Boom. What's up money geeks, Mr. V here. Welcome to another video. I know it's been a minute, but I'm gonna give you guys a quick update as to where your boy has been. And then I'll give you guys some direction as to where this channel is gonna be going, moving forward as far as content. So that's what we're gonna cover into this video. But before we get started, guys, if you're new to the channel, we talk about how to earn money, how to save money, how to invest and build wealth. So if that's something that interests you, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell so you don't miss out on new content. So it's been a minute since I uploaded to the channel, just a brief recap as to where I have been. I took some time off because we had two really young boys that needed my attention before they started school. So I kind of wanted to spend time with them and do some stuff and do outdoor stuff before they started school. Because as you guys know, if you have kids in school, your kids spend more time in school than they do with you. So I wanted to make sure that we spend a little bit of time with the kids before they started school. So now my kids are in school, both of them, which is kind of great because that gives me now the liberty to focus on creating content. So that is the bottom line. I appreciate some of you guys that actually reach out with checking on me asking if I was okay and I am really pleased to report that I am doing great. I've been wonderful and I'm excited and ready to start pumping out content for you guys. And so that's the reason why, again, I was gone for a little bit, but I'm back and not just back, but with so much to share with you guys. So moving forward, as far as content on the channel, I am going to diversify the content a little bit. So you guys have seen maybe in the news or read about it with the chat GPT and AI, there's been so many opportunities as far as earning money that we see. So I want to bring that to you guys. Again, if you guys understand what we do here on the channel, we talk about how to earn money, how to save it, how to invest it and build wealth. So if you don't have money to even do anything, how do you get extra money to save and invest? So our goal would be to focus on those three things and show you where you can create that money, show you how you can secure that money in saving it and then show you how you can grow it in investing. So you're gonna see again some diversification as far as the content here on the channel. So that's what I wanted to kind of bring up to you guys. And again, from the bottom of my heart, I do appreciate all of you guys that reach out to me via email, via social media, checking on me, or even in the comment section. Some of you guys reach out via comment section asking if I was okay. That is just a lot. I don't even think I deserve that, but you guys will care about me enough to kind of reach out and check, make sure I was doing okay. So that is where moving forward, the channel is gonna be doing. I'm excited about adding new content, diversifying the content so that you guys can take advantage of all the opportunities that are out there. The market has been, what I would say, up and down, roller coaster. You see, some weeks the market would be up, some weeks would be down. The whole 2020 and 2021 where everybody could just be in the market, that part is gone. So now it's actually people being smart. And if you guys remember back then, my objective or my goal I kept telling you guys is, don't lose sight of long-term investment because overall, that is what wins. So when you make money, if you're trading, you make money, you put it in your long-term investment and allow it to grow. And again, I have been quiet as far as uploading videos, but I haven't been quiet with my personal investing. As a matter of fact, you guys know how this works. When the market is down, that's when you go shopping.  And so anytime I see a discount on the market, I try to find extra cash and pump it in there. So that cash becomes long-term growth for me. So I find good growth stocks or if you're not so careful about finding them, you just find some good growth ETFs or maybe index funds that you can actually invest in. And if you don't have any of those, again, those are some of the things that I'm gonna be putting out more content about showing you guys good ETFs, good index funds that you can invest in for long-term growth if you're looking for dividends. So I'm gonna be, again, like I said, going about diversifying content here on the channel. So look for that coming up again. I'm excited to be back. It's been a minute, I miss creating content, but as a father, as a husband, my obligation number one was to my wife and my kids and my family and as a Christian to God. And so I wanted to make sure that I do those things first and I prioritize those things then before I can get back to creating content. And I think I can report, I mean, co-heartedly that I am in a good place of taking care of my family, taking care of my obligations to God and then everything and then creating content. So again, if you are new to the channel, I appreciate you subscribing. My goal this year is to kind of grow the channel and get us to get more people to grow their wealth through earning more money, saving more money and investing. So if you haven't already, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and join the journey as we continue to improve ourselves here. So again, let me know in the comment section, what do you think about me diversifying content, adding more? Is that something that excites you or you think it's like, oh my goodness, what is it gonna be? Like I mean, like I said, it's gonna be great content.  I don't go out just creating content just for the sake of creating. I try to find something that I have benefited from and then I bring that to share it with you guys again. Let me know in the comment section what your thoughts are. And if you have any ideas as to what you want to see me cover specifically as far as earning money, saving money and investing that whole space, kind of drop in the comment section. I love hearing from you guys because you guys have some wonderful ideas. So do not hesitate again to drop your thoughts in the comment section.  Peace.


