I'll let Gus begin and it's all yours, Gus. Okay, Mr. Chairman, committee members, thank you for having me for the record. I'm Gus Seelig, I'm the executive director for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. I know, Mr. Chairman, you said this is fundamentally not going to be a bill about money. And I guess I just need to start by offering thanks, for the support this committee and your colleagues in appropriations have been giving us from the housing revenue bond forward because fundamentally the problem we have is as a number of witnesses have stated is a supply problem. And people are not building housing for the people who need it the most because it's too expensive. And the dollars you've provided go a long way toward making things happen that would otherwise not happen in a market-based economy. Just to get to a question that Senator Clarkson asked, we are making a recommendation to our board to provide VHFA with $2 million to start this risk pool that you heard a little bit about and that more Collins will speak to and that should happen at our January board meeting. So that work is well on the way and it's part of the value of the getting an appropriation last year, record appropriations from both ARPA funds and general fund. And it's great that the state is in a position to deal with this. I think one of the things the governor has said repeatedly is we've got a big workforce problem that's affecting all of the work we do, not just the building of housing, but housing management, managing the finances of it. And it's affecting every part of our economy and clearly what Josh said to you earlier in terms of comments from employer communities, it doesn't matter whether it's nurses or teachers or people in business, there just is not enough housing at all levels in our current environment. And it took us a long time to get to this place. What I'd like to do, Mr. Chairman, also is just to give you a quick report on what's been happening and that we can build upon as we do this work. So I'd like to share my screen if I can. Am I able to do that now? You should be able to, sir. Yes. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, I can. Are you able to see this presentation at this point? Yes. Yes, indeed. Okay. So I'm going to just see if I can advance it now. That was further. Okay. Well, this will just give you a sense of what has happened over recent years. And I've just since from 2020 to 2023. And you'll recall that you gave us $33 million from coronavirus relief funds focused completely on helping to house homeless for monitors. Other appropriations have been for a much broader range of housing, but we have funded more than 1,100 homes and apartments around the state with just about half for people who've been experiencing homelessness. Almost 500 have already come online. We expect 386 more in 2022 and yet more in 2023. So housing is being produced at a rate that is much, much faster than had been the case in the previous seven years. I agree with Eric that we could double the rate of production for the next decade and we're still not going to catch up. Senator Brock has always been somebody who has been in my ear saying, can we find some less expensive ways to do housing? And one of the things we're getting national attention for we California and a few other jurisdictions have focused on converting hotels and motels into housing that's been at a much lower cost than new construction and one effective strategy to get housing online quickly which was a prerequisite for the coronavirus relief funds which were due to be all expended within about eight months of when they were appropriate. And here are a few examples, Brattleboro in Colchester and Williston in Burlington of those examples of what we've been able to do. We continue to do new and rehabilitated housing, new housing all over the state. You'll hear from your ag committee about the need and we've recently awarded the Champlain Housing Trust funding for a farm worker housing program. We are continuing to focus on primarily new construction to add units. We are seeing great community cooperation in doing that. Bristol plan for this development that you see pictured here for many years they were hoping for condominium development for home ownership. They couldn't make the numbers work meaning it was gonna be too expensive for what the units could be sold for and it's become rental development instead and part of an overall community development strategy. We'll soon be working with CHT on the redevelopment of the hardware place site down the road from the chair in Shelburne. And this is Fox Run in Berlin is attached to the mall and this downtown building in Rutland we were adding three apartments to as it gets rehabilitated. So the successes are that housing is coming online very quickly that there's a coordination of capital and service subsidies. We have had a housing recovery working group that Commissioner Hanford, Mara Collins, the agency of human services, VHCD and the state housing authority being about twice a month since the pandemic began. There are more apartments being targeted to for monitors experiencing homelessness. So those are among the successes that we've had. I think the largest challenge that causes me to lose sleep at night is the cost increases that others will speak to but I'm gonna give you just a personal anecdote my daughter'd like to build a home on our land in East Calis and she met with a builder who's had it for 30 years and what he said to her is he's a year out before he could begin but for a 12 to 1500 square foot home even with free land she shouldn't count on less than $100,000. And I think we're spending $400,000 for a modestly sized home. That's consistent with what we're seeing in terms of proposals coming to us. I think Eric could tell you that he probably can't build condominiums in Burlington even with lots of density for less than that and probably for a lot more than that. Lots of things have affected our market conditions that make the price of housing very high and the shortage of supply again one more anecdote from down the road from me one of my neighbors owns a three unit building in East Calis Village and two years ago he posted on Front Porch Forum that he'd rent an apartment for 800 a month and this week he posted that same apartment at 1500 a month and I believe he'll be able to get that and it's not a fancy apartment at all there's no fancy finishes in it it just speaks to the shortage that we have. Workforce is an issue for all aspects of our work but Senator Clarkson was also asking about risk and I think that risk is not just time and it's not just uncertainty it's also what do the banks tolerate for risk? So one of the things that's happened since the Great Recession is that banks will not finance condominium development unless you can show that you've sold half the units before they'll finance you and we have not had a market and maybe we're beginning to get there where you can do that level of pre-sales but certainly not at the price points that we're now at so those are some of the challenges. I do want to note and we'll be meeting with Treasury and the congressional delegation in a couple of days that there are some challenges around using ARPA in conjunction with the low income housing tax credit doesn't mean we won't use ARPA funding but it does mean that we will produce less units with ARPA funding than a Treasury where to make it easier for us and I hope there'll be a solution but it's probably months away. A cornerstone of our housing policy has been to revitalize our downtowns and as we look at this slide I will just tell you we're working on a building in downtown Brattleboro just down the street from this flat street building that you see in the bottom left. In Bennington the Putnam block is well underway and has tenants there are two sites there that are available to I think add another 60 units of housing as part of the Putnam block overall redevelopment. In Montpelier I've talked with a church group that wants to build 25 houses in downtown and Washington County mental health has a historic building they're considering converting to housing and so there's lots and lots of opportunity all over the state more than we can shake a stick at. Want to talk for a moment about home ownership and we've been doing a home ownership program for many years across the state we've invested in about 1200 homes they've provided through shared equity home to 1800 families and this chart just gives you a sense of who's living there and I would just urge the term workforce housing gets used a lot that anybody who's above the tax credit limits for rental housing is in the workforce but we have very few federal resources for them whether as renters or homeowners and when you look at this profile of who the Champlain Housing Trust has provided home ownership for they're all the people that make up our economy and I guess I just also want to say that the pandemic made clear that lots of essential workers whether they fill our grocery shelves or their nurses aides or their janitorial staff are really, really vital and housing is a real challenge and they're not at the highest paid folks in the state. Elements of an omnibus housing bill this is put together by Jen Holler and these are all issues that are in some form of legislation or another on the left. I can't speak to all of them in any great detail but they are all important issues and anything that you do that encourages communities to enhance density and let us grow vertically we'll meet our smart growth goals and our affordable housing goals. On the right are a couple of things that I think are worthy of more discussion I don't know if we need legislation but clearly if we're gonna tackle climate as an equity issue, our funding for climate ought to be directed to helping to pay for the energy efficiency components of housing. You'll hear more from Mora about development pilots I don't think we need legislation around shared equity but we will need more resources because I think we've often helped people compete in the marketplace for existing housing but I think the shortage is now so severe that we're gonna have to do more of what we're doing and Michael Monti will I'm sure speak to this in downtown Winooski where the Champlain Housing Trust is building a 20 unit condominium. I would note in that case that the city of Winooski made the land available for free. We're seeing more and more communities step forward. We visited with Manchester a few weeks ago where they have a site with two commercial buildings and room to build at least another 30 units of housing in a great neighborhood and they wanna do it as affordable housing. The last slide I'll just show you as a project will bring to our board and this is more housing in Putney that is planned adjacent to the food co-op. So lots of good things are happening all over the state and with that I need to figure out how to end my screen share. Okay, while you're doing that Gus I didn't quite understand the limitations on home ownership to that there's little funding for people above the housing credit limit I think you said. Well, what I'm saying to you is when you think about workforce housing most of the housing we were able to build in Vermont and leverage other monies comes from the housing tax credit and the housing tax credit you can move into tax credit housing if your income is at 60% of median or below. So in most of the state for family of three that means people up into the mid $30,000 range. And I guess I would just say to you there are not federal resources that are robust above that level. We'll be working on using ARPA funds for those groups. We usually, when we put together housing developments we usually encourage a quarter of the housing to be market oriented for people above the tax credit limits. And I'm just saying the term workforce housing gets thrown out around a lot but without that tax credit we're really talking about people making $20 an hour and more maybe it's a little higher in Chittenden County who do not qualify for housing that's built with a low income housing tax credit. So there's lots of folks that are doing essential work