PA House Housing and Community Development — 2026-03-26

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you all for having us here today. I now call this Housing and Community Development Committee, Informational Committee, Meaning to Order. My name is Brandon Markosik, and I am the chair of the committee. And as you can tell, I talk with a stutter. So please bear with me tonight. Before we start our agenda, I would like to thank our superintendent today, Maggie.

So Dr. Vitale, if you could come up and say a few words before we kick this off. and right here. So little sidebar note, this is my high school. I don't want to tell you what year I graduated. And I bleed purple. I am a Cavalier at heart. Even though our school district does have Cavaliers and Timberwolves. So we are two. Yes, but I was a Cavalier. So my name is Maggie Vitale, and I'm the superintendent of the East Stroudsburg Area School District. And like Representative Prost, I am also an alumni of the East Stroudsburg Area School District. So we are very happy to have you and host you. Welcome to East Stroudsburg. We hope that you had some time to drive around and see our beautiful, wonderful community. And for our families, this is a really important topic. So thank you all for coming out and spending some time and talking about affordable housing. So thank you.

attendance here on I'm leave on I'm leave here on his way but on a leave. Five minutes out. On a leave. On a leave. On leave. On leave. He's here. On leave. It's such a nice day. On leave.

Rep Tordzik, if you'd like to have any comments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's nice to be here in the Poconos. I enjoyed my trip up on a beautiful day. I got a little bit of a cold, so I apologize. And I looked outside and I saw the track and field crew. I felt going back in 40 years, 45 years, to my track and field days. So if I leave the meeting early to go do some hurdles you know where I be Thank you Representative This is also my district is about 5 so pretty far away from here I'm from outside of Pittsburgh, so this is quite the journey for me, but very happy to be here. This is my first time here. So I got to take a quick tour around town, and I really liked what I saw. I wish I could have a town in my district that we could go for a coffee and grab something and not have to have a car. And that's something that where I live, you have to have a car. So that's one thing that I noticed in my quick 10-minute drive with my friend Tara Probst here that I wish we could have back home where I'm from. But with that, I will open it up to Representative Probst.

Thank you all, first and foremost, Chairman, members of the committee, thank you, Representative Probst, always being available to us. And when we come up for Hill Day, you make the appointment, you give us the space so we can talk about the different things that are happening in housing. What I do appreciate that you are saying is attainable. A lot of times people say affordable housing. And many of the times the challenges before us are more than just monies. There's other opportunities that stop people from being able to attain. As home prices are rising and associated costs have risen, even individuals that we would consider having good jobs, good paying jobs, are finding themselves priced out of homeownership. Now, we talk about the short-term rentals. we talk about those different opportunities we're not here to stop capitalism i understand people want to get the most amount for their properties however one of the things we've talked about is having that additional dwelling unit getting zone more zoning permitting to allow people to be able to maybe use the garage and make that an apartment or housing for maybe an aging family member that can open up housing because that means and gives the opportunity for that person to then sell their home people don't have anywhere to go especially for the fact that 10 years ago those interest rates were 3 percent 4 percent now for them to buy a property it's higher so that's a challenge also prices have gone up as a homeowner as a as a person that has real estate, I want to have that generational wealth. I don't think we should do things to stop that. However, there could be opportunities, let's say for first responders, essential workers, that there's an opportunity that maybe through banking, an interest rate can be lowered for people. Because we want to have teachers. We want to have doctors. We want to have the policemen. People cannot afford, because again, we've talked about it, and that's a whole other thing, but our minimum wage. So there's so many moving parts that we need to work on and work with, but what I will say, going back to getting the additional dwelling units, we are about 100,000 units lower in the state as far as that we need to sell in order for people to have homes. The way we can do that, I feel one of the ways, is with zoning and making it the possibilities to be able to use some of these homes that are already existing and create an opportunity to put maybe a one apartment for the grandparents And again, if we go back in the days when we did have that multi-generational living, those kids, the parents can go work. The kids come home from school. There's somebody there to help make a meal, help take care of those other pieces of the puzzle. We can all put the monies together and build accordingly. And I think when people are comfortable and they're feeling good and that family unit is strong, it makes the next generation just that much stronger. I have so much on this topic, but I don't want to take over the whole day. So thank you so much for the opportunity of chatting with you all today. And thank you all for coming out and knowing that this is such an important conversation that we need to have, especially here on the Pocono Mountains. Thank you.