hank you. Good morning everyone. My name is Emily Taylor and I'm currently a service coordinator at Champlain Housing Trust out of Burlington. Thank you for your time today and for the opportunity to testify to the amazing work that Champlain Housing Trust and agencies all around the state have been doing. This is actually my third year attending Vermont homelessness Awareness Day but my first year testifying the previous two years I attended as a housing advocate when I worked for Chittenden Community Action. I started with Champlain Housing Trust in March of last year, just two weeks before Governor Scott issued the stay home stay safe order, and immediately after Champlain Housing Trust works with the state of Vermont and community partners to transform the Harbor Place Hotel in Shelburne into a COVID-19 isolation and recovery housing site for those who did not have a home to stay safe in and for those who would struggle to isolate at home due to living with immunocompromised persons. My role very quickly shifted into providing short term service coordination for guests staying in the COVID-19 motel to help them connect with coordinated entry to apply for three squares and begin working on a temporary housing plan for after their quarantine period ended. We served 102 households through the end of September at Harbor Place and then in October CARES Act funding allowed us to purchase the Ho Hum Motel in South Burlington for this purpose, which is still operational today. To date we have served 169 households at the Ho Hum, so that's 271 unduplicated households served between the two COVID sites in 10 months. Harbor Place has since reverted to its original model, a motel serving GA emergency housing guests. In addition to purchasing the Ho Hum, Champlain Housing Trust also purchased Handys extended stay suites in Colchester with coronavirus relief funds made available through the CARES Act. This hotel converted into office and shelter space for up to 21 households for steps to end domestic violence, who as of last month have fully moved in. Steps reported a 50% increase in domestic violence cases due to the pandemic. And finally, yet importantly, Champlain Housing Trust also purchased the Baymont Inn in Essex Junction with CARES Act funding to convert the building into 68 permanent apartments. The building was renamed Susan's Place, aptly named after Susan Ainsworth Daniels. Susan was a longtime social worker at Champlain Housing Trust for over 25 years and began the development of our resident services department until her passing last March. All of these projects, but Susan's Place especially have been a major demonstration of the extraordinary partnership Champlain Housing Trust maintains with the Chittenden Continuum of Care and coordinated entry system. I'm sure that you've been hearing about these partnerships from all around the state today. All 68 households who moved into Susan's Place moved in from literal homelessness and through vouchers made available from both the Burlington and Vermont State Housing Authorities, as well as many Vermont rental subsidy vouchers and CARES support from the state of Vermont, we were able to ensure affordable housing to some of the most vulnerable Vermonters in our community. I'm now the site-based service coordinator for Susan's Place and I'm offering support to all 68 households here. I'm actually still in the process of moving into my office out here. And I'm now offering support to a gentleman, John, who experienced chronic homelessness before moving into Susan's Place. He was housed in Vermont over five years ago, but was evicted after his apartment sustained significant property damage inflicted by guests that he was frequently inviting over. And unfortunately in this case they were not coming over for dinner and charades, but because they knew that they had a place in the community where they could go to abuse heroin and substances alike. John grew up in an extremely abusive household and over time he thought that he learned that saying yes to other people and letting people do what they wanted to do was how to build lasting relationships and make other people happy. But not long after meeting these people did he become addicted himself, suddenly paying rent, keeping the utilities on and respecting his neighbors weren't much of a priority. He learned services from agencies who reached out wanting to help him, and ultimately it wasn't until he was evicted that he understood the gravity of the lifestyle he had been living, though today he would tell you that he wasn't really living for himself. The last five years were a constant uphill battle for him to meet his basic needs every day and work towards stable housing again. He entered into a lengthy rehabilitation program and still goes to the Chittenden Clinic to maintain his sobriety. He