Tag Archives: Vermont

Today’s Statehouse presentation

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Here’s the statement Ted Wimpey provided today to the Vermont Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights at a hearing in Montpelier on “Housing Issues”:

 

For nearly two decades, the Fair Housing Project of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity has worked on a variety projects aimed at eliminating or mitigating various aspects of illegal housing discrimination in Vermont. We have been involved, with Vermont Legal Aid as partners, in business practices fair housing audit testing, we have organized programs to educate housing consumers about their fair housing rights; conducted fair-housing trainings for landlords, realtors, municipal and state officials and the general public; received vetted and referred complaints regarding perceived fair housing violations; monitored real estate ads for fair housing violations; and published and distributed fair housing guidebooks in English and more than a dozen other languages.

FHP

While continuing to perform many of these functions, the Fair Housing Project has been focusing increasingly on addressing systemic barriers to fair housing choice which can take forms such as excessively restrictive or exclusionary planning, zoning or development policies. With funding from the US Department of HUD, we have in collaboration with a number of organizational partners, mounted a statewide campaign to promote inclusive and affordable development patterns – a campaign called “Thriving Communities: Building a Vibrant, Inclusive Vermont.” This campaign dovetails with a reinvigorated commitment by HUD to better “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH), such “affirmatively furthering…” is a mandate of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 that for action purposes has been ill-defined and erratically observed. Just this summer HUD issued a much-anticipated AFFH rule that brings more clarity at least to the process of evaluating whether entities are effectively attempting to conduct programs and policies aimed at AFFH. We will not now dwell on details of the HUD AFFH rule, which has received a fair amount of popular attention and which essentially sets forth a new planning process for federal funding grantees. Suffice it to say here that the thrust of this initiative is to break down historic concentrations of poverty, and racial and ethnic segregation while proactively encouraging integrated development patterns that includes affordable housing in mixed income, higher-opportunity communities.

Residential racial segregation in U.S., while somewhat diminished – at least in some cities- since passage of the Federal Fair Housing Act 47 years ago, remains pervasive, and income segregation has become even more pronounced. Vermont is about 95 percent white, however, and while pockets of minority concentration exist (77 were identified in the state’s last Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice (AI) – 2012”). Vermont had no census tracts in 2010 where blacks exceeded 7 percent of the population. (Other minorities registered well below 5 percent in most tracts.)

So, while residential segregation by race does bear watching in Vermont – particularly with a significantly increasing number of refugees, immigrants of color, and African Americans typically from more urban areas of the country – it does not exist on the same scale as in many major metropolitan areas. Based on Dissimilarity Index Rankings, the 2012 analysis concluded that Vermont is “moderately segregated for Asians and Blacks and has low degrees of segregation for other minority groups.” It’s also worth noting that minorities in Vermont have lower median incomes and lower rates of home ownership, and that, based on testing results from Vermont Legal Aid’s studies, minorities face higher incidences of housing discrimination than the state’s formal complaint statistics might suggest.

In our Thriving Communities campaign, we’re advocating for broad-based residential inclusiveness – not just for ethnic minorities, but for all protected classes, which in Vermont include people receiving public assistance and which prohibits planning, zoning and permitting processes and decisions that are based on the income level of prospective residents.

In terms of policy and state law, Vermont has taken some positive steps against socioeconomic segregation. (Because of a disparate impact on a number of protected classes under federal and state fair housing law, socioeconomic exclusion effectively equals fair housing law violation especially as regards AFFH obligations.) “Receipt of public assistance” is a protected class under the state’s fair housing law. And Vermont’s law as of 2012 also makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of income in permitting housing or in making land-use decisions. Also under Vermont’s laws defining parameters for municipal planning and zoning, municipal plans must include “a recommended program for addressing low and moderate income persons’ housing needs.” Moreover, bylaws may not exclude housing that meets the needs of low or moderate income people, and multi-family housing or mobile home parks in particular.

