Tag Archives: Burlington

Burlington City Hall Fair Housing Exhibit – Celebrate Inclusive Communities and the Importance of Home

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Housing is a basic human right and everyone deserves equitable access to safe, accessible, and stable homes, free from discrimination. Having enough quality, affordable, and inclusive homes helps build vibrant communities, and promotes economic growth and opportunity for all. In the face of the ongoing housing crisis in Vermont, where there simply aren’t enough homes for people of all income levels – especially those of lower income and the most vulnerable in our communities – and as we emerge from the covid-19 pandemic, housing justice is of paramount importance.

This week’s Fair Housing Month event- overview:

  • Thursday April 14th 12pm-1pm – Landlord Management Series: Fair Housing :Join Angela Zaikowski of Vermont Landlords Association, Cole Elwood of Strong Will Real Estate /Keller Williams Vermont, and Jess Hyman of the CVOEO Fair Housing Project as they cover fair housing in Vermont
  • Thursday April 14th 6-8pm – SEABA Virtual ‘Affordable Housing Roundtable’ : A roundtable for Burlington’s South End artists and businesses to better understand recent housing policy reforms and engage on innovative solutions to help tackle the affordable housing challenge in Burlington’s South End.
  • Friday April 15th 12:30pm Fair Housing Friday Why Aren’t We Building the Housing We Need?  Featuring Katherine “Deac” Decarreau, ED Winooski Housing Authority, Nate Besio, Peer Advocate Counselor Coordinator VCIL, Carol Jaramillo. Community Builder Northgate Resident Owned Corp, in this webinar we will hear about the barriers to housing development, what kind of housing we are building, and why (or why not) the housing we are developing meets the needs of our most vulnerable community members.

Visit the City Hall Gallery at 149 Church Street in Burlington to  check out CVOEO’s Fair Housing Project Fair Housing Month exhibit!  

April marks the anniversary of the 1968 passage of the Fair Housing Act, which was intended to put an end to inequities in our housing system, eliminate racial segregation, and guarantee that everyone has the right to obtain a home of their choice, free from discrimination. Visit the City Hall Gallery at 149 Church Street in Burlington to learn more about the history of the Fair Housing Act, your rights and responsibilities under Federal and Vermont law, and how Fair Housing is connected to the challenges and opportunities of Vermont’s current housing landscape. These newly designed panels  feature our updated protected classes iconography, ways to become an advocate, and a brief history of Fair Housing

For those of you who cannot make it, you can view our PDFs below!

This exhibit was created by the Fair Housing Project of CVOEO with illustrations by Corrine Yonce.

Special thanks to Burlington City Arts & Vantage Press.

Easing Burlington’s Housing Shortage, Opinion by Erhard Mahnke

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(This piece first appeared on the Burlington Free Press opinion page on September 20, 2017)

Safe, stable and affordable housing is essential for a community to thrive economically, socially and culturally. Vermont continues to struggle with housing affordability, and unfortunately the state’s largest city of Burlington is no exception.

A Burlington resident needs to earn over $26 an hour to afford the fair market rent for a two bedroom apartment – that’s more than $5 per hour above the national average.

This is troubling and we hear about the ramifications from families and seniors who can’t find places to live, from young people who are choosing to leave the state for more affordable areas, from agencies serving the homeless, and from our employers who struggle to find qualified employees due to the high cost of housing.

There are several components to addressing the issue of affordable housing, and one of the most critical is the need for capital investment to build new housing and to renovate existing properties. While many additional homes have been built over the past several years, many more are needed to accommodate the growth of 2,375 new households projected for Chittenden County by 2020. Current production is being absorbed into the market quickly, and the long-term vacancy rate for rentals still hovers between 1 and 2 percent, putting supply and demand out of whack.

Not surprisingly, according to Census data, over half of Chittenden County renters are “cost-burdened,” meaning they pay too much of their income for housing, leaving them without enough for other basic necessities.