Thank you all. I actually also want to add that I'm also the Executive Director of Community Development of the Poconos, which is an organization that's a charitable organization that's focused on trying to get more housing developed in the, actually, the four-county region of northeast Pennsylvania. So with that, I want to ask a question. How many of you remember COVID essential workers? That's who we're talking about. We're talking about the person at the grocery store. We're talking about the Amazon driver who brought stuff when you didn't want to leave your house. We're talking about the administrator worker at the jail who's got a good job with the county, but effectively the amount that they're making, these are working folks, is not enough to effectively cover the rent or their mortgage even, as that might be. Also, grandma and grandpa, you know, over the river and through the woods. Well, effectively, grandpa could fix everything, and grandma could make dinner for 12 out of two sticks and a pound of hamburger, but grandma and grandpa, that was when they were in their 50s and 60s, and now they're in their 80s. Now they're out in the boonies because that's what they wanted when they moved to the Poconos. Now they're isolated. They're isolated as far as mental health. They're isolated. They can't get in. They get their medications. They can't go to the doctor. They can't go food shopping very easily. They hate driving when it starts to get dark. They really would like to have a place where they could feel safe and live in a community, and actually their kids would come and visit them. They don't want to have to move up to Scranton or down to Philadelphia or the Valley or somewhere else. They want to have a place to live somewhere nearby that family will continue to visit them. So finding senior housing, as Representative Probst mentioned, is really, really important. So I'm sorry, but I have a little bit of a laundry list. So FAIR, the PHARE program, it's been working to be at $100 million a budget. please continue that path and once it is at that path, please make sure it's indexed to inflation. And please do not try to add limitations into the FAIR program. It is one of the most flexible programs. It has solved so many problems that really require out of the box thinking to address and there are so many other programs where it's limited, you can only spend it this way and the dime has to be on this edge in order to be able to spend it. Those programs are often not so successful. FAIR has been amazingly successful. We've been able to use it to help with homelessness, with keeping people housed, and with building housing. It's an incredibly useful tool. Also, I think you all may have a handout. I want you to flip it over, and on the back, there's a little table that talks about the most expensive areas. I want you to notice that first is Philadelphia and Camden, but right after that's Pike County. And then comes East Stroudsburg, which is Monroe County. And then comes Allentown, Bethlehem. These are the most expensive places to live in Pennsylvania. And then look at the column to the right, fast food workers, janitors, people in health care. These are the salaries of people in these industries. That's Northeast Pennsylvania. It's Monroe, but it's also all of Northeast Pennsylvania. What I'd like to ask is, as you're updating legislation and or providing guidance to the agencies that administer FAIR and other housing funds, is to give credence, to give weight to where the housing problem is most acute. If housing is most acute, housing is more expensive compared to the cost of living in the Northeast, then perhaps there should be some weighting to that. If we fix this problem here, which would be awesome, and it ends up being Pittsburgh, where this is a problem? Well, then wait towards Pittsburgh. So that's one ask I've got. Next ask is the housing action plan that the governor has come up with. We actually were able to host the first roundtable was here in our part of the country when we did more front doors in November 2024. I was just at another, we did another more front doors for Carvin County and Morgan Boyd spoke and actually gave everybody in the room an update. I'm really excited about a lot of the things that are in the housing action plan. I'm hoping that the request for a bond issuance will get approved. I think that will make a huge difference and it's a really innovative way to address the issue. There are resources for municipal planning because we talked about zoning. Most of the parts of northeast Pennsylvania, The supervisors and the municipalities, they don't have resources. Most of them are actually even part-time or not even paid. They don't have the resources to understand how to redo their ordinances, how to actually apply for a 537 grant to get the water and sewer extended in the area. They don't have the resources to do this. They need consultants. That takes money. The municipal planning grants that are available, even those they don't know how to apply for, but some of the things in the housing action plan do try to address that. I'm hoping they continue to get approved. There are other ideas with model ordinances and regulatory changes that are being recommended. I pretty much endorse all of them. A couple ones specifically. One of them talks about Act 137. This was a funding model that was set up many, many years ago, such that local revenues that come out of transfer fees when properties change hands, that they could be used for addressing housing issues. There were also some restrictions on you can't raise those. And this was quite a while back. So they haven't really increased by much. Now, I know the real estate agent might not be crazy about them, but even if it was an extra $2 per transaction, cumulatively, that's a lot of extra money to be able to do things with, either helping with homelessness or helping with developing housing. So Act 137. Now another one that I going to ask for that is not in the Housing Action Plan is to address prevailing wage Prevailing wage the trigger was set in 1963 in 1963 is today It was intended to be a tool to make sure that commercial projects that were funded by state funding went to union funds, union programs. And my dad was a union carpenter. He worked for Novingers down in Harrisburg, Strawberry Square and Three Mile Island. he was on those projects. They provided funding for when he was in between jobs. They provided our insurance for our family. I'm absolutely pro-union, but there's a place and time for it, and what was in place and time in 1963 is different than what it's currently defined as right now. So I know that's not in the plan. I would like to see that for a lot of different reasons. Specifically, programs where we're trying to get some of that housing funding to help people who are in homes that they no longer can maintain, that is subject to that $25,000 cap, which means that roofing, fixing the roof on a house, can often be over $25,000. And particularly if you have to bundle that with repairing the windows or putting in a new heating system, whatever else, now the project goes over the $25,000 limit, and here's where it really comes in. It's not the fact that it increases the cost. It's the fact that a contractor in rural Pennsylvania or any area, effectively the local contractors, they don't meet prevailing wage because they don't have the type of staff that is looking for that. They can't do one project at prevailing wage and then do the next project at not prevailing wage. And what ends up happening is the contractor cannot explain and cannot keep his staff happy when one of them is getting $28 an hour and the other one is getting $22 an hour. And consequently, contractors say, you know what? I don't want that. All the paperwork with L&I and everything else, that's not even the problem. It's the fact that I have to deal with my staffs. I really just don't want your project. Thank you. And I just did a project which was roofing at a food pantry that I also run, and it was $42,000. There was only one bidder, and actually even that one bidder hasn't gotten all his paperwork in because they don't do it very often. I'm now, as a non-profit, waiting to get reimbursed because he can't get the paperwork that's required for prevailing wage. This is important for housing and so many other things. Continuing on, sorry, laundry list. Cut me off if you have to, but regardless, there are state agencies that all of us work with. At one point I was looking at, we had a redevelopment authority was looking for new leadership, and I was interested in the position. But I talked to those who run redevelopment authorities and housing authorities and other organizations that depend upon DCED-type funding. And they all told me, no, I'm going to retire. Nope, I'm changing jobs. Effectively, this is the hardest job in the world. When you are trying to meet all the requirements, particularly for DCED, CDBG-type funding, this is incredibly difficult. And there are communities across Pennsylvania who are basically, they won't apply for some of the competitive grants that they may be eligible for. It's because the paperwork and the hassle is too much. So where we can work on making it easier for those agencies that do want to and are willing to go for funding, we need to make sure that these processes are consistent from region to region, state to state, or county to county, because when it's different, when chaffing changes, means you've got to completely change the way you do your reporting, they simply won't do it again. There are some things in there also with human services and evictions you guys already know Seal those evictions If those eviction court orders if somebody was basically there was an eviction court order and they ended up not being evicted because the judge found in their favor that should be sealed and not counted against them in the future. Yep. This is super important. And it's such an easy lift. It's such an easy lift, really. The last one is, and I've got to laundry this here, I'm going to roll them up into one. Be pragmatic. You're as bad as me. I know. I'm sorry. And everybody else tells me about it all the time. I'm sorry. But be pragmatic. We come up with new guidelines that are, this would be really good. We should limit so that people can't raise the rents by this, that, or the other thing. Or we need to make sure that there are always left-handed plugs by the toilets in all units because that's the safest way to do it. We, to a great extent, have made building and construction and development impossible. impossible even for full market rate housing. It's difficult, let alone if somebody wants to make naturally occurring affordable housing. If they want to be able to do that without having to use some special grant they have to wait forever for, it's too expensive with all the different, not just the zoning, but it's just we made it. There is one community in our area that basically has made a rule that if you have more than two stories in a multifamily, you must have an elevator. All buildings. You know what hasn't happened there? Nothing has been built. There have been not any apartment complexes built because everyone says it's not necessary to put an elevator into every single building. So nothing gets built. We need to be careful that as we make rules to make life better, safer, or whatever, they're all well-intentioned, but effectively we have to weigh against the fact that does that make it impossible to actually build that thing in the first place. I will finally shut up.