But while the state potentially wields at least a small legal stick, for prohibiting income-exclusiveness, many local jurisdictions have a long way to go in providing carrots for more affordable-housing development and, in collaboration with fair and affordable housing advocates and developers, the state and its fair and affordable housing partners needs to keep educating, encouraging and, if necessary cajoling municipalities into more inclusive housing development policies.

Inclusionary zoning, for example, is becoming an increasingly used tool across the country to add to the affordable housing stock in mixed-income neighborhoods – but it is not yet at all common in Vermont. Inclusionary zoning requires or encourages a certain percentage of affordable units in new housing developments. As far as we know, only Burlington and a small hand full of other towns to lesser degrees, have adopted inclusionary zoning bylaws. We’d like to encourage other Vermont municipalities to give this approach serious consideration.

Other signs of municipal commitment to affordable housing development – density bonuses, or waivers/reductions of impact or permitting fees – are also rare exceptions in Vermont. Several years ago, in reviews of land-use regulations in Chittenden and Lamoille counties, the Fair Housing Project found that many towns still had predominantly large minimum lot sizes and that multifamily housing in many cases was a conditional, rather than a permitted use.

What we’d like to see is more Vermont municipalities’ taking steps to encourage multifamily housing developments near town centers, on sites with ready access to good services, schools and transit. In far too many Vermont towns, as is the case across much of the country, lower-wage workers cannot afford to live near their places of employment. Indeed, a recent review of Vermont’s larger employment centers shows that some are woefully short of subsidized housing.

Granted, the limited availability of public funding and tax credits is a constraint on affordable-housing development.   Municipalities nevertheless would do well to prepare the ground for development opportunities as they arise. Vermont’s population deserves no less. More than half Vermont’s renters pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing, and more than one-quarter pays more than 50 percent. Employers feel this burden in another way, when housing costs impede recruitment of workers.

An inclusive community, home to people of a wide range of incomes, backgrounds and skills, embraces fair housing opportunity. We believe this ideal is in keeping with Vermont’s communal character as embodied in its town meeting tradition. Thank you again to the Vermont Advisory Committee for the opportunity to address you on our hopes, fears and concerns regarding fair housing in Vermont.

Ferguson and beyond

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The Times had a story over the weekend on housing segregation in St. Louis region, including Ferguson. Focus was on African American holders of Section 8 vouchers who found themselves limited in where they could move. St. Louis County, it seems, does not have protection for them.

We note here that programs that have sent minority voucher holders to low-poverty areas, in suburban Chicago and Baltimore, for example, have brought benefits in education and employment. We also note that in Vermont, receipt of public assistance is a protected class, so refusing to rent to a Section 8 voucher holder is illegal.

 

 

 

A modest proposal: EB-5 affordable housing

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As public funding for affordable housing dwindles, perhaps it’s worth looking for major financial support elsewhere, as in … East Asia!

Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but has it really come to this, trolling for investors in China willing to underwrite an underfunded public need in the United States?

We’ll leave it to others to judge how desperate Miami is for affordable housing. A headline in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal read:

“Miami Taps EB-5 Visa Program to Help Fund Affordable Housing.”

Hmm, we immediately thought, why not in Vermont? (If you need to brush up on Vermont’s own EB-5 program, which aims to draw economic-development backing from deep-pocketed foreign investors in exchange for green cards, click here, or check out Seven Days’ intriguing update on Bill Stenger’s  various projects in the Kingdom.)

The Journal story noted that Miami has lost affordable housing to upscale development since 2000 and paraphrased a local official as saying that

“it has been difficult for developers of moderate-income housing to compete with luxury developers for land and for financing. At the same time, federal funding for affordable housing has been reduced. In addition to conventional sources of funding a project, using EB-5 funds, which carry considerably lower interest rates than conventional bank loans, might help level the playing field.”

Well! It so happens that Vermont’s EB-5 regional center is headquartered in the Agency of Commerce and Economic Development, which happens also to be home to the Department of Community and Economic Development. DHCD’s advocacy of “strong communities” extends to affordable housing. Why don’t these two bureaucratic wings consider combining forces, or at least, put in a call to Miami?