that are making way less than $100,000 a year $80,000 a year that we do not have a big federal resource to support in their housing needs. Most of the housing needs are focused more at the 60% of median and below level. So that's, as you say, all federal dollars. Is there any program of comparable, not comparable, but of tax credits at the state level or is that just too small a number? What I'm saying to you, well when I walk into the room with your appropriators they have been very focused for many years on the problems of very low income Vermonters and the problems of our GA budget and the fact is we still have 1,300 Vermonters living in motels as we speak has meant that people have asked us to focus on that end of the market but no we do not have other than the home ownership tax credit at the state level a lot of resources for people that are above the tax credit maximum. That's our most powerful tool to produce housing across any policy. It produces more than $20 million of equity a year from the 9% credit and then there's the 4% credit as well. So it's a very powerful tool and I guess I'm just saying as you think about workforce there are people making 18, 19, 20, $25 an hour not a lot of money who are not gonna be competing for home ownership in this market that we need to be thinking about housing as well. Okay, thank you. Any questions? Did you get your slide? Would you be kind of to send your slides to Scott so we can post them? He has. Okay, great, thanks. We're already posted Senator. Oh, great, terrific. So anyway, we would look forward to working with you on an omnibus bill that covers all the issues that are outlined that are already in legislation and again, I would support what Chris said earlier that priority housing projects, the size of them I think probably needs to grow from the 25 that's currently in statute. And the more we can encourage communities to allow increased density, the better and that may mean growing vertically as well. There's a building we built in Winooski in downtown Winooski or just out of the downtown in Winooski for veterans some years ago. And it's a five-story building on a quarter acre and that really actually amounts to 120 units an acre if you were to multiply how many units are on that little quarter acre or fifth of an acre lot. So we can build densely if we choose to, lots of communities have an aversion to that and it's something we really need to encourage. Do you share Eric Farrell's concern about the using the word density as opposed to floor square footage or something like that? I'm in favor of helping the talk with communities in any language that will help us get to yes. So if there's a better term, I'm all for it. I think we, you know, as you all know, I work on the conservation side of things too and if we really wanna protect our rural working landscape then building smart and building with more density or more square footage is really important. One of the things about, I noticed in South Burlington anyway, this is maybe not knowledgeable enough to speak on this is form-based code often requires certain amount of commercial space it has in the South Burlington New Town Center. And we're in a time in our economy where the demand for commercial space is very different particularly office space than it once was and that's something also to be thinking about. I just have one other question. Senator Clarkson has a question after this but I know your background and you just mentioned your obviously housing and conservation, are you optimistic in general that from environmental advocacy side of things that there could be housing policies that don't necessarily negatively impact the environment? Yes, and I think there's been more and more collaboration. I don't know if we'll get to 100% agreement on every single issue but I think it is in the interest of the folks that are concerned about our environment, our natural resources, our land use, our ag lands to support our downtowns, our village centers but also the neighborhoods adjacent to them. And I think we work closely for many years with an organization called Smart Growth Vermont which is now a program of the Vermont Natural Resources Council. So whether we can get to 100% agreement on all of the environmental issues that are in front of you, I don't know but I think that they are in general supportive of lots of good infill work. Senator Clarkson. Thanks, I think the word density people get and understand. I think the Eric's word is for the professionals in that world. I think people understand smart growth and density and cluster development and those of us who are environmental and supporters of downtowns are not mutually exclusive. We're all here supporting, I think the same things and we can't have one without the other is I think what we all come down to. I guess we now have a fairly clear notion of the numbers for homeless for building new home housing that will house our unhoused. I'm just curious and I, you know from the Vermont Futures Project I have a sense of the need, even though it's old numbers it's still huge numbers for our housing needs generally but do you have a number for the workforce population you were addressing earlier? Do we have a notion of that need for that because it's a huge, it's a big number. And I just, I'm just curious if you have a number on the need for workforce housing and families that. I do not have that number today. I'm happy to sit down with lots of people who are smarter than me and try to brainstorm what that number ought to be. I guess what I would just say to you is if we think that we have if we know we have 1,300 households in motels today and there's probably several hundred who are not in motels. The best practice is not to build facilities just for those people that are isolated but really for them to be integrated in housing through every community. And, you know, so if you said well we only want one in five apartments to be for people who are homeless and you multiply 1,500 by five we need 7,500 more homes on the rental side. In terms of home ownership, I think we need to do some thinking about what our goals ought to be. But I think the current market, if you look back at that chart that I, now that it's posted, there are lots of people and Michael will be, Monty will be able to speak to this more than I can. That CHT is provided and their partners around the state have provided housing for who in today's market there's even with an $80,000 grant competing for housing is very difficult. We just are so tight on supply. So we've got to expand the supply. As I've talked to him, you know, he's looking at projects for home ownership that might be in the hundreds of units. We're looking at a neighborhood in West Brattleboro, adjacent to that chalet that has 17 acres that might be built out for more housing. There's a project we're working on in downtown Windsor right now as rental housing. And I talked to one of the proponents and she thinks that there's adjacent land that can be used for more home ownership. Mad River Meadows is a place in Waitsfield where we have rental housing and there's land for more units and maybe some small home ownership units. So we're looking everywhere we can for those opportunities. Thank you Gus very much. We'll have you back certainly. And Jen probably next week, we'll pick this up again for sure. Let's move on. Thank you again to Jim Bradley. I'll see Jim. There he is. Hello everybody. My name is Jim Bradley. Can you hear me all right? Excuse me? I just want to make sure everyone can hear me all right. Yes, can hear you fine. Great. So I am a builder in the state of Vermont. I'm a weatherization contractor, a partner with Efficiency Vermont, a passive house certified builder. I had been president of the Vermont Builders and Homeowners Association for two years previously and also now head the legislative committee. I also have a radio show called House Calls Vermont on WDEV on Saturdays. Surrounding this very topic as far as how to construct things appropriately, how to weatherize your home. It's an assistance show if you will for homeowners and builders. I'm invested in this, what we're talking about right now. And I think any investment we make, we have to do it really intelligently and know all the variables that are in place. One thing that's really important is that pre-pandemic, we had so many other factors heading towards a crossroads if you will in our economy nationwide specifically in Vermont as well with people getting out of the workforce, retirees, baby boomers. It is estimated that since July nationally, we have had seen at least 4 million workers exiting the workforce on a monthly basis. And so that's huge. You look at 24 million people have just exited the workforce since July nationally, which equates into, if you look at the demographics, 55 and above, people who are 55 and above account for 90% of that exodus. So you have a lot of people who are graying, who are getting older, who have been tradespeople, have been in the workforce that are getting out now, they're retiring. Some of them have various reasons, but we knew about this for 25 years that this was going to be happening and here we are, it just happens to coincide at the same time we went through a national worldwide pandemic and it couldn't have happened at a more challenging time. We knew it was happening and here we are. How do we address it? Because we can have a lot of money to throw at a project. We can have great plans for a project. We can even have affordable building lots. If we don't have a sustainable workforce to build these homes, no matter if it's low income, middle income, upper income housing, we're not going to get the work done. And a lot of people have become somewhat jaded when they hear the term workforce development because, oh, we've heard about this for years. Well, we're here. When every builder that I talked to said, I could hire at least one to five more workers immediately. And still wonder if I can get everything done. There are definitely material supply chain issues that are affecting the cost of housing. We're watching lumber prices when they usually equate this into 1,000 board feet and pre-pandemic, that was right around 400 per 1,000 board feet at the height of the pandemic. And last summer, it got up to $1,700 a thousand board feet last fall. So this last fall in 2021, it diminished down back towards around $400, but today it's up to $1,200 a thousand board feet. So that's just a huge roller coaster of material cost variables that it's hard to put your finger on and say, okay, I know exactly what my fixed costs are gonna be. Added to that, you have delivery issues. You have delivery issues where, you know, a kitchen that used to take three to four weeks to get on site is now tracking somewhere between 20 and 24 weeks. So you have to be somewhat psychic to know exactly what you're going to need. And when, unlike before, and just say, okay, I think I'm gonna have everything in place here. And hopefully there's not a ship out in the ocean that has my materials that I'm waiting for that's gonna delay the whole project, which is a crescendo effect because it affects, you know, the whole progress of the project when you don't have certain materials in place from the plumbers to electricians to the finished carpenters, everything else. So those stresses are there. At the Home Builders Association, we have been attempting to engage with others from transitionary workforce individuals, you know, like the military or people who might be new Americans or people transitioning out of the hospitality industry to engage them in some type of a robust training program to ensure that we have those workers in place. It's been a heavy lift, even at the vocational level, you know, at the high school levels, it's just because the bandwidth, the interest, the finances are not there. Plus the conception or the preception that people have of what a trade person is. You know, a lot of times it's unfortunately our society seeing as the lower rung of professions. That can't be the case anymore. And that messaging has to stop and it has to be retooled and refashioned to let people know that if you're building somebody's