In terms of affordable housing, last month the Champlain Housing Trust had just five vacancies among their 2,000 plus apartments, and only one vacancy in Chittenden County. Cathedral Square Corp. had over 800 seniors and people with special needs on its waiting list looking to move into affordable housing.

Furthermore, the effective vacancy rate for subsidized rentals in Chittenden County was literally 0 percent for all bedroom sizes. These shocking numbers help explain why the Burlington Housing Authority typically measures their waiting list in years rather than weeks or even months.

These numbers are astonishing, but the good news is that there are clear steps we can take to address the cost of housing. No one project will be the panacea for Burlington’s affordable housing crisis, but developments like the proposed Cambrian Rise project in Burlington’s North End can significantly improve housing options for residents and relieve the pressure on a strained system.

As proposed, Cambrian Rise will be a 739-apartment mixed-income housing neighborhood with an impressive number of affordable homes. The neighborhood will offer Burlington residents housing options for all income levels.

Under Burlington’s inclusionary zoning ordinance, the development will include 128 affordable rentals for families and seniors with household incomes of less than 65 percent of the Chittenden County median income. In English that translates into housing that is affordable for a one-person household making $37,500, or $53,600 for a family of four.

However, with federal, state and local dollars available to Champlain Housing Trust and Cathedral Square, which are partnering to help create Cambrian Rise, many apartments will be even more affordable.

Furthermore, another 60 homes will be affordable to homebuyers earning below 75 to 80 percent of median income, or below at most $46,150 for a single individual and $65,900 for a family of four. In all, the development will offer 188 permanently affordable homes to low income Vermonters. In addition, Cambrian Rise will offer “workforce housing” for sale and rent targeted to more moderate income people up to 120 percent of the median income. Our working families, our seniors and people with disabilities, and our employers desperately need these new homes.

Cambrian Rise not only offers a diverse neighborhood, it is also a model for sustainable development. The project features alternative transportation options, energy efficiency, a state of the art stormwater system to protect the lake, and a conserved 12-acre public park – giving us continuous public access to Lake Champlain from Perkins Pier to North Beach.

Convenient access to the bike path, car share opportunities and a heated bus terminal for year-round use will ease the financial burden for residents of the neighborhood. This mixed-use development is a model for the future, where diverse residents of all income levels, abilities and ages can live, work and play in one neighborhood.

Erhard Mahnke, of Burlington, is coordinator for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. The Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition is a partner organization in the Thriving Communities- Building a Vibrant Inclusive Vermont campaign.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF NEW AMERICANS TO CHITTENDEN COUNTY, VERMONT

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CHAMPLAIN VALLEY OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY (CVOEO) RELEASES STUDY SHOWING “THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF NEW AMERICANS TO CHITTENDEN COUNTY, VERMONT”

From CVOEO Press Release, June 12, 2017


Sudershan Adhikari, a Nepalese refugee used to teach math and science before coming to the United States. He says Vermont didn’t give him a hand out so much as an opportunity, for which he is grateful.
Photo Credit: Nina Keck / Vermont Public Radio.

 New Americans contribute significantly to Chittenden County’s housing values, GDP, and job market according to a new report released by the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO). The release of this report will be announced by Ali Dieng, CVOEO board member, with Jan Demers, CVOEO Executive Director, and Alex Duchac, author of the study, will both speak.

Produced for CVOEO by Alex Duchac, this report will give the first detailed look at how immigrants impact Vermont’s largest county. The report documents the wide range of benefits provided by New Americans in Chittenden County. Among the significant discoveries included in the report are that, since 2009, New Americans have increased home values by $25M, they have added over $712M to the GDP of Chittenden County, and they have saved more than 270 Vermont manufacturing jobs.

