Partner organizations

National Life Group has doubled their investments in charitable giving this year to 2 million dollars. Part of the National Life Group Foundation’s giving will support Main Street Grants, a new project designed to support revitalizing downtowns. As we all know, affordable housing is often a key component of strengthening our state’s downtowns. Municipalities, community partners, and housing organizations should go to National Life’s website soon to learn more about this exciting opportunity because applications are due at the end of December.

Vermont housing partners honored Connie Snow last week as she retires from her role as Executive Director of Windham & Windsor Housing Trust.  Snow has led the housing trust in this region for 30 years, since it was first established in 1987.  

Read more about Snow's accomplishments in this in-depth story from The Commons.  

Housing partners seeking to improve opportunities for lower income Vermonters described this week why federal tax reform bills would make reaching this goal much harder and hurt Vermont communities. Learn more from these WPTZ and CCTV stories.  

The Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition (VAHC), a state leader in housing policy, research and advocacy, issued the following statement last week on the tax bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and under consideration in the Senate:

At a time when Vermont already has a shortage of 10,866 affordable homes for extremely low income renters and the 5th highest affordability gap for renters in the country, the pending tax proposals would eliminate tax credits and financing tools that have helped create thousands of affordable apartments  in our state and made homeownership more affordable for thousands of Vermonters.

The U.S. Census Bureau is offering Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) 2020 Workshops for Vermont cities and towns, in partnership with the Vermont State Data Center and the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. For your convenience, workshops will be hosted at two sites. A webinar is also being offered.  

When the Senate and House released their initial tax reform proposals last week in Washington, Vermont's Congressional delegation went to work to protect valuable resources that are part of the tax code, such as private activity bonds and housing tax credits.  Tax programs are responsible for most affordable housing developed in Vermont in the past 30 years.

From the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition -

Cathedral Square Corporation, affordable housing partners and South Burlington officials came together this week to celebrate the start of construction of Allard Square.

The 39-unit apartment building is expected to be open to residents this time next year, with rents for the majority of units being well below market rate.

Join us this Wednesday, October 25, 2017 for the Green Real Estate Symposium hosted by our friends at Vermont Realtors.

The event will include information on three main topics. First, appraisers will be educated on how to accurately evaluate a house for its energy efficiency. They'll also learn how to point out areas that could be performing better. 

Next, market research on green energy will show us why we are measuring sustainable energy in the first place. 

Finally, the symposium will cover guided techniques and phrases for articulating the true value of a green home to prospective residents.

Plans were made over two years ago to make renovations to Applegate Apartments, located in Bennington, VT. It's one of Vermont's largest affordable housing developments and threatened by rising fuel costs before improvements were made. The complex paid $175,000 a year on fuel costs, which required rent to rise, and owners were worried that tenants would not be able to keep up.

Last week, the Applegate community celebrated the addition of a new "central biomass plant" which replaced the need for 23 oil burners - one for each building. The project also included a insulated underground pipeline that delivers hot water to all of the buildings.