As things stand, affordable housing isn’t in Vermont’s EB-5 mix. You can see all the projects if you click here.  Mount Snow is on board for construction of a pond and a ski lodge, and is inviting interest in “future projects” that could include hundreds of luxury units … with no mention of affordability, at least in the promotional blurb on the website.

Well, there’s plenty of room for affordable housing at Vermont’s ski areas, as we’ve pointed out in a previous post.  Surely there must be plenty of socially responsible investors in China hankering for U.S. residency who are willing to put up the capital, right?

Maybe the photo with the Journal article, of the Miami EB-5 program’s first project, will whet a few appetites:

miamitower

Oops, that first project isn’t affordable.

Brief respite from drought/wildfire news

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An interesting story in the UC-Berkeley student newspaper touches on several themes of interest. Yes, it’s alien territory – high-rent California, urban beyond our rustic imagination (Alameda County alone, home to Berkeley and Oakland, has 2 ½ times the population of the entire state of Vermont).

Still, there’s resonant material here:

  • A university food-service worker who can’t afford to live in the town where she works, Berkeley, and who thus must endure a long commute. She pays a mere $1,400 for a 2BR apartment in Richmond (hey, at $700 a bedroom, that’s about the going rate in Burlington!). Berkeley’s 2BR apartments average about $2,100.   Here’s a shot of a Berkeley “castle.” Not so exotic, really — we can picture a building like this in St. Johnsbury or Rutland.

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Chances are, a UC food-service worker makes a good deal more than a UVM food service worker. After all, the University of California recently raised its minimum wage to $15, more than Sodexo pays its line workers in Burlington, and the main beneficiaries were reported to be student employees, apparently because the regulars were already getting at least that much.

So, yes, the numbers are all inflated compared to our world, but the cast of characters is similar: workers who can’t find affordable housing near where they’re employed or where their kids go to school.

  • Berkeley has had some form of inclusionary zoning for nearly 20 years, but it hasn’t done the trick. In fact, the affordable housing shortage has increased. This doesn’t mean inclusionary zoning is worthless. It’s an important policy tool, but it’s not salvation and in many cases produces only a small fraction of the affordable units needed. (Burlington’s total is less than 250 units over 25 years, fewer than 100 of which were rentals).

Here’s another, not-so-picturesque perspective of pricey Berkeley:

berkeley2

  • Simply building more housing isn’t going to solve the affordability problem. So says a housing activist quoted in the stories. Yes, he’s talking about the Bay area, which apparently is pretty well-built out within its topographic limitations. Building new housing there typically means tearing down an existing building and replacing it with something taller and more costly.

We hesitate to draw the same conclusion about Burlington, which likewise is pretty well built out, but which still has plenty of room for in-fill and accessory units. Here, a surfeit of additional rental units might indeed alleviate the upward pressure on rents, but not enough, we suspect, for low-wage workers at our state university.

 

The 30 percent itch

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What’s up with 30 percent? Why is 30 percent the standard benchmark for the share of income that an average household can afford to spend on housing? That figure has been around for decades. Where did the number come from, and is it still appropriate?

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An article in Fortune raises these questions and implies that, well, maybe the threshold should be higher in the 21st century. After all, the 30 percent benchmark dates from the Depression and the long-ago debut of public housing.

Well, it’s always worth questioning shibboleths. The hazard in this case is that raising the benchmark would fall hardest on the people who are already the most squeezed and potentially provide an excuse for cutting their public benefits even further.

Back in 1937, 30 percent was set as the share of income that public housing residents were expected to spend for rent. Today, that’s the share that Section 8 recipients are expected to spend. It’s the share of income that a renter spends for an apartment that’s deemed “affordable.” Apartments that cost more are “unaffordable,” and renters living in unaffordable apartments — that is, people who pay more than 30 percent of income on rent and utilities — are considered “cost burdened.” (In Vermont, that’s 52.5 percent of all renters. Those who pay more than 50 percent are “severely cost burdened – that’s 26 percent of Vermont’s renters, and 12 million of the nation’s households.)