home, you have to have a great education in proper building science, material acquisition, how to run a business appropriately, the professional way of doing things. And that shift has definitely happened in our society and we have to stay in step with that. Otherwise we are going to be left behind. So making that investment in our workforce is hugely important and that starts at the ground level. I know I've heard it said, you know, we need some quick housing, some fast housing, that's great. But if we have out of five tradespeople who are getting out of the workforce on a monthly basis are only being replaced with two new ones, that math doesn't, you know, bear out, it doesn't hold water for us. And so this is going to only get worse if it's not addressed now. Turning the ship around and getting it, you know, in the proper direction as far as workforce development is not an easy task, but it's an important one. We have to be able to change the mindset of parents, of guidance counselors, of those people who are counselors in the transitionary workforce area to let people know that the trades are a viable, financially viable, a rewarding type of career field that people should want to go to without incurring huge amounts of college debt and everything else. It doesn't mean you're not going to get the education. It will be there. It will come if you're going to stay in this industry, but we have to change the value that we have placed on that because otherwise we're not just not going to get our homes built. We're not going to get our other weatherization goals met either. So we have, you know, more money being thrown at weatherization, which is great. Let's make that investment and, you know, the planet and everything else and, you know, diminish the cost of fuels. But if we don't have the people to actually fill those jobs, it's a fool's errand. And so we have to make that investment and it needed to be made yesterday. But here's today. And we have that opportunity to make that investment and it starts with whatever program we go forward with. We might get some success initially, but the longterm is what my concern is. So after the first round of success that we do get some more middle income housing built, then at the other side of this, okay, who's going to backfill that, those, the workers and be the people who are building that today? Like I said, without exception, I have every builder that I talk to are saying I could use more people. I could use people who show up. How that's affecting the cost of the home. Right now, if you're a tradesperson and you're a laborer that just shows up on the job site without any experience in Chittenden County, it'd be hard to find somebody who'd be willing to work for less than $20 an hour. Usually that pay rate is between 20 and 25. Great, but I've also heard other builders trying to, there's this one in particular that was trying to find somebody who will show up, doesn't care what the skill set is, just show up and be consistent and I'll pay you $34 an hour to start. I'm considering thinking, okay, the wages just keep going up and up and up and as they do, that has to get passed on to the buyer and or to the government entity who's funding the housing project. But the thing that's so important here is, we need to have those workers to draw from to not just make wages go down but help them level out appropriately. But at the same time, if we are having new people transition into the state or stay in the state, moving out of their parents' home maybe and into their own home, there was 12 million new households formed in America from 2012 to 2021. There were only seven million new housing units constructed, five million unit deficit. We share that same dilemma here in the state of Vermont. Right now, someone asked earlier, I think it was Senator Clarkson, you asked, what were the needs currently for the workforce? I know just from the trades people side, you could easily say that anywhere between 1500 to 3000 workers immediately would have jobs. And as we continue to put more money towards these initiatives, we're gonna have continued growth. We're gonna need more people in those areas and they're gonna need housing. So yes, you can get more workers in but you also need housing for those workers so they can stay here at the same time. And so putting a concerted effort here, yes, we need to build more housing but you need the workers to build with. Otherwise, you could have the best of plans, you could have affordable lots, you could have building materials if they do show up but you can't get them built without the workforce. And it's not just something that says it's gonna happen someday and we can keep kicking this down the road, the can down the road, it's happening. It's already here, we deal with it on a constant basis and that's the lament of every builder that I've dealt with is finding the people that will work so you can get the job done and yet we could get more projects done. So we weren't booking out to 2023 and 2024 with some of these projects because if we just had the people and had that resource and that's a vital part of our resource. The other thing, the resource preservation is usually important because it was asked by Senator Sorkin and I love this question is can we do this efficiently and swear it's gonna be proper for the environment? So many of the building materials that are offered today can be put together without the durability factor being championed and why is durability important? Because if we're looking to diminish the stress that we put upon our environment, you wanna build it once and be done. You don't wanna build it once in five to 10 years we place your site or within a one to five year window you have major mold problems inside the house because you didn't use the right materials and you didn't understand indoor quality or vapor drive or ventilation and everything else. And let alone what are the health component factors for the occupants because you didn't get the building science right. The reality is though these measures the building science, the proper materials and the building techniques already exist. It's important and incumbent upon us to make sure that we're investing this money that we're getting these details right. It doesn't mean you have to build the most efficient house possible. It means that you're gonna make it as durable and healthy and safe as possible using known prescriptive measures to get this to happen. And it doesn't have to drive the cost way up there especially if you have to replace your siting prematurely within a 10 year window because it already started to rot away or deteriorate add another $15 to $25,000 to that expense. But if you get it right in the first place by adding a few thousand dollars to put the belt and suspenders on and make sure that that deterioration is not going to happen so rapidly, you're saving money, you're affecting the planet. And that's the resource preservation component that we have to get right. So as we're investing these monies, let's make sure that we're investing the monies yes to secure middle income housing but durable housing that's healthy and safe and also we're investing in our workforce so that we have somebody to backfill these positions that are being, people are retiring from them so we can continue to have a workforce and a sustainable resource that can build the homes that we're looking to have as part of our housing stock. And at that point, I'll go ahead and take questions. Thank you so much, Terrence. That was great testimony on a personal note. I couldn't agree more. I represented the trades for decades in the legislature when I was advocating. Also have to say, I really just really struck a nerve when you talked about lumber cars. I had the misfortune of building two decks this summer and everything just went skyrocketed. But I did want to ask you, have you been asked to testify yet in the house? I did last week sir, yes. I did. They're taking the lead on workforce shortage. These things obviously overlap but in terms of dividing workload, they're gonna do that and it's really important to me because I hear people talk about the need for more nurses and the need for more childcare and the need for more broadband workers. But the trades, it touches them upon broadband a little bit but the trades are not mentioned in that top three tier of groups. And I think we need to get people's awareness up there that we need more people in the construction trades. Any other questions for James at this point? Great, we're gonna move on to Mora Collins. Thank you again, Jim. Mora, I haven't seen you for a while. I know, I have been hiding in my home basement like all the good doobies who are trying to stay away from everything scary. My name is Mora Collins. I am the executive director of Vermont Housing Finance Agency. Today I am joined by my coworker, Seth Leonard. I want to introduce Seth because he's really gonna be the one following the committee's work this year. We know what this committee can do for housing powerhouses and we're so grateful for, not just for the effective advocacy you do for housing but also the meaningful and measurable results that you've clearly been able to deliver on. So Seth oversees our community development department which means he's responsible for our development programs when we talk about rental housing development and these home ownership pilots. You've heard about all of our research work and the asset management department which means that he knows of all the housing that we've already funded and created in Vermont what's happening with it. And so can talk to some of those issues that Chris Hart spoke about about the capital needs of housing in the state. And lastly, some of you may recognize him. He was the longtime mayor of Winooski during the time that they implemented form-based codes. And so he knows a lot about land use planning and municipal realities. So I say this because there's a whole lot of research and reports and information that we have that I think would really reinforce the messages that you're hearing today. And so when the time is appropriate in the future if he could come back and speak to each of these I'll just give you a quick highlight and then dive into some of the conversations we've been hearing so far. So Seth led the work that VHFA did in partnership with VHCB to study the cost drivers of affordable rental housing development. So if you want him to come back and speak to that he could talk about what those factors were that led to increased costs in Vermont. Another initiative housed in that department is a housing fellowship program that we have with graduate students. And this past summer one of our graduate students surveyed town planners, zoning administrators, chairs of planning commissions, town clerks, economic development directors and we heard from 69 different communities. And that may be worthy of him coming back and going through those results. They were fascinating because folks like me and us on this panel follow the end result of what housing gets developed. But it was really interesting to learn that 22 of the 69 towns don't have any zoning that is less than a half an acre anywhere in their community. And we know that large lot sizes can pose significant barriers to housing affordability. So when towns increase the amount of land required to build new homes then those units are gonna have to be sold or rented at higher cost to make up for that initial investment in the property. So there were recommendations that came out of those findings that talked about opportunities to look at by right development or a taxing vacant land. We talked about streamlining the permitting process and reducing fees. We already heard previous witnesses talk about not having duplication of state and municipal permits, increasing residential parking flexibility. And you heard Chris talk about updating zoning bylaws to allow and encourage higher density development. And so just high level, I looked at several of the bills that are in the legislature being considered right now. I think you all are looking at as fodder for the Somnibus bill and there's a lot in there that supports those