Category Archives: housing committee

ATTN Vermont Housing Committees: This conference is for you!

affordable housing, housing committee, Inclusive Communities, Municipal and Regional Planning, Vermont, zoning

Limited conference scholarships available for Housing Committee members: Nov. 11 deadline

VHFA’s 2022 Vermont Statewide Housing Conference is Wednesday, Nov. 16 in Burlington. The day includes an exciting lineup of interactive sessions that cover policy tools, community case studies, and strategies for pulling together the pieces needed to solve Vermont’s big housing problems. 

Among the highlights:

  • This year’s theme is “What YOU can do to help solve the housing crisis”
  • Keynote speaker Cornell Professor Sara Bronin will discuss her work on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, and connected places.
  • The Fair Housing Project of CVOEO is facilitating a special session for local Housing Committees with co-hosts Katie Ballard (Essex/Essex Junction Joint Housing Commission), Eric Durocher (Dover & Wilmington Bi-Town Housing Committee), Saudia Lamont (Lamoille Working Communities Challenge Housing Committee), and Sarah Martel (Thetford Housing Committee).

“Making change at the local level: Housing committee roundtable” will bring together members of housing committees from all over the state to discuss common challenges and opportunities, share innovative practices and policies, and brainstorm ways to collaborate with and learn from each other. This facilitated, attendee-driven session is intended for members of active and developing housing committees (municipal housing commissions, community groups focused on affordable housing, and everything in between). It’s a way to learn from other groups with similar goals, share your successes, and identify solutions to common challenges, such as refinement of mission, funding, cross-sector collaboration, equity and representation, member recruitment, community outreach, affordable housing messaging, and more. Through small group and full group discussion, attendees will gain a better understanding of the breadth and depth of housing committee activities, pinpoint specific and actionable next steps in their communities, and identify gaps in resources, information, and support. The session is facilitated by Jess Hyman of CVOEO with co-hosts from the four different Housing Committees . 

The Housing Committee session is just one of more than a dozen workshops throughout the day that include opportunities to learn about the latest tools and best practices related to housing affordability and inclusivity. And, since making new connections and renewing existing ones are critical to putting ideas into practice, there will be plenty of networking breaks and a late afternoon reception overlooking beautiful Lake Champlain.

Register for the conference here.

The Fair Housing Project has a limited number of full registration scholarships available for housing committee members. To request a scholarship, please email fhp@cvoeo.org with “Conference Scholarship” in the subject line. The request deadline is Friday, Nov. 11. For municipal housing committees and participants who work for housing-related organizations, we ask that you first check to see if your town/city/organization can cover the registration fee.

We’re looking forward to seeing you on the 16th!

And here’s a great resource for Housing Committees: https://housingdata.org/toolbox/steps-for-municipalities/housing-committees

NLIHC’s Out of Reach Report tells us what we already know: Vermont has a growing affordability problem – Here’s what we can do about it.

affirmatively furthering fair housing, affordable housing, Economic Inequality, fair housing, housing committee, housing inequality, Housing Inequality, rental housing market, renters

The recent release of the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Out of Reach report shows that Vermont has the sixth largest shortfall between the average renter wage and the two-bedroom housing wage. In the Burlington/ South Burlington region, where the 2-bedroom housing wage jumps from the state’s average of $23.68 to $31.31, the housing wage gap is particularly acute. This means that full-time employees living in Burlington and South Burlington have to make $31.31per hour in order not to spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Meanwhile, the average hourly wage for Vermont renters is $13.83.

Source: Housing wages based on HUD fair market rents. NLIHC The Gap 2021 pg 5

“We’ve been in the midst of a chronic affordable housing crisis for many, many years,” Kerrie Lohr of Lamoille Housing Partnership, asserted to VTDigger earlier this week, “This report pretty much shows what we already know to be true, is that housing is out of reach for many of Vermont’s renters.” What housing advocates have been seeking to address over the course of Vermont’s long housing affordability history crisis has become especially acute during this past year. While Vermont’s housing sales spiked 38% this past year, many of these new residents purchased with cash-on-hand, often significantly over the asking price, with sales of million dollar homes almost tripling.

These numbers are particularly concerning when we turn an eye to Vermont’s pattern of racial inequity. This year saw rates of COVID doubling in communities of color, highlighting the disparities in health and economic opportunities for People of Color in Vermont. Nationally, the home ownership rate of White households is 70% to the 41% of Back homeowners, a gap caused and reinforced by a pervasive history of racist housing policies, inequal lending, and lack of meaningful policy change to address this systemic problem. Vermont’s homeownership gap is much larger with only 21% of Black households owning their home compared to 72% of white households. Local student activist (and current Fair Housing Project intern) Minelle Sarfo-Adu spoke to VPR about experiencing this stark disparity in her South Burlington community, “I think I only have two African American friends in the whole — like in all Vermont, that actually own homes,” she said. “Other than that, every other one of my friends actually rents, unless they’re white. All my white friends actually own their homes.”

