Planning

With town meeting day behind us and many new faces elected to local office across the state, this post shares a few key housing resources for towns.  

The State of Vermont's Department of Housing and Community Development will conduct a public hearing to receive input on its Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Consolidated 2019 Action Plan.

Due to its upward pressure on home prices, VHFA urged the South Burlington City Council this week to end the ban on home building known as Interim Zoning.  South Burlington adopted the Interim Zoning Bylaw on November 13, 2018 after protests about future home building proposed within the City.

If you own a home please join Champlain Housing Trust for this educational Homeowner University.  Learn how to maximize your biggest investment, your home.  Learn how to maintain, manage and protect your home and how to plan and pay for improvements.  Check out the schedule for the day and enroll today!

When?

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.

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.  

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. 

Staff from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board will outline specifics of the Housing for All initiative, the program funded with the state's recently-enacted bond for housing development.

Based on feedback from property managers and apartment seekers, VHFA launched this week a redesigned, user-friendly Vermont Directory of Affordable Rental Housing at www.housingdata.org. We improved search tools and expanded the site to include more information people looking for an apartment need, such as rent and income limits, property photos, proximity to public transportation, accessibility features and pet policies.  

John Thompson addressed hundreds of data users at their annual conference Thursday while news broke of his abrupt resignation as director of the U.S. Census Bureau. Several experts pointed out the great challenges Thompson’s resignation creates.