had very large debts to pay to his previous landlord and housing subsidy provider, which is a barrier to housing that we see in many cases. But thankfully for John he was able to finish those payments last year due to the rapid resolution housing initiative fund, which was made available from the CARES Act as well. Over time he began saying no to toxic people in his life and has maintained connections with his support team, which now includes me. And every few days here at Susan's Place I'll see him come into the lobby and just sit so he can say hi to his neighbors who are coming home. Susan's Place has been a really better sweet project for me personally. I couldn't be happier to see so many people in permanent housing, but yet it's heartbreaking to know that they couldn't access affordable permanent housing until Susan's place opened in November, which was almost a full eight months since I last worked with some of them as their housing advocate. Helping the 68 households find housing in just two or three months is really certainly something to celebrate and we have celebrated. But there is still so much work to be done for the hundreds if not thousands of other Vermonters that are still experiencing homelessness and temporarily living in hotels all across the state. I couldn't help notice yesterday that Governor Scott proposed a one time appropriation for affordable housing development on top of the normal allocation so as I conclude my testimony for you today I will just leave you with this that Champlain Housing Trust is absolutely ready to create or build more affordable housing just as soon as we can. Thank you again for your time. Thank you. Any questions. Okay I'm going to move on to Steve Marshall. Yes, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Steven Marshall I've been an advocate and an activist for homeless community here in Burlington for at least five years. And in that time, I mostly circulated with the folks who are living outdoors. They speak for them. I'm really grateful for and admire the testimony that has come today. House testimony and said testimony about housing, about services to homeless folks, but the group that is unspoken for who I stand to speak for are those who lose their permission to live anywhere. When you lose your housing, you move to a car, you move to a tent. You might move into an ATM. There are the situations when you lose your housing or can be very desperate. And what I what I'm here to ask you to do is to consider a plan that I call safe parking safe camping. And the folks in this phase, they don't have permission to live anywhere. So the proposal is to require towns have a plan so that when someone loses their housing. There's a plan to help them do something. One story that I heard was from a guy who's sleeping in his car, and the cop would come and knock on the window. So you can't sleep here. If you're homeless and you're living in your car, you have to be you're constantly being shuttled along. I lived in my vehicle for a long time it was really hard to find someplace I could safely park. So the idea is to bring everyone who is between housing within the law by having a law that helps them find a way to be safe. So the proposal is on the piece, the CH is a vehicle. I'm not forgetting the Google Drive, the folder. And I probably could find it. But anyway, it's in the folder with the other documents prepared for today. And it's called safe camping safe parking and I hope we'll take a look at it. It's probably for somebody in the legislative committee a little immature, but I think you'll see that I've covered a lot of the details. Thank you very much for the chance to speak. Thank you, Steven. Sue, would you like to talk to us. I do. Are you, can you hear me okay. You loud and clear. Okay. Thank you so much for having us here today. I think you met me last week. And you know that I'm the executive director of capstone community action. The anti poverty organization in Washington, LaMoyle and Orange counties and part of a network of community action agencies around the state. And today I am here really as a member of the Washington County homeless response team, which really the state brought together in the immediate onset of COVID, but has become an ongoing task force, and we've been working collectively ever since and we've really worked as a collective force ever since the first days of the shutdown, and we have together stood up critical supports for our homeless neighbors in our county. I'm really pleased to really be testifying together with down streets, tremendous asset director Eileen Peltier, who has also worked with me as what we called the unified commanders really early on we set up the Washington County incident command center. She also continues and we meet weekly and she's really a key leader of our task force so we will be submitting written testimony and just speak briefly today, sharing our insights are experienced the data and how we've worked through this crisis but also where we go from here. Thank you all so much for taking the time, like you are today to really reflect and listen and advocate for solutions for homelessness and housing and security. We know that homeless being homeless is deeply traumatic. It's stigmatizing and can really result in long term negative impacts on people's physical mental and financial health and just want to say thank you for taking on this responsibility forward today, and throughout your session. You know, we just came from the house and heard quite extensive tense testimony from around