recommendations. Seth was also one of the authors on a report VHFAA released this fall focusing on what we heard from builders and developers like Jim and others. We know that the cost of developing homes is going up, it's becoming more lengthy and more complicated. And so what we're seeing is what we did, I'm sorry, is that in August, we did a survey and held a forum to hear directly from development professionals and contractors. And we asked about how the pandemic was affecting development capacity and moving projects forward. And we found that about 90% of the respondents were experiencing COVID-19. We're experiencing project delays and higher development costs beyond typical increases. They also talked about increased processing time and costs due to overlapping and sometimes excessive regulatory and permitting burdens. And so we found just looking, we don't have information about housing costs across the whole state, especially when it comes to the private market where there's no affordability restrictions. But VHFAA does have access to what's happening just with the tax credit program that we administer. And between 2020 and 2021, the average cost of a proposed development for the tax credit program went up by 9%. And that may seem really high and get people really nervous, but that increase is just slightly higher than the change we saw in multifamily homes under construction nationwide, which was an 8% increase. And so 64% of people we heard from had abandoned or substantially delayed starting a project due to cost pressures. So there's so much more the nerd in me wants to go into, but I'm gonna hold back and just dive into some of the specifics that I think you all are considering is this omnibus bill. And I wanna just speak in support of being on the record and support of some kind of rental housing health and safety measures similar to what were proposed last year. I think that that could really help our state overall. There was some news that I think a lot of us saw that talked about the failure of some housing and how it wasn't up to the conditions that any of us would expect. And I understand that some of those communities where that housing existed were in municipalities with longstanding and robust inspection systems. But what struck me was that those weren't the only towns where those violations were occurring and only a statewide database where staff has the ability to look at those kind of findings from across multiple communities could such widespread violations be identified and I would hope a swifter response could have begun. I think Commissioner Hanford has, I've heard him testify in many committees about the success of the VHIP program to improve the rental housing conditions of our state. I know last year there was also a home ownership revolving loan fund that was proposed. I don't think, I didn't hear a lot of committee testimony fleshing out all those specifics but I'd be curious to listen in on more conversations about that. Because I think some of those goals we've heard a lot about home ownership today and I think a lot of those goals are laudable. It's just a question of how that all comes together and to make sure that maybe we're not trying to do too much with one program. Maybe there needs to be some pulling apart there of those goals. I'm very supportive of the municipal bylaw modernization grants that Chris Cochran spoke to. That is a great tool. Although I worry a little bit that when we offer money to those who apply for the money we are reinforcing the good deeds by the good actors. But again, if you could read the full survey of the towns that we did this summer you'd find that there's a lot of communities that answered questions like no, the fact that we have limited water or sewer capacity is not a problem at all for housing development. And I question if all of our communities are fully aware of what the impact on housing is for some of their zoning and the like. Of course every community is different. So I put a little asterisk by that that I shouldn't also paint every town with a broad brush. But in housing proposals being considered there has been a call to increase the manufactured home replacement program that's funded through the state housing credits that VHFAD ministers that program has great outcomes and there's strong demand for it. So that has been something we've really supported as well has been the expansion of the downtown tax credits for the reasons you've already heard from today and expanding those to neighborhood development areas so that we're encouraging resources to go to areas planned for growth. I know you're focusing on policy and not funding but you've also heard teased up some talk about a budget adjustment request that's looking at the creation of affordable home ownership construction. That's going to be very important as we recover from the economic impact of the pandemic. And so I would be happy to talk more about what's being proposed in that pilot as a part of the BAA. You heard it previewed there is a construction capital access proposal that we are working with VHCB to get funded. Gus said that his staff is recommending to the board for their meeting in a few weeks that that guarantee and backstop program be set up. The BAA request is to create, to have some capital be available to cover the value gap, which is defined as the cost of construction is often higher than what the final home appraises for once the paint is dry and the final nail has been hit and all that. There is a gap there. And so if it takes a home builder $425,000 to build a home and the very day it's completed before anywhere in tear happens and appraiser walks in and says, I'm looking at the market and this home's only worth $375,000. This subsidy program would cover that gap that's necessary so that that home can be sold and by someone especially who needs a mortgage. But additionally, it calls for some additional subsidy to buy down the cost of the home so that we can make it even more affordable and that that additional subsidy would be a permanent subsidy that's retained in the home and stays there for future buyers. So in the proposals at some point I hope that you will look at tweaking the definition of mixed income housing. This is something I've testified to committee about several times and it's too complicated to dive into today but there is a reference in statute to mixed income housing which defines what a priority housing project is that gets an act 250 exemption. The problem we have is that currently the statute references a VHFA program limits that no longer exist because VHFA has changed the way we do business over the past decade and statute hasn't kept up with that. So there is a proposal to tweak that and modernize it so you're not pegging things to a purchase price limit that if anyone goes on our website, they won't find but instead something that we have committed to updating each year that adjusts by bedroom size and community and things like that. Well, we did that. We didn't do that already? That has not passed final that still is outdated and needs addressing. Okay. Maybe we could do that in 101. It's in 101 but I also see Chris has his hand up and one reason I need Seth here is because sometimes these things move so fast that I'm not up on the latest. So maybe I would love it if Chris could correct me if I'm saying something wrong because I don't need to. We may have done it in our committee but it didn't maybe to survive. But anyhow, I'd ask you more like I asked Josh if you could sort of put a bullet point, one page memo or two page, one or two page memos of these ideas that you're talking about and some of them are existing programs but just sort of a short summary so we can have a little bit of a roadmap because you're listing a lot of different ideas that are all good.  I know you are, because you know because this was in the middle that this committee has passed and all but absolutely of course I don't- I'm not as good as Senator Clarkson. I got him, we've got him. Yeah, so I mean that just really what I'm doing is just reviewing what I've seen come through this committee and have largely the committee's support and just re-endorsing that these are good ideas that I think need to be brought forward over the finish line and get done. And I think that this idea of an omnibus housing bill is a great one in order to try to bring all that together and as a suite and package of solutions it's going to be able to touch on homelessness, rental housing, home ownership and everything in between. We're gonna be looking at supply. We're gonna be looking at, you know planning and zoning and the like. And so I'd be happy to answer more questions if there are specifics. Well, we need to move on but you're a key person to us. So we'll probably have you back on a regular basis or set back, set welcome. Do you wanna add something right now? I mean, I can see you coming in next week for sure. No, I think more did a great job with it just as you all are moving really fast. There has been a lot of great work done in the background that's taken a lot of time to come up with some policy recommendations on a lot of these issues. So we've got some of those in hand to discuss with you as the session goes on. So look forward to working with all of you. Okay, thank you very much. Senator Clarkson. Maura and Seth, I didn't hear you and I know it's there somewhere. Talk about an expansion of the first time home owner down payment assistant program or a variant of it, which I know many of us are very interested in and using it as a way to build home ownership for a wider group of people. I assume that's in there somewhere. I do firmly believe that some kind of forgivable loan or enhanced down payment assistance is critical, especially if we're talking about first generation home buyers who have not had access to the mortgage market historically. Oftentimes people think about black indigenous and people of color, but also it could be for a lot of people who just have been prevented from accessing that market. That is important. I think that right now as the market is adjusting, we're looking at those supply constraints and saying giving people more money to participate in such a broken market may not be as hopeful if there's not the housing stock.  But I do think that that is a critical tool that we need to address. And it was part of the budget adjustment proposal that we were talking about in the house. I know that they've had concerns that it's not well fleshed out enough and there's a concern. This really would be a shift in state policy if we were to go from perpetual affordability and to have all of our public dollars be retained in the homes that we've invested in to this idea of transferring wealth to individuals. And that is a conversation to really take carefully because it is a real shift in policy. And so I can appreciate that on the house side they were saying maybe budget adjustment is not where we should have that conversation but that that should be a conversation for the full budget. And so I welcome the conversation because I do think that down payment assistance will remain a critical component that we need to look at and this kind of enhancement for first generation buyers will be a great tool to have. And perhaps an enhancement into our downtowns and neighborhood development areas. I mean, we can also kill two birds with, maybe we can kill three birds with one stone with this program and drive investment into our downhounds where there may be lots of housing that needs work but there's housing stock there. Anyway, thanks. One quick question to button up here before we take a small break. Are you familiar with the proposal from the realtors for a 529 like program for to help people build up resources to put towards a down payment or to a new, a first time house payment? I'm not. Okay. Well, you'll hear about it. I think some state has done this and supposedly very successfully but the idea is to treat putting money aside for first generation home buyers to give them tax incentives to put the money aside like we do for them to pay for their college education for kids. So it's an interesting concept. Let me, let's take a break till 1125.