Undeniably, household spending patterns change over time. A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of 100 years of consumer spending found that, on average, the percentage of income spent on housing has gone up: From 23 percent in 1900 to27 percent in 1950 to 33 percent in 2002-03. (That’s right, Vermont’s cost-burdened percentage of about 50 percent is close to the national average.) Meanwhile, the share spent on food went down — from 42 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in 2002-03.

The Fortune article argues that we should all expect to be spending a larger share of our income on housing today than back in the Depression. On the other hand, a threshold of roughly 30 percent still means something to mortgage lenders, so maybe it’s not as obsolete as it might look. What’s more, a 2006 Census Bureau study that looked at the history of the 30 percent housing benchmark concluded that it was still appropriate, especially for families of lower incomes.

thirtyb

The fact is that a family with an income $200,000 or more can more easily afford to spend a higher percentage on housing and have plenty left for other necessities. For a family like  that, a housing “burden” is considerably more bearable.

 

Fair housing news from all over

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We begin the week with bulletins from unlikely places that nevertheless bear on what this here website is all about…

It seems that lots of people who work in Mount Pleasant (population 75,000) can’t afford to live there. (Sound familiar?) The town has something called a “workforce housing” plan, intended to encourage development of housing that people who make 80-120 percent of the area’s median income can afford, but the plan hasn’t produced much. And now, there’s talk of eliminating the plan’s density bonuses so that even less affordable housing would result.

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And this is a region where about half the residents already spend more than half their income on housing. The good news, we suppose, is that the town has a workforce housing plan and density bonuses to begin with. That’s more than can be said for some communities. The challenge – in Mount Pleasant and elsewhere — is to ensure that they actually come to something.

The editorial comes to a conclusion that sounds rather familiar: “The town needs a healthy mix of residents to remain vibrant and prosperous in the future, and those residents – of all income levels – will need a place to live.”

(By the way the Post and Courier won the public-service Pulitzer this year for a series on domestic violence against women – a prize citation that the newspaper reminds us of on its masthead – so, as newspapers go, it’s fairly reputable.)

salem

Since 1969 Massachusetts, to its credit, has had an affordable housing program called Chapter 40B. Chapter 40B permits the overriding of local zoning bylaws to allow affordable housing development in towns where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is affordable.

More than 50,000 units have been developed over the years, statewide. The problem noted by the letter-writer is that some recent projects have been targeted to urban areas that already have their share of affordable housing, rather than to the “leafy suburbs.” The takeaway point here is that a good measure of new affordable housing units should be located in middle-income and upper-middle income areas, not just in the same old places.

  • Lastly, an update on what appears to be the longest-running fair housing case in the country.

Back in 1971, Hamtramck, Mich., was found to have violated civil rights of black residents by razing their neighborhoods as part of urban renewal. The remedy was supposed to be provision of 200 family housing units and 150 senior housing units, we learn from an Associated Press account. Well, it seems that Hamtramck still hasn’t made good, and the judge who presided over the case originally is still determined, at age 93, to see it through.

Here’s hoping that protracted case in Westchester County, N.Y., is resolved sooner.

 

A small step in the right direction

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Inclusionary zoning is getting more and more attention as a planning tool to increase the stock of affordable housing. This is a policy that requires, or encourages, various percentages of housing units in new developments to be “affordable.” The standard of affordability varies, but is typically targeted to people earning 80 percent or less of an area’s median income.

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While inclusionary zoning has proliferated nationwide – a study last year counted more than 500 programs across the country – it hasn’t exactly taken off in Vermont.

True, inclusionary zoning is typically found in urban areas and larger cities, not in rural expanses. Most of the literature on inclusionary zoning, indeed, focuses on metropolitan settings. A recent example is this one from the National Housing Conference on how inclusionary policies can be made more flexible – with examples from urban settings.

The example routine cited in Vermont is Burlington, which adopted inclusionary zoning in 1990 and which happens to be the state’s largest city.

But in fact, small towns can’t make use of it, too – Davidson, N.C. (population 11,000) and Park City, Utah (8,000) are examples.

And closer to home, there’s Hinesburg (4,400). Hinesburg’s regulations apply to developments of 10 or more units in the village growth area, and call for 10 percent of those units to be affordable. Hinesburg also offers density bonuses, expedited review and other development incentives for projects that include affordable housing.