The complete report, detailing many positive impacts, can be viewed > HERE. 
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT EVENT:      
WHEN: 3:00 pm, June 15, 2017   
WHERE:Flynn Center for the Performing Arts(just prior to Parent University Graduation at 3:30)
CONTACT: Joan White, Development Director CVOEO. joanwhite@cvoeo.org; 
802-862-2771 ext.744
 

Coalition Launched to Increase Housing in Chittenden County VT

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South Burlington, VT – Dozens of Chittenden County leaders in the fields of housing, business, local and state government, and social services announced this morning a new campaign to increase the production of housing and setting a target of 3,500 new homes created in the next five years.

The new coalition, called Building Homes Together, was formed by the Champlain Housing Trust, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and Housing Vermont and released an initial list of nearly 100 community leaders supporting the effort.

“Working together we will accomplish this goal,” said Brenda Torpy, CEO of Champlain Housing Trust. “For the sake of our communities, our workers and local economy, we will educate and advocate together for more housing.”

“The housing shortage in Chittenden County has been well noted with unhealthy vacancy rates and high rents,” added Charlie Baker, Executive Director of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. “Employers can’t find workers, and workers themselves spend more time in commutes and with a higher percentage of their paychecks on housing costs.”

Twenty percent of the 3,500 goal are targeted to be developed by nonprofit housing organizations. The remainder by private developers.

“This step-up in production will not just provide new homes and infrastructure for communities, it’ll be a boost to the economy and contribute to the tax base. Building homes together is a big win for all of us in Chittenden County,” said Nancy Owens, President of Housing Vermont.

The campaign will provide up-to-date data to the community on the need for and benefits of new housing, build cross-sector and public support for housing development, increasing access to capital, and supporting municipalities.

Individuals, businesses or organizations that wish to sign on and participate in the campaign are encouraged to by sending an email to Chris Donnelly at Champlain Housing Trust (chris@champlainhousingtrust.org). For more information, visit www.getahome.org/news/building-homes-together

And another thing

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This is the last grant-funded post, so we’ll try to keep it snappy, not sappy. What do we know about housing, anyway? Not a lot, but a good deal more than when we signed on to this gig 10 months ago.

For what they’re worth, we’ll leave you with a gratuitous thought and an anti-climactic ranking.endgame1

Housing can’t simply be left to the private market, any more than health care or education. It’s time for people to accept that resolving the housing-affordability crisis will require significant new governmental investment; and alleviating the socioeconomic and racial segregation that continue to stand in the way of fair housing choice, all across the country, will require concerted government intervention. Why shouldn’t the right to decent housing and fair housing choice be a public policy priority commensurate with the right to health care or the right to receive an education?

Rankings abound at New Year, so here’s one with an ancillary question: Rent or buy? 504 counties around the country are listed in order of rental affordability — that is, the percentage of local median income that’s required to pay median rent of three-bedroom apartment in that county. Also listed is the affordability percentage of a median priced home. Compare the percentages to see whether it’s more affordable to rent or buy.

No. 1 in rental affordability (or unaffordability) is Honolulu, at 73 percent. Buy. No. 505 is Huntsville, Ala., at 23 percent. Buy.

You can get  to the Excel table by clicking here.

The only Vermont county in the table is Chittenden (listed as Burlington/South Burlington). Sorry, Bellows Falls, Bennington, et al, but that’s the way of these national surveys.

Burlington/South Burlington comes in at No. 152 in rental affordability, at 40 percent. Buying affordability: 46 percent. The recommendation: Rent.

Lake Champlain Burlington, Vermont.
 

That’s despite the fact that, according to the table, the cost of a 3 BR apartment in Burlington/South Burlington went up 12.2 percent in the last year.

Sounds a little high to us (so much for the 3.3 percent figure we’ve been hearing) but again, what do we know?

Could be worse.