the state and really the point is that every region of our state has responded to the pandemic in different ways. So critical to understand is we have all been stepping up really tires tirelessly to meet extraordinary and unfolding demands of our time, and I want to emphasize that we've worked very closely with our state agencies and I want to shout out and commend tremendous appreciation work from the Agency of Human Services, particularly DCF children's and families the Office of Economic Opportunity, as well as the departments of health and mental health, and also the Emergency Operations Center, all of these agencies and entities have been dedicated to their partners. And we feel thrilled, especially by the state's proactive agreement to actually place homeless neighbors into hotels that's a huge leap. They eventually took over the feeding of the hotel guests that many organizations like Capstone were doing actually for five months. And they have also been very much supporting the team with resources. So housing counseling helping moving people out of housing and security, mental health, medical supports, safety and security at the hotels which has become quite acute. But I also want to recognize the key programs that you have funded through CARES Act. These have been essential from the housing subsidy vouchers you were talking about the rental assistance and rental rehab for our landlords. We have a rapid resolution funding which is really essential because it's flexible and how it's used and the eligibility for these funds. And all of these collective resources have made really the difference in our community and we are hugely optimistic and hopeful that these resources will continue to be available at least for six months, but we need believe we need them much longer. I want to ask Nathan if he can put a slide up we have prepared an impact report, which really tries to lay out what we've done but also to emphasize that while we've done a tremendous amount. We continue to face dire numbers that you will see here. I want to say at the outset that the bottom really shows you, I think, if you can see the whole thing. The point is that a home is part of the solution but it's not the whole solution and as you look at all of the services and we lay them out in the second page of this report I encourage you to really see the numbers of things we've done. It really shows you how much it takes to serve this community. Up the upper left here you will see the the graph that really looks at the numbers and the change the dramatic escalation of the numbers of people in our hotel based on our coordinated entry report. Early March, we had in Washington County 128 households now 324 households 153% increase that represents 396 adults and 91 children. So many children that are homeless and we serve many of them through our Head Start program. On the positive side we've actually managed to house permanently 65 of these households that's a huge accomplishment but not nearly enough, and just as critical, we've created 67 new units incredible advance, but again, not meeting the need a paralleling this we have our wonderful shelter, and I do want to recognize at the bottom of the slide there you'll see all of the members of our task force you're almost there one little bit further down can you see, includes another way it includes the Agency of Human Services, the Good Samaritan Haven, the parent child center of Washington County, and it includes our Good Samaritan Haven, and the Washington County Mental Health Services so all of them work together. Our shelter. Before the pandemic we had 76 bed capacity. Now we have 25 bed capacity. So this 51 bed decrease is not going to simply come back after COVID. On top of that these are only shelter beds for individuals, no families, and we already heard 91 children. So we have a tremendous challenge. I think that these numbers can feel overwhelming. But we really feel that also this year has taught us that we're stronger than we think we're more capable than we believe and we are even more resilient than we ever imagined but I feel it is so important to remember that we can do amazing things and we have to use this crisis as a foundational time to go forward and not back to where we had been. So with that I'm going to hand the screen to Eileen to give you more of where we go from here. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you, sir. Eileen, welcome. Good morning, Nathan. You can take the slide down now if you'd like. Thank you. I'm Eileen Peltier, Executive Director of Downstreet Housing and Community Development. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today on Homeless Awareness Day. My role today is to share some specifics about what we, the Washington County Homeless Task Force, together believe is needed. Sorry, I usually do the verbose inspirational speech but not today. Today we need action. So here we go. First, I will touch on the three-legged stool of housing supply, subsidy, and case management. Supply in Washington County is tenuous and totally inadequate. I don't overuse the word crisis, especially these days, but I do think it is time to think of our housing supply challenge as a crisis. Capital funding is critical. For our region, we can immediately use capital funding to support development like our upcoming project in Berlin that will serve 30 families, as well as the many pipeline projects waiting to queue up for funding. We can use capital to bring more offline privately owned rentals back online, which would mean a continuation of the