Now, while inclusionary zoning might seem to be a sensible way to address the affordable housing shortage, it’s hardly a cure-all. In Burlington’s case, for example, inclusionary zoning has resulted in just 200-plus affordable units (rentals and sales) over a quarter-century. That’s barely scratching the surface in a city with nearly 10,000 renting households – more than one-third of whom are severely cost-burdened, that is, spending more than 50 percent of their income on housing and utilities.

Inclusionary zoning does serve the purpose of ensuring that new development isn’t entirely upscale and out of reach for people of average means. But it’s just one tool in the affordable-housing planner’s proverbial toolkit. One of the most effective tools of all — in Vermont and everywhere else — would take the form of substantially bigger public appropriations for housing subsidies.

subdivision

Do you suppose we’ll be hearing anything about that, or about how to address the affordable housing crisis, in the coming presidential campaign? Don’t all speak at once.

 

New Jersey’s inspiration

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People in these parts can often be heard mocking New Jersey as some sort of cultural and environmental antithesis to Vermont. But they should be aware that New Jersey gave rise to a landmark civil rights doctrine – in housing – that resonates here.

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That’s the so-called Mount Laurel Doctrine, as set out in two New Jersey Supreme Court rulings in 1975 and 1983, banning economic discrimination against the poor by municipalities in their land-use and zoning decisions. The rulings came after members of the black community in Burlington County’s Mount Laurel Township sued over a housing development plan that would have uprooted them in favor of middle-class and upper-middle-class families. (The town’s zoning effectively mandated homes that low-income families could not afford.)

The Fair Share Housing Center, which was among the litigants, has called Mount Laurel “one of the most significant civil rights cases in the United States since Brown v. Board of Education.” That might sound like a self-serving characterization, and of course, the rulings applied only to New Jersey, but the court’s reasoning echoes across the country. The court pointed out in its 1975 ruling that zoning regulations, “like any police power” exercised by a public entity, must promote general welfare. The decision went on to say:

“It is plain beyond dispute that proper provision for adequate housing of all categories of people is certainly an absolute essential in promotion of the general welfare required in all local land use regulation. Further the universal and constant need for such housing is so important and of such broad public interest that the general welfare which developing municipalities like Mount Laurel must consider extends beyond their boundaries and cannot be parochially confined to the claimed good of that particular community. It has to follow that, broadly speaking, the presumptive obligation arises for each municipality affirmatively to plan and provide, by its land use regulations, the reasonable opportunity for an appropriate variety and choice of housing, including, of course, low and moderate cost housing, to meet the needs, desires and resources of all categories of people who may desire to live within its boundaries.”

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The court declared that Mount Laurel “must permit multi-family housing, without bedroom or similar restrictions, as well as small dwellings on very small lots, low cost housing of other types, and, in general, high density zoning, without artificial and unjustifiable minimum requirements as to lot size, building size and the like…”

More than 60,000 affordable units have been built in New Jersey as a result of the Mount Laurel decisions. That’s nowhere near the need, and there has been plenty of pushback, which continues to this day.

Nevertheless, the principle – that land-use regulations must accommodate people of all incomes – has been adopted by other states, including Vermont. Vermont’s zoning statute states, among other things, that:

“No bylaw nor its application by an appropriate municipal panel under this chapter shall have the effect of excluding housing that meets the needs of the population as determined in the housing element of its municipal plan as required…”

Among those requirements is “addressing low and moderate income persons’ housing needs.”

Vermont’s housing affordability gap, by county

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A couple of years ago, the Urban Institute came out with a study, “The Housing Affordability Gap for Extremely Low Income Renters in 2013.” The takeaway conclusion: Nationwide, there were just 28 “adequate and affordable” units available for every 100 renter households with incomes at or below 30 percent of the area median.

The paper listed, among other things, populous counties with the biggest affordability gaps – that is, the counties with the fewest affordable housing units for every 100 low-income households. At the bottom was Denton, Texas, with only 8 affordable units for every 100 renters. (At the other extreme, Suffolk County in Massachusetts had the smallest affordability gap, with about 50 units for every 100 renters.