No, she is awesome. Could you guys hear me? I think I did. Hello? Okay, sorry about that, guys. Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chair, thank you so much for just having me here today. And I was actually going to say that having met Tara when she was mayor, I never met somebody who more tirelessly served a population as an elective representative. And she opened up my eyes to so many different things. I'm grateful to call her a friend and work with her. And I'm grateful that you asked me to be here today. I'm not a content expert like these folks are and thank God they're here to tell you all the formal things that could be done but if I could say there's a couple if I may and if you can indulge me just a couple things I'd like to say yeah I'm very very fortunate to be involved with an industry that's thriving here the tourism industry there's no question in the Pocono Mountains the tourism industry is the number one provider of labor income so we provide 40 of the labor income in the market that representative probes the four counties that were just outlined And out of all the 11 tourism regions we have the highest level of income contribution We generate $7.2 billion in direct and indirect spending, and 75% of that comes in outer market, which is a really strong economic driver for us, which we're grateful for if companies like Kalahari and Mr. Nelson taking $600 million to $700 million out of his own pocket and investing it in our region. However, the one thing I want to talk about is what's constraining us from diversifying our economic base is the fact that we don't have, and I'm going to use the word attainable, attainable in workforce housing. That's a huge impediment. The first time that we were fortunate to have Secretary Seiger come up, he tore Jim Thorpe, so I effectively tackled him. and the first thing I should have said is, how much money are you going to give for tourism marketing? But I didn't. The first thing I said to him is, what are we going to do about housing? We're effectively being choked for lack of not being able to have attainable and workforce housing. And I explained it to him. He was very gracious. He gave me his time. He listened to everything that I said. And then we invited him to successive meetings to kind of brief him on where we were at. And I hope we had a little piece of bringing that to light. He was a smart guy. He's been in Pittsburgh. His background is in economic development, all things that he did. He understood where we were coming from. I know with working in our industry, we are absolutely seeing companies that aren't locating here for a number of different reasons. One of them is workforce and attainable housing. It's just not here. Secondly, when we do have interest from parties, zoning is oppressive. And when I spoke with Secretary Seiger the first time, I highlighted that to him. And, you know, I believe with my heart that we need, and I came, I was a school board president for 12 years. I'm all about local control and government, and I believe it's important. But they're unreasonably withholding – that's like a legal word. I looked that up. They're unreasonably withholding zoning because there's a lot of nimbyism related to it, and that's very unfortunate. I just think it needs global reform from the state level because unless we really attack that problem, I don't think you're really going to see any effort because it could be, in the state level, you guys are great, you give us tools, but then it's blocked at the local level. So that just puts the brakes on everything. And you can understand why people want certain things on development. Coming from the tourism industry, sure. I want to see the environment be protected. We invest $300,000 to $400,000 a year picking up litter in our market because we feel it's important. So we understand that, but we also understand that in order for companies to locate here and invest like they have, they have to be able to have a confidence that their employees will be housed. And then the other thing, too, is it breaks your heart to see people move out of the area because they can't find housing here. Two really quick things, if I may. We had somebody who wanted to work for us at the Visitors Bureau. I've known the kid for years. He worked with one of our partners. he wanted to move here in the worst way and work for us. We had a position that was open and he wasn't applying for it and I called him. I said, Matt, why aren't you applying for this job? He said, Chris, I can't find place to live. I can't move up there. The rent is double when I'm paying. Actually, he's in Lancaster. So, and he loves it. It's a great, and I used to work in Lancaster. It's a great place, but he wanted to move up here too. He said, Chris, I can't, I can't find a place to live. So also there's a talent drain. We can attract talent. I mean, there's, I know I'm probably speaking to the choir in a lot of different ways, but there's a lot of things that are happening here that are pervasive. When you scratch the surface, housing seems to be at the base of it. And I know that you know that, but I think the more that you hear that, you know, I hope that you'll keep that in mind as you look at these things holistically. And I think what the governor did, it was great that they do have a housing plan because there's a recognition that something needs to be done on a global level. But the final thing, too, is that I would like to dispel is that our industry does care about the quality of life in our marketplace. And I have to give a shout out to the PMVB board who authorized us in what would seem like a disparate kind of thing to say, we have to be concerned about housing. You need to do whatever you need to do to be able to help this process go forward. So we've helped to establish the CDI and a couple of other things. and we want to continue to keep doing that because we feel that it's not only important for our industry but for the quality of life for our friends and neighbors in the Pocono Mountains. And again, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chair and Representative, thank you so much for letting me speak. I'm grateful for that and for our voice being heard. We appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you very much for that warm welcome. It's a lot warmer than it was 10 years ago. Mr. Chairman, Vice Chair, and the representatives, thank you for coming up and joining us on this beautiful day in the Pocono Mountains, 75 degrees, when I was driving up here. Yesterday I was in Montreal and it was freezing cold. I don't know why anybody would want to live there. But I was in Montreal with my boss, the Nelson family, and we were looking at the possibility of bringing an attraction to the resort. So let's just back up for a couple minutes here, and let's just think about what's happened in the last 10 years, almost 11 years, 11 years. This July, the resort will be 11 years old, but let's just think about what's happened in the last 11 years. In the last 11 years, if you look at the footprint of the Pocono Mountains, the whole four-county region, and what you had was this really really special place that was pristine and kind of quiet And it had been the honeymoon capital of the world for decades But a lot of the resorts were in decline here and they did not have the capital to keep up In the resort business, what we call it is the death spiral.