rental rehab program that was so successful in the past year. We believe there is a strong potential to successfully house individuals in a single room occupancy peer-based model. Washington County Mental Health Services has leased four buildings and is currently housing a total of 14 individuals with great success. We would use capital to expand on this model. Yesterday's news that the governor's budget includes an overall 34.8 million to Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is very welcome. We hope you all will support the governor's recommendation, which will truly begin to address the housing supply crisis. The second leg of the stool is subsidy. We need more and we need it to be committed to projects early. Housing supply and subsidy are codependent. The Biden administration signaling they will be increasing voucher availability and the governor's increased capital proposal. There is some reason for hope. Case management is the final leg of the stool. To be clear, case management directly impacts housing retention, which is the household's ability to stay permanently housed. This is no small issue in Vermont. For some of our neighbors, an apartment is a temporary respite between episodes of homelessness. Permanent housing is a misnomer for too many Vermonters. Our task force is working hard to understand the many and varied ways in which we case manage our vulnerable neighbors. There are many successful programs and a strong group of providers, but we can do more. We need the flexibility to use our funds in innovative ways, and we need more funds to meet the growing need for case management. Speaking to the emergency shelter beds for individuals, as Sue said, we've lost 51 beds due to COVID restrictions. In the near term, we need to develop 40 to 50 new beds. To make this happen, we need both capital to develop the building and a commitment to ongoing operating support through the Agency of Human Services. For families, we believe expanding family supportive housing vouchers and associated programs is critical. This program combines vouchers and case management, and it works. The Family Center of Washington County has increased case management in the hotels, but more is needed both immediately and as part of a long term solution for families. If we can adjust the supply issue, putting families directly into permanent housing through the family supportive housing program is a far better option than hotel stays. For families, we can do more for the 91 children in our hotels today. To ensure we coordinate effectively and efficiently, we need financial support to invest in the development of a virtual hub for homeless services in central Vermont. Our task force has built a sense of purpose and partnership, and we would embrace the opportunity to develop a virtual hub that provides cohesive coordinated programs for people experiencing homeless across Washington County. We are committed to our partnership and strongly believe we can have a greater impact if we can get capacity support to move our vision along. Many of these requests can have an immediate impact. Others will take time. Time, we may not have. At this point, we understand that the hotel system, including the enhanced case management, will end sometime in 2021. We want to say clearly that we believe this would create not only a short term disaster, but would critically reduce the long term success of the programs I've just highlighted. Continuing to invest in the hotels, while simultaneously funding the innovative solutions identified is the only humane option. This is not to suggest that we don't have problems at the hotels with so many people congregating, but we are working on that for a joint approach of security and supports with other community partners. Certainly, it is a costly solution, but we have the opportunity in this moment to permanently reinvent our system so that the likelihood of homelessness will be greatly reduced and the quality of life for our neighbors will be greatly improved. Before I close, I do want to speak briefly to the AHS's proposal to transfer the GA, the general assistance hotel funds to each county. Although we understand there is much more to discuss about this proposed program. We want to say at this time, our task force has very serious concerns, and we do not support the proposal. We will be pleased to testify more specifically on this in the future. In closing, I want to thank the committee for your time today, your dedication to helping our most vulnerable Vermonters and your support over many years. We certainly can say these are challenging times they are, but for too many Vermonters every day is a struggle that begins and ends with a worry about whether or not they will be able to rest with a roof over their head and a warm bed. Too often, we stigmatize individuals and families experiencing homelessness. We believe that focusing on housing neighbors as a systemic challenge is a moral imperative for Vermont, moving the conversation from homeless to unhoused neighbors speaks to the need to address the system as a whole. With that, we stand ready to continue our work and to do more and more and more. Thank you. Thanks, Eileen. It's about noon and the vigil is about to get started. Committee members if you want to join that you can do it on YouTube or you can connect with Nathan or air heart and they could let you into the room. I want to thank everybody it's been a long morning and great presentations and incredible amount to think about. So, a bid you do until I guess this afternoon at one.