A sampling of housing news and resources from around Vermont and beyond

Vermont News

CHT buys Dorset Commons in South Burlington

Champlain Housing Trust is safeguarding more of Chittenden County’s affordable housing stock with this purchase of 105 units in South Burlington. Read more here: https://www.getahome.org/app-news/cht-buys-dorset-commons-in-south-burlington

SAVE THE DATES

• Tuesday & Wednesday, Nov. 13 & 14:  Vermont Statewide Housing Conference – Registration is now open!
  The Vermont Statewide Housing Conference is Vermont’s largest gathering of housing professionals. Held every other year, the event draws upwards of 450 people from all over Vermont and beyond, from many sectors of the housing industry: development, construction, financing, legislation, advocacy, policy and more. This year’s conference theme is the impact Vermont communities have on housing affordability. An inspiring line up of interactive, cutting-edge sessions will focus on specific municipal policy tools and community case studies. The conference is at the Hilton Burlington on Battery Street. The agenda, workshop descriptions, speaker bios, and registration info is at https://www.vhfa.org/conference/
  

• Tuesday, Sept. 18: Joint Meeting of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition (VAHC) & Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness (VCEH)
  The event includes a presentation by GroundWorks Collaborative and Windham & Windsor Housing Trust on their successful partnership at Great River Terrace in Brattleboro, addresses by the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates and key legislative leaders (invited), and a networking lunch, followed by the VAHC Annual Meeting and the VCEH monthly meeting. 9:30am-2pm at Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church in Randolph. Keep your eye on http://www.vtaffordablehousing.org for more details.

Vermont women: Are your housing needs being met?

The Vermont Commission on Women is seeking feedback on issues that matter most to Vermont women. The Listening Project survey asks what needs aren’t being met, what most affects women’s abilities to provide for themselves or their families, and what can be done to help. This is an opportunity to share your thoughts on all types of issues, including housing. To post your comments, go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/vcw2018listeningproject

Valley News Editorial: Window of opportunity in the battle for affordable housing

The town of Fairlee is the latest Upper Valley community to recognize the critical need for more workforce and affordable housing and to realize that providing some of it might be key to the town’s future vitality. Nearby Lebanon, N.H., is thinking about lowering impact fees on new construction, which are assessed to compensate the city for the cost of additional public services the developments require; Hartford suspended impact fees indefinitely last year; and voters at the Hanover Town Meeting approved zoning changes allowing greater density and decreased on-site parking requirements for senior housing downtown. The editorial board of the Valley News makes the case for smoothing out and speeding up the permitting process in order to spur more development of affordable housing: https://www.vnews.com/Editorial-Critical-need-for-affordable-housing-19319354

Good Ideas

Hacking for Housing!

Q: What do you get when you combine whipsmart coders and housing organizers?
A: More accessible websites and data!
Code for America hosted a National Day of Civic Hacking on August 11 with the theme of housing. Code for BTV worked with the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness, and Vermont Housing Finance Agency to make recommendations for modernizing and improving accessibility on the organizations’ websites and help streamline their database systems. Check out the Channel 17 video from the hackathon here:

To learn more about the projects of the day, see  http://codeforbtv.org/sites/default/files/NationalDayofCivicHackingHousing2018.pdf

Resource of the Week

Interactive housing, migration, affordability dataset from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

In Vermont, 44.4% of renters are cost burdened – meaning they spend more than 30% of income on housing. And the number of low-income renters far exceeds the number of available low-rent units. Moreover, similar to the rest of the country, the supply of low-rent units in Vermont is even more scarce due to what housing researchers call an “availability gap” or deficit. This means that higher-income renters frequently occupy lower-cost units, crowding out middle-market renters and those further down the income scale. Learn more from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Read more: http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/our-shrinking-supply-of-low-cost-rental-units/  The State of the Nation Housing Report a great resource with interactive charts that show trends in housing costs, affordability, homeownership and more in Vermont and around the country: http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/state-nations-housing-2018

⇒ Want to see your Vermont housing news featured in this weekly roundup?
Email jhyman [@] cvoeo.org