I know what that is. Next we have Mary Frances Postupak.

Thank you all to our panel. I guess I'll kick it off here with just a statement and then some questions. So this is my first term as the chairman of this committee. I was never on this committee prior. So I come into this role eyes wide open, unbiased towards all people, all facets. I just want to get stuff done. And that's kind of been my mantra from day one when I took over the committee this term. So far, this session, we've produced over 20 bills out of our committee. Most of those have passed. out of the House, which I take pride in too, because I just don want to pass bills out of committee that aren going to pass the House So I think that incumbent upon us up here at this table that we passing bills that can actually get signed eventually by our governor. So with that, this committee was a little bit stagnant in past sessions. So it was my intent to kind of flip it because this we are in a crisis and it's too important for us up here just to sit on our hands and not do anything and I'm the type of person to go do something and so that's why it was my intent to bring our committee up uh here today uh we're also looking to do um similar events like this um across the state so and from what we've heard so far is a lot of these issues are not issues that are just pertained here to here. I hear these same issues back where I live. We hear these in places like big cities, but also we hear them in Potter County too that are, are, are facing the same needs. So a lot of the concerns that we heard today are things that we are trying to tackle. Also, a lot of those issues we have already done as a committee. Representative Smith-Wadell's bill, which he's done a lot of work on for eviction sealing. We got passed through the House this year already. So that's just one thing that we've already done. But I would like to say stay tuned. We are working with the governor's office to really be quite active in the spring and summer when it comes to a lot of the issues that you all brought up. So with that, I will stop talking, and maybe I'll open it up to my colleagues for questions.