The 2016 list features 50 new woman achievers. We congratulate them and salute all the winners. It's a great honor indeed to receive an award for something that you do for a passion. The industry is a very small industry, the radio industry in the media ecosystem and to be recognized and radio being recognized and being a part of this really means a lot. We have a long way to go and it really feels great. Thank you.


County, North Carolina. For 200 years its people have fashioned a life for themselves out of the grudging hills. There's with the hands that had cleared the wilderness. Today they squeeze out a living gathering wild leaves. Decorative touches for a city florist which bring them $6 cash for two days work. They call any man an optimist who hopes to earn more than a thousand dollars a year and they are very few.  They have always been a patriotic people, sending sons to every war since the revolution but returning always to the hard life of the hills. More and more of the young people have gone away to find work in the fields and factories of another place, reluctantly leaving behind those too young and those too old to do more than keep their stubborn hopes alive and cling to the age-old faith. They are just a few of the many who've been left in the back waters of American life. Survivors of a simpler age. Their families scattered all the lessons and accomplishments of their yesterdays giving no guide on the path toward tomorrow. While they continued their usual way, asked no help and struggled along to keep them and theirs alive. But finally the time came when they decided that they'd carry the water long enough that their children had been denied too long. They began to hear about something called community action. People getting together to improve their lives through a chain of concern that reached out from their own valley all the way back to Washington. Saturday, May 13, 1967. To this valley, one of North Carolina's most distinguished citizens has come with a friend from Washington to witness what his hill country neighbors have accomplished. In less than two years, through this new idea of community action, they have built a water system, begun a handcraft industry and changed the pattern of education for themselves and their children. As is the custom when company comes, the children were presented first. They discovered that some of the dances were not native to the region, but all the children were. North Carolina's first Head Start graduates. It's been lovely. Look at that. It looks good. We usually use old scraps inside or cut. This has cotton in it, which made this quilt cost two dollars. And this is made from a poster. And we have so many that are getting the surface food. Now we're teaching them how to cook it here and have a plan. We're on balance. Are many on the surface food? Yes. Yes, we do have several. With the program, Community Action Program can provide transportation. How many, for example, come here? Start with just the RSN, all right? Right, wrong, right? You did very well with that. Pick out now and let me hear you real good now. All right? Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. All right, good. Pearl, do you have your book open? Black. Black. Bless. Blink. Blink. Block. All right, just a little out of now. This one right here, Thelma? They were learning something more important, perhaps, than the language. Learning to believe that each one's effort was still important. That they could change their world. That opportunities still existed. And that other people knew and cared about what they had done. I think that it's wonderful that we can work together and plan together and build together and have the help that we're getting today. Because this is your day, you have created this water system by your own ingenuity with the labor of your own hands and with your own perseverance. We're very glad to have even a little part in helping you to make this dream come true. Well, thank you. We don't want to pull against each other, either. That's right. Which way? This way? This way right there. It is. All right, the water should be on. Oh, sir. Thank you. What a timeline of help. All right. You're not going to get anything to eat, Sarge. All right. You always say you ought to eat with the people, the local people, because they know what's the best. That's right. That's good. That's too pretty. Breaking bread together on the church ground placed a seal and a benediction on their accomplishments. For Billy Graham, it had been a day of revelation. For the people of this valley, it was something far more. We in the mountains of North Carolina are very rich. We're rich in the beauty of these mountains. We're rich in our faith. We have a faith in God. We've watched him work in our community. And today, we re-dedicate that faith in God and faith in country and faith in ourselves. No miracles were wrought here. Only the beginnings of change. What has taken place is a testament to the human spirit that reaches out and beyond these hills. I think that it's possible to be comparatively poor and be spiritually happy. But I believe that Christ teaches that we can have both. And he taught us that while we're to go out and proclaim the gospel on the one hand, we're also to go and give a cup of cold water in his name on the other hand. And in so doing, we are gaining reward in the future life. Dr. Billy Graham has spent this day in North Carolina checking the progress of the war on poverty with its director, Sergeant Shriver. Now at Dr. Graham's Mountain Home, they compare notes on their common concern. In the second place, they say to me, well, you know my father or my grandfather came over here and he got out of poverty by himself. He didn't need the government to help him. What is your idea? Shouldn't we be doing this at all? Is there some reason why the government should be doing it other than just to do good? It's true that your father and mine did work hard. But our world has changed a great deal since your father's day and my father's day. Now the Bible teaches that if a man is naturally lazy and idle and he gets drunk and spends his money on drinking and so forth that he doesn't deserve our help except to try to get him remotivated, reconverted, reborn and changed so that he'll work for himself. But if a man or a woman is poor and they can't help it, let's say it's a widow or perhaps the husband is left or I may not have a job opportunity in the area in which he lives, then first of all the church has a responsibility and until more recently the church has done nearly all of it at least in our Western culture. And secondly, the state has an obligation and I don't think anyone can read the Bible. In fact, I went through the Bible and chose oh, I would say about a hundred scriptures that indicate that we do have a moral and spiritual responsibility to help those that really are in need and we have thousands of people in this country in genuine need. And when people say this I think sometimes they have blinders on and they don't see the needs. Well, it's my Christian responsibility to think about such things. It's my duty as a citizen of this country to think about such things and not only to think about them but to do something about it. Now today, individual groups in our tremendous population can't do as much proportionately as they could a few years ago. It takes the action of government and that's one reason why I have supported the idea of the poverty program. Now I know that there have been many mistakes made. You can't start a thing like this as quickly as you've done it without making some mistakes. It couldn't be done perfectly. But at least the motivation has been morally right and religiously and spiritually and biblically right from my point of view. We've always said that the poor should be involved themselves in the administration and in the decision making process in this effort. We've said that because we believe that poor people want to be treated in a dignified way as an equal. That they don't want to be handed things or told to do things. They want to discuss what ought to be done and then do them voluntarily, you might say. And that it was essential to develop them as human beings to give them a significant role, even a powerful role in the decision making process. We feel that in a human enterprise like this one, the equal participation of everybody, including the poor, including the beneficiaries of the program, that that's desirable. How does that strike you? Well, you know, it's the same principle sometimes when we go abroad.  But the local missionaries will say, no, don't do that. They won't appreciate it. You sell it for a very small amount. But if they buy it, they appreciate it far more. And I think the same principle is involved here, that people that build for themselves and take a pride in it, it's theirs. And I think that's what you're doing. What I've seen today and what we've seen today indicates that what you're doing is training people and you're giving people an opportunity to do for themselves. And this to me is a very important point that I don't think has yet been properly communicated to the people. And I think it's the most important point that can be communicated. Something that I think people have the wrong ideas in this country about the poverty program and the Office of Economic Opportunity as it's more formally called. And that is that the idea that it's sort of a handout that you're going around giving money to people and as soon as the money is spent, it's not going to do any good. And of course, the Bible teaches that this is wrong, that we should give motivation, that we should give people an opportunity. And this is what I found today is really what the poverty program is doing. And I was quite surprised and delighted that you're not going around handing out money. One of the things that people continually throw up at me is the statement in the Bible that Christ is supposed to have said that the poor will always be with you. And they say, well, since Christ said the poor are always going to be with you, what are you trying to eliminate poverty for? You can't eliminate a driver, they say. Christ said you're going to always have the poor. Well, Christ said that and I think that his prophecy is proven correctly. Here it is, the middle of the 20th century and we probably, if you take the whole world, have more real poor people today because of the population explosion than ever before in the history of the world. But he wasn't giving us a command. All of his commands were in the opposite direction. If you turn to the 25th chapter of Matthew, you'll find that Christ is saying that we're to go out and to help those that are in visit the prisoners, we're to feed those that are hungry, we're to give clothes to those that are naked. And he said, in doing so, you're taking care of me. In other words, when I as a Christian go out, I see Christ in these people. I go and try to help them because of Christ and his motivation. What do you say about the people who say, well, yes, I'm all in favor of helping good poor people, or they call it the deserving poor. But what I don't like is helping these people who are bummed and lazy, the undeserving poor. What justification is there for helping a man who's a drunk or an ex-convict? Why help him? Well, if they want to be completely selfish, they're spending it really for their own self-preservation. If you develop in this country a very strong, poor group, take all the humanitarian idealism out of it. Take all the religious motivation out of it. Just from self-preservation and the building of our own society for our own good, I would still want to help the poor. Because I don't think that we can build a great America and have one side of the street riding Cadillacs and the other without water, without food, without education. You know, all the indications are that about 99% of the American people say they believe in God. Now they may have strange ideas about God. They may not express it by going to church. But the vast majority of the American people, I think, do have a religious motivation. And many times we let selfishness dominate because the Bible teaches that all of us are sinners and, of course, sin in essence is selfishness. And it's only as this selfishness is eradicated. And we have people going out with this self-dedication. And one of the things that I've been greatly impressed in the poverty program, just like in the Peace Corps, is the dedication of these people working with you. I'm really tremendously moved and impressed. It's the same motivation that you find in the missionaries that go out and live out in the jungles and live out in foreign countries to try to spread the message in the work of Christ. Because we've built in the church, both Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, we have built hundreds of hospitals around the world. We've done this sort of thing, but we didn't have the resources that can be put at your disposal by the government. And this is why I stand back and say, hallelujah, get going.


