rented from places for 20 years great histories but landlords want to get out of the market so they're selling homes we have people that sold their homes because it was a great buyer's market wasn't great when you sold your home that you've lived in for the last three decades and now have nowhere to go and there's nothing nothing there um so really we are just seeing the impact across the board my way of thinking that the Airbnb boom if you will is kind of a double-edged sword for a community like Rochester I think yes we need housing but if you took those 50 some odd units and took all the people who rent and they didn't go to maple salt they didn't go to the Rochester cafe they didn't go here what impact does that have on your community I mean it's yeah it's not just a right lack of right it's a balance absolutely like like peanut butter and a certain amount it is toxic you know there's an article that we read recently and I apologize because I can't remember what it was but it talked about the impact of there's there's a few very big corporations that are out there buying up real estate right now and that's raising the market it's raising the cost of houses a first time home buyer you can't get a house the way you used to you're talking $400,000 minimum when we look at rents when we're trying to find rents for people we're finding one bedrooms for $1,600 a month two bedrooms over $2,000 I don't know about your budget but $2,000 would put a big dent in mine and I have a decent job so somebody who's making 13, 14, 15 bucks an hour that's not possible the three doesn't include just the second homes also of folks that aren't here being it but just happen to have a second home in Rochester and come maybe three years out of the year which is another problem it's almost the worst problem because they that they're not bringing in yeah they're coming in they're coming in two weeks a year right yeah yeah I do want to mention if anybody is a landlord for folks that do receive assistance there is the Vermont landlord relief program so folks are struggling there are some supports out there as well yeah the state did a study in 2018 which was actually um which estimated because evictions are a problem and but a lot of evictions are just you know one speed bump in somebody's life that's really the problem and the state estimated that for $800,000 a year they could prevent half the infections in the in the state and you go ice cream truck give that money just just here's here's the money pass that speed bump because you think of all that the millions and millions of dollars that causes problems and people go I gotta take my kid out of school I'm losing my job the factory now I gotta help on its eye on the window just just repercussions go on you it's change so we are coming up on the end of our time probably time for one one more question if there's any final question just so you know in your town we are Sarah Rage from our office is working with Sandy and other folks in the planning commission and so your zoning is um nearing the final stage if I can I say nearing the final stage is nearing the final stage is of getting rewritten all over um to incorporate the new stuff the legislature passed plus some extras and so zoning as a boogeyman is no longer really going to be a thing um in Rockchester and isn't a thing in most places that's not the issue it's still paperwork and a painting but the permanent hurdles are are pretty much going away I would say D and G or anything else anything final you want to share and I also to clarify the do-it-yourself versus needing a licensed plumber and electrician and when those would kick in so it is actually yeah you're going to single-family house you can wire you can plummet you can do anything you want it's your house but having said that I make sure I do everything to code because that building inspector when I go to sell the house it's going to come open that panel and if it looks like shit someone that that's going to affect me so it's you know I'm right at code um it's not the single-family homes there is a residential building code in Vermont it's just not enforced for single-family homes I mean it exists IRC and the state statute references that but it just isn't enforced for owner-occupied single-family homes and I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that's I if I own the place I can have two units and I can still wire and plummet myself but if I go beyond two then I have to have a licensed person yeah that's what we we did three units and we had to have the licensed plumber electrician and we had to meet fire code so all the the units are fire separated I get around that because my brother-in-law is a licensed electrician in Vermont and he just puts it on his I can wire under somebody else's license that's not a problem I mean if anybody you hire and is a it's you hire an electrical contractor probably they have seven people working for him probably three of them don't have any they're there because they're wiring under somebody else's license that but that person's liable if anything goes wrong and all bets are off on your own commercial building you have to have everybody certified and pull permits to do anything as I own two of them it it basically layers the the issues I basically when I did it I I called everybody that I knew and said what do I have to do tell me tell me the path and I did it it was not cheap but basically you know the fire marshal the electrical inspector the plumbing inspector everybody basically said yeah well you have to do this this and this and so it was done it's just like it's that's a lot of it's a lot of work but if you don't do that you're you can get hit on the other side of not complying yeah they're very easy to deal with and so as we wrap up tonight's conversation this actually a good time to plug like the next thing that the Rochester Area Housing Committee has been working on so the committee's really like thought out of a pipeline of how we can support the Rochester community in creating more housing so we already have another event date set in December and maybe someone can like many remembers the date because I'm remembering dates in December we'll be having a follow-up event for folks who are interested in digging even deeper into this this was really set up as a panel but the December event will be more of a networking event so I'll show you like meet one-on-one with people who can provide advice and opinions and give you their contact information like and talk to you specifically about your situation is December 7th at 6 30 thank you so much I don't remember dates at the school cafeteria yes so we're still in the process of organizing that but we can promise that we'll be bringing folks who can like talk directly with you about your situation so that's sort of the next level of detailed follow-up around this anything else Deb that you want to say about from the committee just that this video will be put on the Rochester town website under Orca because there were people that had called that couldn't attend that were wondering if they could access it so it will be there and I know as part of the housing committee I am going to figure out how to talk to someone about this um neighborhood designation because I think that's really important for the community thanks Deb thank you huge thank you our panelist this is really great having you so I think that's pretty much it I think um whatever we can do to be creative and try to resolve this issue yeah and there's information up here if you're interested on the state of housing in Vermont


In this quick video we're going to have a look at what constitutes a nation. One of the most important thinkers in this area is Benedict Anderson who wrote a book called Imagined Communities – Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Benedict Anderson defines the nation as an imagined political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. Anderson describes the nation as imagined because, as he writes, the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. Let's think on this for a moment. Think about what comes to mind when the term fellow Australians is used and how do we conceive of being members of a national identity in a way that relates us to our fellow Australians. Think also about the relationship between the nation as an idea and the concept of the border. For instance, a border is only ever imagined, even in Australia where, in a rare instance, the ocean naturally creates a border and yet this division between what is not or is the nation is made real only through words. We have never walked the perimeter of the border and yet we are told that its importance shapes who we are. Anderson suggests that the modern age of nationalism began in Western Europe in the 18th century for a complex variety of reasons, including the rise of print capitalism, meaning that the wide circulation of reading material to the masses in one common dialect rather than exclusively Latin brought dispersed locales together through a new and shared language. An important question to ask at this point is how Anderson describes imagined communities as political, in one sense as he writes, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail, the nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible for so many millions of people not so much to kill as willingly die for such limited imaginings. Another question to ask is how does an imagined community become so real in the minds of its individual members so as to render such sacrifice unquestionable and even expected? For Anderson, the answer lies somewhere in the construction of nationalism. For example, the state can construct a nationalist sentiment through the idea of the unknown soldier. The unknown soldier represents not so much a person, but an ideal and becomes a site unto which discourses about the nation come together that one can and should sacrifice their life for their nation. This has been just a brief introduction to Benedict Anderson's ideas on imagined communities. Thanks for watching.