Sure. I'm a chewer. Oral fixation. My mother was a psychologist, never said anything about it. Anyway. Sorry, that joke's not for everybody and not what we're here to talk about. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up, Tim. And I will say, Chairman, I'm in my second term. I've served on this committee both terms, and I really appreciate the energy that you brought to the role. So on eviction sealing, I mean, you all already know, and we think it's a common-sense enough issue, that we were really thrilled to get the support of the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors. And I'll be very honest, when we started down this pathway, we thought that the realtors were going to be our biggest opposition. And in fact, they're one of our biggest supporters in moving this forward. The shortest version is this. The way that court records go in the Commonwealth and actually in many other states, you as a landlord and I am a landlord don't actually know what happened in the eviction filing that a background check gives you it won't tell you if it was non-payment if it was over five dollars or five thousand dollars won't tell you if domestic violence was involved and actually won't tell you if the person in the record was actually even evicted and so there are working Pennsylvanians, thousands of them every year, who are denied housing for evictions that never actually happened. And some stuff is complicated. Some housing things are Democratic issues. Some housing things are Republican issues. But people get a fair shake at finding housing in a commonwealth where, as you all point out, it is harder and harder to find the housing that you need to take a job, even if for some ridiculous reason you want to move out of Lancaster up to the Poconos. Sorry. But there has been such agreement on this. It shows that we now know, one, that housing has reached a crisis point, but also that it is baked into Pennsylvania's values that people should have a fair shake at buying a home, building a family, building a life. So that I don know if that what you were looking for Rep Tordzik but that how I feel about it Can I make a comment Yes please So on the thought process on senior housing I lucky I blessed I have both of my parents 90 and 91 years old

Yeah, and thank you. I'm in the same boat. My grandparents are 94. and they are knock on wood still in their home doing quite well, but at some point they might not be able to live in their own home. And we've kind of searched in their area about if they were to go somewhere, how much it would cost. They're looking $8,000 per month for like the bottom level. So we're looking $8,000 to $12,000, and they just can't, you know, they don't have those funds. so that's something I know that's there's probably not a single bullet or a or a silver bullet answer to that question or answer really but it's something I face too so I understand the concern there you know what a lot of people will do is what we did is actually have my parents lived with me for 18 months until they just simply we just simply couldn't do it anymore and a lot of people do that and we had the foresight to say okay we just can't do this anymore and i know this is not what we're supposed to be talking about but it's a good point and um that didn't go over very well i can tell you the conversation didn't go over very well at all but it did we simply could not do it anymore and i'm a firm believer that they're still with us today is because we moved them into transitional home and seven thousand eight thousand dollars a month and now they're into a full skilled nursing care facility. Thank goodness for the workers that are working there, but there is a huge challenge there, so thank you for embellishing me. No, you're right, and to go off that point, I think it's a great topic, too, and something that we're going to be trying to tackle here in the spring is how do we encourage our local towns, boroughs, to have an accessory dwelling unit. That's something that we've seen be an issue. And we've had some feedback from both sides. But at some point, there's going to be a crisis. And that crisis is now. It's now. We have an aging population. So my district back home is the eighth oldest in the state out of 203. So I see it every day. myself included with my own family. So it's something that we're going to have to do something or else we're going to have folks in dire, dire need. And actually, I shouldn't say that. They are in a dire need. So us up here, it's our job to make sure that we're doing all we can to give the tools that we can to our locals. But that being said, something's going to have to be done.