The severe affordability crisis in Vermont creates an environment where landlords can be more discriminative in who they rent to. For renters who belong to the Fair Housing protected classes and face the greatest barriers to housing access in our state, this means longer and more desperate housing searches. While housing advocates are certain that most discrimination goes unreported, testing performed by the Housing Discrimination Law Project of Vermont Legal Aid indicates that housing providers generally disfavor African American renters, renters of foreign origin, renters with children and renters with disabilities. Reports from the CVOEO Vermont Tenants hotline and housing community forums are riddled with stories of people being turned away from housing because of a housing voucher or for having children (both violations of the Fair Housing Act in Vermont), and of desperate housing decisions such as signing leases before viewing the property or even offering to pay more than the listed monthly rent.

So what do we do about it? 

“Treat the housing emergency like an emergency,” retorts the collective voice of Anne N. Sosin, Mairead O’Reilly, and Maryellen Griffin in their recent VTDigger commentary, “Housing is a Public Health Crisis in Vermont.” Sosin is a policy fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College; O’Reilly is a medical legal partnership attorney at Vermont Legal Aid; and Griffin is a housing attorney at Vermont Legal Aid. Housing activists, policy makers, and the broader population of Vermont need to act now to address this growing problem, they wrote as they shared the major lessons housing advocates have gleaned from this past year of COVID response. Their voice has urgency, as some key opportunities to enhance renter protections have already passed. These key missed advocacy moments include the veto of the Rental Housing Safety Bill and a failure to delay the ending of the State of Emergency – which had expanded shelter space for houseless folks through federal CARES funding – until more rental housing was made available. Some economists and sustainable communities experts caution this trend is only at its early fruition as climate change pushes folks from more geographically vulnerable locations.

Much of what Sosin, O’Reilly, and Griffin called for is still possible. “Mobilize a statewide response,” they stated, noting that these solutions will be unique to the region and therefore require regional solutions. Our Fair Housing Friday panelists this spring noted that creative solutions require broad civic engagement, especially from those most impacted by the growing inequity of available resources. Housing Committees are a critical tool to mobilizing regional solutions to a statewide problem and can jumpstart conversations at the community level. The common thread  running through all these solutions is that they must center the needs of the communities consistently facing the highest barriers to housing.

Housing Equity & Preservation of Open Space

affordable housing, Burlington, Chittenden County, Chittenden County VT, density, economic growth, Economic Inequality, housing, housing committee, housing crisis, housing development, housing inequality, Housing Inequality, Inclusive Communities, NIMBYism, Place matters, public opinion, zoning, ,
updated, 12/29/20

At the Fair Housing Project, we generally applaud community members who organize to get their needs better met. But this featured article in the Other Paper as part of the Vermont Community News Network begs a counter response.  Continue reading Housing Equity & Preservation of Open Space →

New Webinar: Housing Committees as a Tool to Meet Local Housing Needs

affordable housing, housing committee, resources, zoning, ,

Friday, August 21 – 12:30 to 2:00

Miss this webinar? Watch the recording here.

Register for this webinar

We are in an unprecedented moment, still deep into a health crisis that has magnified existing economic and health disparities and has destabilized our country, state, and communities. Meanwhile, there is a tremendous energy for civic engagement and people are finding ways to make positive change at the local level and to support their neighbors.

It’s clear that safe, affordable homes are the foundation for opportunity and there is a strong correlation between health disparities and housing opportunity, especially for people of color and others in protected classes. Thousands of Vermonters were already in a precarious housing situation before covid – and tens of thousands more struggle to find affordable, and accessible homes.

A local housing committee can be an effective tool for addressing housing needs and promoting equal housing opportunity in towns and cities of all sizes. These committees can take the form of a municipally-supported committee, subcommittee of the planning commission, resident advocacy group, housing discussion meet-up, or any other group that seeks to support or change the quality, quantity, affordability, and/or inclusiveness of housing in a community.

This interactive webinar provides an overview of the role and function of Housing Committees with examples from municipalities around the state. We will discuss how a local Housing Committee can help your community address housing needs and challenges, engage residents, and help advance community planning priorities.

This webinar is co-presented by the Vermont Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD), Vermont Housing Finance Agency, and the Fair Housing Project of CVOEO as part of DHCD’s Community Planning and Revitalization Division Planning & Permitting Innovations series, which is focused on tools to help communities adapt to the rapidly changing world.

Miss this webinar? Watch the recording here.