We decided to look at the affordability gap in Vermont, comparing the state’s 14 counties using statistics drawn from Vermont Housing Data. The measure isn’t quite the same as the one used by the Urban Institute, but it shows a wide ranging disparity across the state nevertheless.

County Pop. Below pov. (2009-13) Below pov./pop. Subsidized units Subsidized units per 100 people in poverty
Addison 36,821 3,875 11% 499 12.88
Bennington 37,125 4,900 13% 808 16.49
Caledonia 31,227 4,236 14% 548 12.94
Chittenden 156,545 16,672 11% 4,644 27.86
Essex 6,306 995 16% 77 7.74
Franklin 47,746 4,837 10% 761 15.73
Grand Isle 6,970 481 7% 69 14.35
Lamoille 24,475 3,021 12% 358 11.85
Orange 28,936 3,701 13% 399 10.78
Orleans 27,231 4,047 15% 324 8.01
Rutland 61,642 7,655 12% 1,341 17.52
Washington 59,534 5,439 9% 1,232 22.65
Windham 44,513 5,306 12% 1,231 23.20
Windsor 56,670 5,708 10% 1,164 20.39
Vermont 625,741 70,873 11% 13,445 18.97

Here are two key numbers to look at: The number of people below the poverty level in each county; and the number of subsidized housing units in each county per 100 impoverished people.

As you might expect, there’s not enough subsidized housing in any county to accommodate low-income people. But beyond that, it’s noteworthy that the affordability gap is biggest in the two counties with the highest poverty rates (Essex, Orleans) and smallest in the county with the lowest poverty rate. In other words, affordable housing is even scarcer in the poorest counties than in the richest.

 

Housing bias in Vermont: more than meets the eye

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Amid all the overarching attention to housing segregation and inclusiveness prompted by HUD’s newly released AFFH rule, we shouldn’t lose sight of housing discrimination at the granular, or individual level. It’s still very much with us, in Vermont and everywhere else. What’s more, there’s a good deal of housing discrimination that goes unreported, as a cursory look at Vermont’s statistics makes clear.

First, the national picture: HUD does an annual report toting up housing discrimination complaints based on seven protected categories in the Fair Housing Act: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, familial status. In the last fiscal year for which data are available, total complaints to HUD and affiliated agencies totaled 8,368, of which 53 percent were based on disability, 28 percent on race, 14 percent on familial status (presence of minor children) and 12 percent on national origin.

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Now consider the complaints filed with the Vermont Human Rights Commission. According to the commission’s most recent annual report, there were 41 housing discrimination complaints in Fiscal Year 2014, of which 19 were based on disability, 4 on  race/color, 4 on “minor children,” and 1 on national origin.

The numbers in Vermont are pretty low, and the discriminatory profile is a bit different from the that for the nation as a whole. Disability is the major source of complaints here, as elsewhere, but in Vermont just 10 percent of the complaints pertained to race. Granted, Vermont is 95 percent white, but the number seems low for two reasons.

For one thing, hundreds of refugees are arriving in Vermont every year. It seems implausible that they confront no discrimination based in the real-estate rental market based on race, religion or national origin.

For another thing, Vermont Legal Aid’s periodic tests of Vermont’s rental markets show much higher incidences of discrimination than are reflected in the complaint statistics.

In 2012-13, VLA conducted more than 200 tests, using control testers and subject testers of assorted races and national origins expressing interest in renting apartments. “Forty-four percent of the tests conducted either demonstrated overt discrimination against the subject tester or otherwise showed preferential treatment toward the control tester,” the VLA’s report concluded. “(T)here were significant rates of disparate treatment against the subject testers in 46 percent of the national origin tests, 45 percent of the familial status test, 36 percent of the African American race/color tests, and 22 percent of the disability tests.”

So, why aren’t more fair housing complaints filed in Vermont? Perhaps because many tenants don’t know their rights, or because they might fear retaliation. As it happens, protection from retaliation is one the rights they might not be aware of.