The economic damper

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If  a crisis isn’t mentioned in a presidential debate (as the national housing crisis was not, in either of the televised colloquies over the past week), does that mean it doesn’t exist?bench2

Of course not. Whether the candidates are willing to discuss it or not, the affordable housing shortage remains a damper on economic vitality and job creation. Burlington’s latest housing market analysis (July 31) gets to this point right in the first paragraph:

“Burlington’s housing market is marked by an imbalance between supply and demand. … The rental housing imbalance translates into high housing costs (relative to income) and lower quality rental housing stock. … An imbalanced rental housing market also impedes economic growth since employers have trouble recruiting and retaining their workforce.”

The same can be said for many other communities in Vermont and beyond, as seen in these news bulletins from the last few days:employment4

  • Toyota Financial Services decided to pull out of Los Angeles and move to Plano, Texas, in part because of LA’s high housing costs and rent burdens.
  • Well up the coast, in northwest Oregon, the lack of affordable housing “threatens the viability” of major cheese company that is subsidizing a housing task force in a county, beset by negligible development.bench3
  • In Key West, the Naval Air Station has trouble retaining civilian employees because of high housing costs. About half the base’s firefighter recruits wind up leaving after a few months’ training because they can’t afford to live there, according to the chief.
  • In Travers City, Mich., the housing shortage repels new workers, in a kind of vicious cycle. bench1 “Builders can’t construct housing because they lack works and workers won’t relocate to the area because they can’t find housing,” The Traverse-City Record-Eagle laments.
  • Colorado, the rental market is so tight in some ski towns that some workers are living in their cars or in temporary shelters. Several hundred Vail Resort workers recently confronted another kind of indignity: they were informed that they’d have to share rooms in the employer’s housing complexes.employment3

Capital ideas

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This country’s shortage of affordable rental units runs into the millions, and Vermont’s is in the thousands. Where’s the money going to come from to build or rehab our way out of this hole? Government spending falls chronically and abysmally short, but there’s a glimmer of hope that a growing fraction of the massive need can come from an unlikely source: private investors. finance1

But first, consider the scale of the need. According to the recent Harvard report on rental housing, 11.4 million renter households are “severely burdened,” paying more than 50 percent of their income for housing. (An additional 9.9 million are simply “burdened,” paying more than 30 percent.)

In Vermont, 26 percent of the 75,000 renter households are severely burdened — that’s 19,500 households living in places that are far beyond their means. And in Burlington, 35 percent of the 9,500 renter households are in that position – about 3,300 households.

The federal government’s primary subsidy for affordable housing development is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, which produces in about 100,000 affordable rental units a year. Then of course there’s the challenge of maintaining affordability for units whose tax credits expire, a challenge that Vermont’s housing nonprofits and state agencies contend with annually as they marshal limited public resources to preserve the affordability of what’s here. And even though they’ve been largely successful, what’s here isn’t anywhere near enough. Yes, the private market is turning out new rental housing to meet the growing population of renters, but the great majority of those new units are high-end.

A new report from the Urban Land Institute and NeighborWorks America, “Preserving Multifamily Workforce and Affordable Housing,” describes a range of new financing vehicles that seek to create or preserve affordable housing. Sixteen partnerships o investment companies – some new, some well-established — are profiled. One thing they have in common is that they offer returns to their investors– who include philanthropies, university endowments, pension funds and private individuals in the single digits, below what the typical real-estate investor might expect to receive. These entities include private equity funds and two real estate investment trusts (REITs) that focus on affordable multifamily developments.

The hook is that this investment sustains a social good: affordable housing. If “socially responsible investing” is popular among Vermont’s progressive monied class, why can’t affordable housing be one of their fiduciary causes? A creative financier might even find some way to enlist the UVM endowment or the state pension fund in support of affordable housing development.finance2

The report also mentions another possible funding source for affordable housing — the EB-5 program, which pulls in big investments from foreigners (typically from East Asia) in exchange for green cards, and which we’ve harped on before. Yes, EB-5 is supposed to be a job-creation program, but it turns out that real estate development developments are among the most popular EB-5 projects, in part because the construction jobs count. (Check out this article, “Real Estate: Still the Darling of EB-5.”) True, affordable housing isn’t the typical EB-5 project, but it has been done – in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point Shipyard, and in Seattle, near the Seahawks’ stadium. Next up, Miami.