I think also, because you brought up a lot of great points, one of the things, too, is people need to go to these zoning meetings. A lot of times things are happening and you have a lot of people that work in New York and live in the Poconos, and they're not at these meetings, and then all these things are happening right below them, and people are voting on issues that don't serve. Smart zoning. Making the zoning make sense for what actually is happening right here, right now. And also, like you said, something about the elevator. We need to be able to go up, right? So, again, zoning is the key piece. If we're not able to go up, we're not going to have those properties that we can have people that, again, for the college. What you shared about the cost of education here where people are going all over the place. And I know because I had another bill for another college. And so, again, get that education here. we we want to be able to educate our youth but also give them the opportunity to be able to work and live here after they get that education that information so that they can build this community we have to be present and if any I don know who work walk watching in TV land or any land we have to be present I don know who watching in TV land or any land We have to be present Please go to your zoning meetings Please go to your planning meetings. Be a neighborhood specialist for yourself, not just at the bus stop and cha-cha. Make moves. Be really, really proactive. We need you. That is the key. We can all say all these things, But if you're not there, it's going to pass you by. And then, again, we'll be in this situation 10, 20 years from now. Rep. Robes? Okay. Crisis came up. We are. And 15 seconds. We're talking about homeowners, and we're talking about buying houses, and we're talking about taxes. where for, you know, my mom, in the first 16 years of my life, my three brothers and I moved 11 times, always in the borough of East Stroudsburg because she needed sidewalks, and I needed to get to school and get to sports, and we needed to be able to do things and get to Dansbury Park, more importantly, in the summertime. She was a waitress with four kids, no help whatsoever, except for my grandmother, who always lived with us. and she the rents would go up and I remember in 1983 the knock came on the door on Lenox Avenue and they said Lois we're taking your rent to 425. We had to move again and I loved it it was right next to the school it was right next to Dansbury Park so I grew up in a family that will never have that never had generational wealth never had stability didn't know what was going to happen and if I think it was bad then, it is worse now. And it scares me, but then at my mom was 55, it was 1996, when she was able to buy her first house. So when she bought her first house, it was a little off a Chipperfield Drive, very affordable, taxes were reasonable, boom hit, we had to build schools. and I think Dr. Vitale will tell you our Monroe County schools were the least funded in the Commonwealth. 67% of our schools are paid on the backs of our taxpayers and it's not because we overpay teachers or we spend too much on a child. It was because we were not funded in Monroe County. I want to be very clear. We are finally funding our schools. I'm proud to have a Stroudsburg school board member here that for the second time straight now since we started funding our schools properly they're lowering the millage rate again this year now is it going to be life-changing i can tell you it hasn't gone down in 25 years so anything they could do we're funding municipalities stroudsburg borough lowered their millage rate if we do our jobs here and we can keep funding and not that there's anything wrong giving to private investment sometimes but damn it this is taxpayer money and it should be going back to you so that you can afford to live and then spend money at the local shop that's how i feel so when i talk about housing and i talk about where it begins so many seniors right now like my mother in 1996 well by the time she she passed away in 2022, but by the time she, before she passed away, her taxes were more than her social security. She was a waitress. She got $875 a month. So everyone says, yeah, but hey your house is worth more You should be so thrilled that your house is worth more Well when I built it it wasn worth this much I don want to move and I can afford the taxes Where am I going to go? Sure, I may sell it for double than what I bought it for, but where the hell am I going to live? And this is Monroe and Pike County. This is the world we live in. So what we need to do, and we need to do it quickly, is we need to continue funding programs that we should be. Public education to get those taxes off of the backs of our homeowners. When you get the taxes off the back of your homeowners, suddenly more people are buying homes. The rental market will open up and it'll be less to rent. Second, we need affordable senior housing. My mom sold her house and went to Grace Park. Thank God, because that money was running out real quick. And they were wonderful. But it was $6,500 a month. My grandmother didn't have that. I don't even have that. But she sold her house for good care. But that money was going to run out. And we need, based on your social security for seniors, to have a place to go. Not a three to five year waiting list. We need a place for people to say, all right, I'm ready. I'm ready to scale down. I want to be by, we have two great hospital systems. We have a university. We have a downtown. We have sidewalks. Seniors love it. Should love where they live here. But If we don't take care of seniors, if we do take care of seniors, I should say, it will open the door for everything else you want to do, period. That's how I feel. We have to start somewhere. That's where I'd like to start zoning change. I was the mayor. We upped the levels in the historical district to add another floor of apartments. We did the Blight Law. We were the first one in Monroe County to have a Blight Law when I was in the borough of Stroudsburg. We've done a lot. and I'm no longer in Stroud. I represent Stroudsburg. I represent everybody, but I've met with Habitat for Humanity. How many houses did you build this year? So this is what is going on in Monroe and Pike County. They're wonderful, but we need to start taking care and putting the funds in there for all of this or we're going to be in this crisis. That's all I have to say. I thank you all very much for bringing a different perspective. But if one of you gets something done, it will help the person sitting next to you. So that's my five cents. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We talked about zoning a little bit. Are all the municipalities in this region zoned separately? Okay. So that makes it even more trouble.

Mary Frances, have there been occupancy limits based upon familiar relationships in your community for the tenants? Because I remember you know some places don allow more than two surnames to sign a lease It interesting that you asking that question because this morning I talked to Sue with the East Stroudsburg Borough just to be very clear So in East Stroudsburg Borough for a rental unit you cannot have more than four unrelated people living there