What's up everybody? Jayce here for jaysbreezecasebrakes.com 2020 flawless collegiate football one-box break You see number seven sold out with this random number block here for the Dolphins Colts cheese 49ers Broncos And again works like any other random number block breaker on our website But only for this for these teams in this specific break ten spots everybody gets a random number from zero through nine and I think I've explained it right before this video with the other one So number three gets all hearts with three being the left first time on the left side of the dash So there you go. You can read about that right there So boom Here's a dice really here's a customer names from Matt down to Paul you got zero through nine Roll dice and we got a four and a one for five times guys five times one two three four and five Five times Patrick down to Paul five times Come on mouse one two three four and five I have five times One down to zero All right, so Patrick I see you have one any one of ones for these five teams will be yours Paul with two Matt with seven Danny with three Gregor with six Patrick Garcia with four Paul you have five last Bob Mojo Joshua with nine Paul with eight and then Paul if there's any redemptions You also get that as well as zero so they go guys This was the last video before the break so come on next is the break itself. Appreciate it


Welcome to the Feetcast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from your friends at the Foundation for Economic Education. I am Richard Lawrence and we are here today with our ravishing panel, Anna Jane Perrell, Dan Sanchez, at Varian March. Hello. How's everything? You're looking more radiant as always, Richard. Thank you. I am working on it. I'm getting a haircut later today. You need it. Yeah. It's evident. It's long. Yeah. Yeah. So how's everybody doing? Excellent. Fantastic. What's going on the website? Feet.org has a wealth of things happening. We have several articles about a recent proposal by Bernie Sanders. I don't know if you guys have heard of the Stop Basos Act. Kind of, like on Facebook and stuff, if you want to explain a little more. Yeah. So Stop Basos, obviously he's referring to Jeff Basos, the CEO and founder of Amazon. But Basos is an acronym. So Basos stands for Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidy. So Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidy. How hard do you think he pushed for that acronym to represent somebody who has a big business? He probably had a whole team of interns looking on it. Just the acronym, the acronym team. That's right. It's a clever one. It actually sounds pretty good. Yeah. Subsidies. Let's get rid of those. Yeah. Libertarians don't like subsidies either. But he has an interesting idea of what a subsidy is. All right. So he thinks that food stamps basically are subsidies from the government to Amazon. Interesting. Interesting. So to Amazon. That's the key. That's the subsidy to that business, not just to the people. From us, the taxpayers. Right. Right. Okay. And so what is Bernie Sanders sort of all of a sudden getting the deficit hawk mentality? What's his angle here? It's much more of a class warfare mentality I think. Darn it. Basically he's saying that a food stamp is a subsidy to Amazon because the taxpayer is subsidizing the living standards of the workers that freeze up Amazon from having to pay them so much. And so he doesn't have to pay them a living wage quote unquote because of these food stamps. And so the act has the effect of taxing Amazon to the exact 100% of whatever food stamps their employees are getting. So yeah. So every dollar that an employee might receive in food stamps, Amazon would then have to cough up to the federal government. Is that right? Exactly. So 100% tax on every dollar that the government pays for these employees to have benefits. Yeah. Right. So then why wouldn't Amazon just stop hiring people who are on food stamps? That's a good question. That's a point raised by Anthony Davies and James Harrigan in a piece that we have on the site, Bernie Sanders Stop Basos Act campaign, ignore several basic economic realities. And they just point out that that is basically that they point out that in other cases Bernie Sanders recognizes that if you want to dissuade people from doing something, tax it. Yep. Right. Like for the carbon tax, for example, which Bernie Sanders is a big fan of. But in this case, doesn't recognize that if you make it more expensive to hire poor people, you will have less jobs for poor people. And so it's unlikely that that's his aim. He more likely would like to see what happened. I mean, is he really looking to get Amazon to increase their salaries? Well, that's right. So my question is also, so is he eventually, so basically he's trying to replace the money we spend on food stamps, for example. So the money we spend on that, is he trying to basically say, no longer is that going to be a government funded thing that's going to be solely 100%, like they said, 100% funded by the business? Is he trying to in that way decrease the number of food stamps that we give out? I don't think so. I mean, what's the end goal there? I think ultimately what's going to happen are these people on food stamps are going to get laid off and they'll still get food stamps. And they won't have a job. So it's just going to increase dependency on government, which, of course, Bernie Sanders as a member of government and as sort of like a paternalistic figure who likes to think of himself as a benefactor of the people would love. Yeah. But I think you can imagine how that thinking goes. Since SNAP, or what we used to call food stamps, SNAP-NFN, since they peter out as your income goes up, I believe he probably is thinking that, yeah, if we can just get their incomes to go up, then we could potentially stop paying out these benefits. But what they're not factoring in is that Amazon has a choice in who they hire. They don't have to hire anybody. They can hire robots. Right. It's the same thing as with the minimum wage that like just because you're mandating that you can only hire them if you pay this, well, if it's not profitable for the company to pay that rate, then they're going to lay them off. They're going to lay them off. I think people in theory at that point have no other place to go because no other employer will be able to at least legally pay them anything lower than the minimum wage. Right. And if there was an employer who was willing to pay them more, why wouldn't they already have left Amazon to go there? I think I at least have heard about troubles that Amazon employees have. I've heard about the pickers, the people who go through the factories and pick out all the stuff that we buy to package and send off. Those people are under really hard targets for the amount of scans they do within an hour. Really tight constraints on breaks and even how they get into the building with security measures. However, all of that makes it really easy for me to get my two day deliveries. We can't have the service that we love, these two day deliveries, these quick turnarounds on purchases without giving up something somewhere. I'm not saying that makes it right. It's just we have high expectations as consumers. We really do. Have you guys, by the way, seen those videos that Bernie Sanders has put out interviewing all the different Amazon employees who are sort of having grievances against Amazon? I haven't seen those. So he's basically got maybe a room of six people who have worked as pickers in these warehouses and they're talking about harsh lighting, the security conditions, the shorter breaks, the hard targets for how many items that you're scanning that you're putting into a basket to be packed up, to be delivered to each of us. Um, and it makes me think because of course at fee, we're always kind of comparing these different imperfect systems that we have in the world. Look at these grievances, which are legitimate and I don't want to dismiss them because I would not want to work in those kind of conditions myself. But look at those grievances in context with grievances out of other sort of economic systems, right? So you look out of Venezuela, for example, where there's famine right now, where there's rampant unemployment, where there's a government that is stifling free expression, free speech. There's nothing approaching a free society any longer in Venezuela. And you compare that to a situation that Bernie Sanders features in order to get support for government action to improve ostensibly the livelihoods and the lives of these employees.  I mean, this is not obviously to, well, there's forced labor, which is the opposite of labor for money. Exactly. So not to diminish these people's individual problems, because of course we want people to be happy and productive and fulfilled, but just sort of comparing the grievances in capitalism in this particular case with the grievances that people in other sort of economic systems would have. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think like you compare it to sweatshops in foreign countries. And you think about, OK, what's the alternative? Because the, you know, the enemy isn't the fact that these companies are not willing to pay them more. Because again, they can only pay them the amount that the worker can contribute to their revenue. If they pay them more than that, they will go out of business. And that means that they are actually devaluing the resources that they're working on. And so it's really scarcity. That's the enemy. It's poverty itself. And so the fact that these employers are arranging labor in a way that can create value with sacrifice, it's a lot better than the alternatives. It's a lot better than just going hungry and not being able to produce any value at all. And especially in third world countries, it's a lot better than a lot of the alternatives like prostitution that they have and, you know, selling children and awful things like that. And so, you know, if it's justified and it is, it's actually a godsend. These sweatshops are actually a godsend to a lot of these people. All the more it's justified in America when, you know, you just the litany of things that they're complaining about that you listed, you know, hard targets to meet like that doesn't seem that bad to me. Well, and McGot Wade, I mean, she said once I went to one of her lectures on actually sweatshops and that idea and she said ultimately, which I think can be applied across, across contexts is, I mean, much like economists, we're never looking, I mean, we can't look for the perfect solution, but we can look for the better solution. And if you cannot make it better, at least know your solutions not going to make it worse. Yeah, which is a great question about the Stop Bezos Act, because I wonder when positioned with the argument that maybe this is a bad idea for having poor and maybe unskilled people being employed, I wonder how Sanders would respond to that because the laws of economics cannot be changed by legislation, right? I mean, that's something that we talk about a lot at fee. And in addition to that, something you said a moment ago, Dan, reminded me that one of the very first lessons we teach at many of our seminars is something that I think many of our students actually don't hear before they reach us, which is that scarcity is a fact. That's one of the things in our world that we do have to deal with. And it's not perfect. And in fact, I tell people sometimes when arguing with them about various sort of theoretical economic frameworks that capitalism may not be perfect. In fact, it's the least imperfect solution, at least that we've discovered thus far. And so we should be willing, like you said, Dan, to accept the costs and understand those costs and to weigh them in our decision making process. Well, it's kind of like it's the worst economic system out there, except for all the others. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's certainly not perfect. And I really like what you said, Marianne, about the, you know, in order to maintain our living standards, because like so many people are so many people who complain about Amazon are beneficiaries of Amazon's output. It just makes life so convenient.  I'm expecting a brand new phone case tomorrow before I end up going on a trip. Yeah, I literally just placed an order today. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it just goes back to what Ann Jainsen it's always about trade offs. We can give up a little bit here, but it's going to cost us somewhere else.  Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit more about sort of the notion that government benefits actually subsidize the operations of some of these big companies. So of course, we talked a little bit about Amazon, right? But there's also the contention that Walmart pays too little for their employees to not be also subsidized by government programs. So what's the deal with that? I mean, is for example, I tend to think that Walmart, when you look at their support for the minimum wage, that they're doing it for reasons that aren't entirely humane, they're doing it because they see an opportunity, in fact, to crowd out other competitors who cannot bear the minimum wage in the way that a large corporation such as Walmart does. Wait, what do you mean? Can you elaborate on that? So you're saying that Walmart basically supports publicly supports minimum wage as a concept because they know that they can afford, they can take the hit. They can compare to a small business. That's exactly right. And when we're talking about a small business in comparison to Walmart, of course, we're talking about almost anybody else, right? But they, Walmart historically have been on the front lines of advocating for higher and higher minimum wage wherever they operate. Yeah. And it goes with taxes and regulations in general that in general that the biggest players in an industry can afford to bear those burdens better than their smaller competitors can. And so what would you say to somebody who says, okay, well, that is why capitalism is bad because monopolies form naturally organically because because of things like they can take the hit, that concept that a larger company can handle, you know, business obstacles better than a small business. And like, well, that's how monopolies form. But it's not business obstacles. It's it's a government obstacle. Regulatory. Yeah. I didn't think about that. I wonder, so this whole Bezos Act, obviously it's targeting Amazon. But in my research, I discovered that roughly 52% of fast food workers are recipients of Medicaid or SNAP or a different kind of benefits. And the same goes for child care workers, home care workers, 25% of part time college faculty are receiving some kind of assistance like this. If each one of those fast food restaurants, each one of those universities is unexpected to look to the same standard, assuming that they too have at least 500 employees, what is going to happen to all to all of those places? I can't imagine all of those different kinds of organizations being able to take the hit. No, they start putting in the cashiers, the automated sort of order key asks that you see everywhere, coming up in McDonald's. And it doesn't mean that they're not affected and that the business model is not affected, because if those key asks were more efficient than workers before the legislative change, they would have adopted already. And so it's a second best alternative. And so that means that the whole process is less efficient. And that means that the hamburgers and food that they create that they produce are going to be more expensive ultimately. We like to say, sort of given some of the economics that we teach, the decisions are made on the margin. And this is one of those very marginal decisions that companies are forced in the sense to make once you have additional regulatory burdens, such as the minimum wage that increases, right? And raising McDonald's and Walmart really just brings to realization the fact that the companies that they're most angry about are the companies that serve poor people the most. I mean, that make life better for the largest amount of people in our country.  I mean, these are hallmarks of those things. And I think to, yeah, to villainize them is somewhat reductive, I think. You want to talk about accessibility? These companies provide goods and services in an extremely accessible and cost effective way. I remember Stephen Colbert on his old show, he used to have this bit where every time he'd talk about Walmart doing something, quote unquote, evil, then his punchline would be like, Oh, but I got these cheap tube socks.  But for a lot of families, it is. I was like, that is to me, that's on the margin is like, if I had to pay $5 extra for a pair of socks because it was, you know, American made, is that something I'm willing to do? And then that's a sacrifice that we're all going to have to make continually, repetitively every day. If we want Amazon to pay more for their employees, I think this goes really to the role of economics and the way in which we should think about the world, right? So economics is fairly value free. When you're doing it right, it's a fairly value free way of thinking. You can say, All right, increasing the minimum wage will raise the cost to employers to employ people. But it doesn't really say whether that's right or wrong, right?  And so you're right. You have to look at the costs separately from how you look at the economics, but the economics themselves isn't all that ambiguous. When you raise the price of something, it makes it or when you tax something, you raise the price of something and you make it less available or less possible for somewhere else. Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's interesting. So because we see these large organizations under the gun, I think people tend to compare the guy at the top, whether it's Bezos or the Walton family. And they compare and they compare them in their wealth to the average worker. And they say, Well, this guy, I don't know. I don't really know what he's doing.  Why shouldn't they earn more money? Why enjoy the benefits of this prosperity? How come Bezos is worth 150 billion bucks? But this guy can't even get $15 an hour. And I think there's some confusion about what what net worth actually means.  Yeah, like Scrooge McDuck. Yeah. That that is all wrapped up in the property that Amazon owns. That's for the Waltons. That's wrapped up in their cash registers and the carts in the market. Yeah, like even though the consumption that the Walton family and Bezos enjoys, it is higher than the average worker, of course, that they probably have nicer cars. But but that is miniscule, a miniscule part of their net worth, like most of their net worth is actually tied up in the cap productive capital that is creating these goods for the masses. And their living standards, when you think about it, are not actually that different from ours that everybody has basically the same iPhone, right? You know, everyone has four wheels. If you've got a car, it doesn't matter whether you've got a Bentley or a Toyota, you've got four wheels that can take you places. Indoor plumbing.  Yeah. And I think that yeah.  But I think it's also understanding much like the conversation we had last week with with what value you're contributing. When you talk about a professional sports player, athlete, whatever they're called, sportsman, and or, you know, a school teacher, we're talking about supply versus, you know, supply versus demand or what have you. So there's a large supply of people that can be pickers at Amazon or can do, you know, that task. And then we've got Bezos who, you know, use some sort of, he used his brain to create some product that was new and innovative, right? So he was he was paid for that adequately. And so thinking about what value you're contributing and what resources we're you're getting, you're getting also a level of risk you're taking. Yeah, you're gonna say, Dan? Yes, exactly. Have you guys seen that picture? It goes around every now and then on Facebook, it'll show up of Jeff Bezos in like 1997 in his office with the spray painted Amazon sign, right? Hair and the hair, right? That was while I was back when Amazon was just known for selling books. Yeah. Yeah. Who buys books on Amazon anymore? I mean, I know you do, Dan, you must, but they're digitized, right? You do too. Yeah, I don't use Kindles. I think that's a it skipped my generation. Like, I don't really know that many people my age that that use Kindles, but I think it's because a lot. I don't know. I'm generalizing and don't want to speak for my generation. They're gonna get mad at me, but I feel like Kindles are more you guys. And the thing about the socialists always think of it as if it was just a problem of distribution and not a problem of production. And so when Jeff Bezos was taking that picture, there was no guarantee that Amazon was even going to be a thing. Like and when when people workers complain, Oh, well, I'm doing all the work. Well, you're doing all the work because he had the idea and risked the capital to make it possible for you to do all the work. So it's like if you take him out of the equation, you've got, you know, thousands of workers that are no longer working on the same project that are off doing just different things. And this value isn't actually created. And now I can't get my book in two days. Like it is absolutely. Yeah, we are all getting, you know, a marginal amount of value every day from this large endeavor. Exactly. And that's you times millions of people. So so Jeff Bezos put his capital on the line in order to make exchanges that benefit. It's a small benefit, but a small benefit for so many people. It's like millions and millions of exchanges every time someone clicks purchase on on an Amazon link, it's like they're doing a little exchange with Jeff Bezos. That's a win-win exchange where he's benefiting all these people. And that's a lot of value. Yeah, I also have to wonder, let's say we took every cent that he's got, just strip his bank accounts. What would happen to Bezos? Is he just going to be your average Joe on the street? No, he's going to go ahead and make another billion after that. At what point does the redistribution stop? Well, and to that point, Marianne, what happens when you liquidate his entire net worth? Right. And so you take away all the cashiers you take away all the computers, all the forklifts, all the shelves, all the planes, whatever else is tied up in Amazon wealth that he owns. Is that a better situation? Even if you were to divide it evenly between 350 million people in the United States, then what? We don't have Amazon anymore. And then the next person who has an Amazon type idea is going to say, well, no, I mean, if it's going