How about Newport, Vt.? 

Good news, mostly

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  • Little backyard houses — aka “accessory dwelling units” — are springing up all over Vancouver. vancouver This is a partial remedy to the affordable rental shortage that afflicts municipalities all over North America, including Vermont. It also affords an optional living arrangement for older people who want to age in place. In Vancouver, these appendages are called “laneway houses,” and some of them are pretty handsome. There’s plenty of room for additions like this in Burlington, even if we don’t have alleys — and in plenty of other Vermont communities, too.
  •  A “mobility program” in heavily segregated Baltimore moves families from high-poverty public housing complexes in the city to higher-rent, higher-opportunity suburbs. This is an initiative very much in the spirit of affirmatively furthering fair housing, but it serves a small fraction of the subsidy-eligible families in need and it operates largely under the radar, to minimize opposition. One obstacle: a shortage of affordable housing in suburban communities.
  • Plattsburgh has a new 64-unit affordable housing complex, called Homestead on Ampersand.  plattsburgh2It’s just a couple of miles from the neighborhood where complaints about a proposal for a smaller affordable housing complex prevailed.
  • Columbus, Ohio, plans to transform a vacant downtown building into “workforce housing” – which in this case means housing for people who make $40,000 to $60,000 a year. The made-over building would feature micro units – apartments of 300 square feet or so and targeted, presumably, to single Millennials. We’ve touched on the micro movement before, which seems to be taking hold mostly in bigger metro areas (here’s a roundup with a national map; for a more substantial study of the phenomenon, click here).   But it has also spread to Kalamazoo and, as we’ve noted, Syracuse, so there’s no reason it couldn’t work in an over-priced city like Burlington, where officialdom is forever wringing its hands about how young professionals have trouble finding affordable accommodations.

The Burlington College land deal

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Burlington College’s intent to sell off much of its lakeside acreage drew opposition when it was announced two years ago. Now, as a development plan awaits City Council approval, the grumbling continues. Some of the grumblers apparently cling to an obsolete fantasy: namely, that most of the property could be spared development and conserved as greenspace. Burlington-College

Thumbnail history: In 2011 the college bought 32 acres from the Catholic diocese for about $10 million, then came to the realization, after a couple years of stagnant enrollment, that it couldn’t afford the payments. To survive, the college would have to sell off a big chunk of the land, and it revealed its plan to do so to housing developer Eric Farrell a little over two years ago.

The deal wasn’t done, though, and there was a window of many months when someone else — someone like the Nature Conservancy, say, or a land trust — could have stepped forward to offer the $7 million or so that would have been necessary to buy the developable land for conservation purposes. No one did, though. That’s why the greenspace fantasy is obsolete.

Not developing the land was not an option, at least if Burlington College wass to stave off bankruptcy. And if the college were to go belly up, well, then ownership of the property  would have reverted to creditors (principally a bank), leading to a development scenario perhaps less palatable than Farrell’s.

If there’s anything reasonably left to grumble about, it’s in the details of the agreement the City Council will review next week. Among those details, as we understand them: The city is acquiring 12 lakeside acres for $2 million to be maintained as parkland (a parcel, by the way that has been appraised at $2.9 million). Farrell will develop about 550 housing units on 16 acres, of which 160 will be affordable to families of income below 65 percent of the median, with other units targeted to people of moderate income, while the rest are market-rate; and 200 beds for students on a parcel the college will retain for its campus.

This much is clear: The city is in desperate need of more affordable housing, and it has its inclusionary zoning ordinance to thank for the affordable units in this scheme, and (2) This inclusive new neighborhood, as planned, will be one of exemplary economic diversity.