Tag Archives: inclusive communities

With sadness – but with some hopefulness

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Alas dear friends, December 31, will be the last official day of work at the FHP/Thriving Communities campaign for the wonderfully talented, informative, and entertaining Blogger and journalistic seeker of truth, Tim Johnson. Tim is one of a kind and is an irreplaceable human resource. We offer Tim our deepest felt thanks and all best wishes. Of course Tim will be missed greatly, both his personal presence in our office and his many professional  contributions to the cause of promoting Thriving Inclusive Communities in Vermont and as far and wide as our campaign is reaching beyond the state.

Our loss of funding from HUD, compounded by no forthcoming funding commitment from the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development, is forcing CVOEO to eliminate not only Tim’s position but to substantially reduce the funded hours for my position as director at the Fair Housing Project. However, all is by no means gloom for the New Year ahead!

The hopeful part comes from the following:

  • The Thriving Communities: Building a Vibrant Inclusive Vermont campaign will continue with current, and perhaps new partner organization in the future!
  • The Fair Housing Project of CVOEO, lead organization for the Campaign will continue albeit with reduced staffing/capacity.
  • We are receiving some private and organizational contributions to the project budget and continue to welcome such generosity.
  • More people continue to be interested and involved in our Campaign’s variety of social media outreach and we will build upon that.
  • We will be planning and working toward another successful art and education oriented celebration of April – Fair Housing Month in 2016.

What you can do to help continue to build our campaign:

  • Read, write comments, and engage in discussion on this Blog page.
  • Write a guest blog for us to post!
  • Contribute money to the Campaign and suggest possible foundation or other sources of funding for us to pursue.
  • Get involved in every way possible helping promote inclusive, thriving communities, affordable housing and funding/public policies that make more affordable and better located housing possible.

Finally – HAPPY HOLIDAYS ALL!

 

Here we go!

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Thriving communities house (2)Welcome to the new website devoted to our “Thriving Communities” campaign. We’d like this space to become a Vermont forum for a continuing discussion of fair housing and affordable housing. These are two distinct but overlapping public policy concerns. They have something in common that we’ll get to in a moment.

Fair housing means the absence of housing discrimination. The federal Fair Housing Act, passed in 1968, sought to give Americans the right to live where they choose without begin discriminated against on the basis of race, color, national origin, or other protected characteristics. Vermont followed up with its own fair housing law about two decades later, expanding the list of protected categories.

Alas, housing discrimination is still with us. Thousands of individual complaints are filed across the country every year, and Vermont has its own share of violations. But beyond the individual cases are systemic, or organizational obstacles to fair housing choice, often in the form of planning, zoning or governmental policies that effectively restrict where certain people – particularly, those of lower income – can live. Nearly half a century after the Fair Housing Act was passed, much of our nation remains heavily segregated by race and by economic status.

Affordable housing, by the standard definition, is housing that doesn’t consume more than 30 percent of a household’s income. Families who pay more than that are termed “burdened”; and those who pay more than 50 percent, “severely burdened.” Unfortunately, these terms apply to a large share of Vermont’s renters. That’s because (a) market prices put housing out of reach, and (b) there aren’t anywhere near enough subsidized housing units to accommodate lower-income renters.

One goal of “Thriving Communities” – and of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a key sponsor – is to reduce pockets of poverty and to proactively promote inclusive communities of high opportunity. We want to encourage municipalities to welcome more affordable housing – multi-family housing, in particular – that’s located in mixed-income neighborhoods, in close proximity to town centers, transit and other vital services.

OK, so what do these two issues – fair housing and affordable housing — have in common? They’re both off the political radar.   Housing segregation and unaffordability are both major national problems, disadvantaging tens of millions, but they get very little attention from presidential candidates or Sunday talk shows.

Why the disconnect? We welcome your comments on this or on our posts to come. We’ll try to be newsy.