to be divided evenly between everyone. What incentive do I have to make this to do this thing? Yeah, to innovate, to change and to put myself on the line. Right. I also take just specifically with this, with this, with this policy, I am really concerned about how you're supposed to keep track of the number of people. I mean, I know how we keep track of people who are on government assistance, but in order to then manage a secondary component where you have to tax every business that has a government, somebody with government assistance on your payroll this year. I mean, just the resources that are going to go to that endeavor seem implausible. And truly, who's not getting some material benefit from government, right? I mean, Social Security recipients, technically, they've paid into it, right? But even even then, I mean, this is other people's money that is now cycling into the Social Security Fund that ends up being redistributed. A lot of us when we're retired, we all have to sign up for Medicare, right? So there are just so many different levels of government assistance. Now, does this set of precedents that says, you know, we're just going to add that additional layer on everybody, every company, every productive employer to pay a hundred percent tax on every dollar that their employees get in government assistance. It's it's a very strange precedent. And that's not government assistance. Then it's then it's a benefit paid by the company that the middleman is the government, right? That was just insane to me. And it's like if it's a benefit that that company wants to give because they want to hire good employees and they want to be competitive in the market of employees, then that's a decision that they would make. And so speaking of these administrative costs, just to give everybody an idea of what that could look like in 2017, there were forty two point one million people receiving SNAP benefits. Forty two million people that that's a huge number. I don't want to count that. Yeah. Yeah.  And so if you get to a certain point in your by getting a raise, you might actually lose money in the bargain because you are qualifying for fewer welfare benefits. And so that stalls people in their career. They just kind of like stay here. Don't either stay here or get to here. You can't kind of hang out anywhere here because you're still interesting. Right. So that's what would you call that like a welfare gap? Sort of, you know, the point at which you're making too much to qualify for these previous benefits. So your net sort of income generally ends up decreasing even though it's technically increasing. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a trap. Yeah. And and really it just makes it encourages dependency. And the thing is that people are not built to to be dependent. People people actually get satisfaction from working. And I think this attitude that work is necessarily bad, even hard work is necessarily bad, I think is is actually backwards. You know, one of the things that the Bezos Act or I guess it is the it is the Bezos Act. I was thinking of a stop Bezos Act. It would be a little too on the nose. But it it reminds me of sort of one of those sorts of laws that's actually prohibited in the Constitution. That's an older type of law that they used to have in the UK called a writ of attainer or a bill of attainer that would actually sounds fancy punish individuals in legislation. Right. So it sort of takes the punishment aspect out of the judiciary, which is traditionally the way in which we conceive of punishment for justice violations. And it actually makes a certain type or a certain person punished in legislation. And so this particular law, regardless of the name, although the name is pretty on the on the nose, stop Bezos, it's very much Amazon related reminds me so much of something. And it's not the first time we're doing it. We have all kinds of laws that kick in at a certain revenue amount. Of course, that's targeted towards certain large companies. So what's an example of a writ of attainer? Like a writ of attainer would be putting into law, for example, in explicitly, Jeff Bezos has a tax rate of ninety one percent. Oh, so it's very individual. It's specifically like Richard Lawrence is going to be taxed on his haircut later today. Exactly. Exactly. And I will be, but not any more than you would be. Right. So the notion of taxation, at least in a, you know, good framework, if you can call it that, would be that everyone's treated the same. Right. So a writ of attainer would be not everyone is treated the same. And that's what this reminds me of. But most of our laws are essentially a lot of our laws are essentially like that and maybe not down to the individual level, although they use the individual as a figurehead to represent a class. But these laws actually tend to be class warfare, where it really is zeroing in on one particular cash cow that to raid for the benefit of another progressive income tax. Well, see, here's the frustrating thing. And I know I keep coming back to the resources that will go into this, if this becomes an actuality. But I just can't stress enough that if the goal is to, if the goal is, and maybe I'm wrong in assuming that this is what the goal is to decrease government spending and to encourage, you know, private taking on private private spending on, you know, employee benefits and employee assistance, if that's the goal to decrease spending, we are going to spend more, way more money trying to keep track of this policy and trying to enforce it, I think, spending way more money on, on enacting it than we would ever save. And so that's, you know, that's issue number one. And it's also just in general, it is decreasing innovation and it's decreasing production, the value of production and the value of innovation. Additional tax on productivity. We're decreasing wealth creation in this country. I mean, that's fundamentally what it is. And I think it would increase the amount of money that taxpayer money that we're putting into the SNAP program. Because again, I think it's going to lead to layoffs of people who are on SNAP in the first place. And then because they're poorer, they will qualify for, for more benefits, more SNAP benefits currently, or at least in the year 2017, we spent 414 million on SNAP benefits. That's not walking around change. That's a lot of money. It's certainly not the biggest part of the budget, but it's significant. And, you know, and Jane, to your comment, I don't believe the end game here is to decrease the amount of money that we spend on this, right? The end game here is, in my opinion, Bernie Sanders is not interested in really seeing this bill passed, although it's a good publicity ploy. He's interested in raising the minimum wage, which comes with all the attendant problems and costs that we were talking about earlier. He really wants to get that $15 federalized minimum wage going. This is one of the ways in which he's pushing forward. How do you see that? How do you see this get being fed into that? Well, first of all, track record. He's been advocating that for three or four years now. But he's always highlighted that wealth gap between the rich and the poor, Bezos and everyone who works for him, right? And so this is yet another way to highlight the way in which Amazon and the people at the top, including Jeff Bezos, are siphoning value, at least in his opinion, from people who are working below. Minimum wage in his opinion would end up equalizing, or at least making things a little bit more fair. What do you guys think about the fact that so many people look up to Bernie Sanders as a hero, as opposed to Jeff Bezos? Bernie's out there every day saying what he believes and advocating for it in a no holds bar kind of way and seeming like a very authentic person. Jeff Bezos is not a public figure. He's not a politician. He's just running a business that ends up helping all of us. I think people tend to look at intentions, at least stated intentions, much more friendly way than they look at people who are billionaires and so far out of the league of most folks. Yeah. Well, I think people rightly, in some cases, tend to associate money with power and say they look at something like Bezos and they're like, oh, this guy is worth a billion dollar or a billion dollars.  Well, he's speaking. He's speaking for those people with no cards and he's, you know, putting these people's feet to the fire in one way or another. I think that's why people respond. Well, and especially because he has messy hair and so he doesn't really look authentic that bird's land on his podium. Right. And so you might think that well, he doesn't have power. He's not a person of power when, yeah, even though he maybe he doesn't, his personal income or his personal consumption might not be that high, but the amount of power that as a senator as part of the Senate that he has over all the people in the United States is tremendous. Well, it's a great question. I think we should probably end up talking about that at some later point.  And we'll see you next week on the FeeCast.


Hi, I'm Matthew Coase from commitmentconnection.com and today I have a question from another woman in our community who Asked me, you know, why does a man who said that he's interested? Complementary and who spends time with me becomes someone who is not as interested in furthering the relationship so just because a guy's interested in you and is Complementary and spends time with you doesn't mean that he wants a long-term Committed relationship with you. It doesn't mean that he wants anything other than to spend time with you and be interested in you and and probably want sex because most guys want sex, but If it there's this thing that I talk about in my program the keys to his commitment and In there I talk about this idea of urgency Right, and if a guy doesn't feel like there's any kind of urgency to move things forward with you then he won't move things forward with you at all and so if you want a guy to move things forward you have to Create an experience where he feels like if he doesn't take you off the dating market Then he's gonna lose you You know, that's really one of the big big things that a guy needs is to feel like he needs to take you off the dating market immediately so that he doesn't end up losing you to another guy or I Don't know another woman or something Another reason that a guy might not move things forward with you is if he doesn't feel like You're in alignment with him if he can't see you as somebody that he could be with in the far distant future and The last reason that I'm gonna give you here is that a guy might feel inadequate or unworthy A big complaint that I get from a lot of women is guys that come on really really strong at the beginning And then kind of drop off and and one of the reasons that that happens That there's several reasons that that happens But one of the big reasons that it happens is because a guy sometimes will Overpromise or try to make himself look really really good in front of you and He might not be as Awesome and badass as he tries to appear to be When he's first when he's doing that so Yep, those are the reasons and that's it for this video If you'd want if you want more information about how to attract a quality man into a committed Lasting relationship make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm Matthew coast and I'll speak with you again soon