Okay. Very good, because I guess there's a Golden Girls bill that we're working on to try to find a chance for, you know, four gals to have fun and become a comedy. It's really interesting, though. I really appreciate the time you're taking with us, because these are all issues that, you know, in our small areas it happens. we are actually doing some building in the southern part of schuylkill county and we talked about this morning 2008 were when these projects were on the board and then they just didn't make economic sense for the builders but they came up a reading they found land that was less expensive than reading and they held it and now they're building 400 units here 250 units there so it's finally paying off and we just had to wait a long time. But the other side of the coin is in these small towns where we don't have the chance to build nice apartments or we still have to figure out how to rehab these small towns. And we had a program in downtown Pottsville where we had beautiful apartments on the second floor of all the downtown retail. We spent a year and a half trying to find builders to take grant money to help them put these into place. It didn't work because zoning and code told us they had to do sprinklers on a four-story building when you wanted to put just an apartment on the second floor. And we're all for safety, and we're not going to be harmful, but the numbers never worked, so we never got that housing done. So we keep working, we keep hitting roadblocks, but we just need people to stand up and take that risk. Again, Don, I'm really appreciative to hear that your business works hard, the family behind it works hard and does a good job. It reminds me of the Wegmans store. We brought a Wegmans distribution center to our community. And in Rochester, Wegmans did a great job. and Danny Wegman, because it's a family business, they were building a hotel downtown Rochester and the guys went bankrupt. So Mr. Wegman went to the people who were in town and said, we're all going to invest in this building because we can't have an empty hotel in the middle of our town and we're all going to lose money, but you're all going to do it. And they did. So that's the blessing sometimes of family business because you can do that. It's not a corporate fund that we have to make our quarterly numbers. So thank goodness for small business. Thank goodness for good business. And I really appreciate, you know, I'm actually kind of encouraged because all the stuff we talk about, you know, it fits into our housing. And I'm also on the health committee, so I'm glad to see the health is doing well. And so we try our best to work together in Harrisburg. We've got a lot of things coming over the transom. So the more you tell us, the better we're informed, the better we can help you. Thank you. I had one more. I wanted to ask each and every one of you how you feel about this, because I see the pros and the cons. I see the pros from a realtor's position. I see the pros of it from transfer taxes and things like that, but I do see the cons. How do you feel about private equity buying up all of our homes? and Airbnb-ing them, and they could be potential first-time homebuyers in our area, starting generational wealth. I want your thoughts on that, because I have a community in Penn Estates that, what is there, 300, Erin? Between 200 and 300 homes that are Airbnb-ed. And I can tell you right now, they're affordable homes for first-time homebuyers, and we don't have access to it. So private equity is buying up our homes. And you want to hear something even more scary? Private equity is buying up mobile home parks right now where mostly seniors and people with disabilities live, and they're jacking up the rates. And we have a bill to put a cap on it because, I mean, where are seniors going to go? Where are people with disabilities going to go? they own their mobile home. They pay the lot rent. Private equity are now buying up these parks and jacking up their lot rents. And it is to me a crime. So there is, I understand making money, but when is private equity going to take a backseat to human beings and people where they live, forcing them out? They don't care. It's all about profit. So I want to hear what you guys think about that. Being the Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau, you get a lot of money off of those hotel taxes. But then it's hampering the issue that we have. But then they're cleaning up neighborhoods and making places look nice. But then the people that live next to them can't afford those taxes since now their houses are worth more. It's an ugly, viral virus that I don't know what to do about it. I get it, but I don't know what to do about it. So I'd like to hear what you all think.

I want to add a couple different perspectives to this. The large organizations, the corporations that are buying homes, some of them yes, for short term rentals, but actually a great number of them are being purchased for long term rentals. Effectively, organizations that have very deep pockets and can pay for cash, pay cash on their purchases, they're buying those homes that could be sold to somebody that's an owner occupied home, they're buying them and they're turning around and breaking long term rentals. And even more interestingly, they're doing this not just because it's a revenue stream for them, but also it effectively creates a capital basis that they can use then as a basis, as a collateral for a follow-on loan that they might use to do some other project. So it's not even necessarily a matter of just finding the, taking the homes off the market and short-term rentals. It's effectively, most importantly, whether it's long-term or short-term, it's taking the owner-occupied opportunity away. So what I want to be very careful, though, is I'm saying that because short-term rentals are certainly an issue. I actually owned some short-term rentals before Slice of Life. I sold them all. But effectively, that's not the only aspect of large corporations buying homes. It's actually also to rent them out and to build capital for uses on other purposes. Now, at the federal level, we do see the road to 21st century housing coming up. I'm very, very hopeful that it will come through. It does have one thing in it that I hope we don't replicate if we do something similar in Pennsylvania, and that is it prevents build to rent. So there are organizations that can build housing, affordable housing, that they can rent out at reasonable rates. Townhomes are particularly where they focus, and they can build on an entire neighborhood of townhomes at very reasonable rates because they're not that expensive. But the way that that bill was written is they can keep it for more than seven years They have to sell them out And that model doesn work because they can finance it It just simply doesn work It an investor model and it can create a lot of housing quite quickly But we've put a kibosh on it by not being pragmatic about how that law was written. So one, the answer may already occur automatically nationwide. We don't even have to do anything statewide if it actually happens at the federal level. But if we do do it at a federal level, let's be pragmatic and realistic about what we expect when we design that bill that we don't actually block building new housing by again putting in a rule that prevents anybody from actually doing anything at all so to answer your question no I I don't like it you know I don't like

Just have to cut in for one second. Little things like what we're talking about with the short-term rentals, it stops generational wealth. It stops young people from having families, which means your kids aren't going to be, schools are going to be less and less, which means your workforce is going to be less and less which means that ESU is going to be less and less they're really hurting people ready to start their life and grow their families and have stability and I should have said at the top I'm of two minds of it because I do see your points I look at my own son who's 26 I think of the same thing I bought my first home when I was 28 and it was a fixer upper and I loved it and fixed it and eventually sold it and it was able to kind of move up from there. And I look at our young people today I teach at ESU And I ask them a lot of times what are you going to do after school just because I love the kids It just interesting what they say about housing You know, a lot of them are going to go back and live at home because they don't even have a shot at thinking about it. And I really hate that, you know, because I have two kids that are in that age range right now. I think we all do, right? We all think about those generations. And I agree with you. It's important for us to really come up with something. But something has to be done first. And I was going to say this when I made my comments, but I'll say this now. There is – and it's a hospitality business. They're currently sitting on 2,500 acres that they would consider developing for housing, but there's no infrastructure. They would have to spend millions in infrastructure to get it there. and one thing I would say too is I had a home in Hershey that's where I was on the school board for 20 years the infrastructure there is so much more developed nearer the capital when you get spoke out from the capital if you're not in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh unless you're in the city in a city I mean there just has not been the investment in infrastructure and that's another big spoke of the wheel too because I think there is land here that could be developed but there's just no way to build the infrastructure. So again, there's a lot of spokes to this wheel. A lot of spokes. One of the things we've done in the successful building infrastructure is by doing industrial development. You bring the warehouse in, you bring the manufacturing in, the lines get laid, and then you have more opportunity. But again, this is not what fits in the Poconos. Every area is different. And you know, Tim, I know you guys have done some really good... You and Senator Argel have done a lot of good work, and I was speaking to the mayor of Hazleton last week. They're doing a tremendous amount of great work in the city. So are things being done around the state? But your point is well taken. Every area is just a little bit different. So what works for us versus might work for us, excuse me, may not work for another area. But I just want to reemphasize this. I'm just so appreciative that you're interested in this information and you want to do the work, Mr. Chairman, to try to start to get this done. And, I mean, seriously, I'm grateful for that because from the beginning of us doing this, there are times I said, oh, my God, nobody's doing anything. You know, so I just, we're grateful for that. So sorry I'm off my soapbox.

local municipalities that is a big big concern that they have with strs so you know it's it's a very tough question do i like to see companies coming in and buying in you know lots of land and doing things and buying up houses and no but does does it help clean up the areas sometimes yes it does so it a very difficult situation My ask is you put lodging traditional and non lodging, on as even of a playing field as you possibly can. Thank you.

All the different things that for security? Totally. I mean, and again this is the thing we were just sharing about that you want to make sure that those STRs are managing properly that's why I said the education is key if they're failing they don't need it that's not if you're not doing your job you're gonna get fired you getting a fines on making the mistakes as an STR owner you're gonna have to do something different and like you shared a lot of them have turned into long-term rentals I have to say that I've seen a lot of that happening because many people might have bought those properties during COVID when the numbers were higher and they were doing whatever it takes to be able to get out here. And then they decided, okay, now I can go back to New York or Jersey or wherever and I'll rent it out. And they're absentee owners. And that, I see everyone's face. And that became a problem. But what did take place is a lot of them became long-term rentals. But we definitely want it done right because all of that is a reflection on all of us. The communities have to be harmonious. That's part of the charm of the Pocono Mountains. You want to see the blue skies, you want to see the green, and you want to see the harmony within the communities. Somebody just said, I love that I can walk and do those different things. But because we have that, there is that business. Because it's also, it used to be the the honeymoon capital of the world Now our biggest business is tourism So you can want all of this and not expect some of this However again I have to say I am very proud of how we have been dealing with the infrastructure and that growth and capping and being a neighborhood watching and see who's doing what? Poconos is not doing it bad. I've been many places. Poconos is not doing it bad. I can't disagree with you. And in the Poconos, there's probably the most progressive organization that manages the short-term rentals. And it's the Pocono VRO. And Rebecca Gallagher is in charge of the organization. She does a fine job and she's a model. She's created a model that can be carried throughout the rest of the state. And she wants to be on a level playing field. She 100% wants to be on a level playing field so there are models that can make that happen and they can make it happen very well thank you so much I'm sorry all I would comment on short-term rentals as we have them because our boroughs and our townships provided the guidance and the approval to do them in their community and I would have to believe that an an ideal situation would be a public-private partnership that has the same goal in mind. As a state system university, even when we're looking for grants, they're always looking for public-private partnerships, and I think that's so critical. And how do we get people who are on the private sector to share our vision, to have the best outcome for the Poconos and across Pennsylvania? So thank you.

with that I would just like to say I been up here taking notes and I got a page and a half full so these will be going back with me I would just like to say thank you This is our first time taking this committee outside of the Capitol and it's something that I wanted to do because a lot of these issues that are facing you folks here are facing the same are facing folks in big cities smaller areas so and a lot of these issues are not subject to a certain zip code or these are impacting all people and so it's incumbent upon us up here to take these issues back to Harrisburg and I look forward to working with my counterparts, Representative Tordzik and Chairman Rich Irvin, who could not join us here today. But we really take pride in running a bipartisan committee, because a lot of these issues, as I've been mentioning, are not subject just to one party or one stakeholder. They're impacting all of us. So we really try our best to work with all parties, all stakeholders, with all the bills that we do put out of our committee. So with that, seeing no other business, we are adjourned. Thank you.

Yeah.

Could she grab a microphone?