Seven Days, the Burlington area's alternative weekly newspaper, made Burlington's tight rental market its cover story this week.
In "Unfair Market," Andy Bromage writes "Burlington ... continues to boast one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country: an astonishing 1.3 percent. In other words, for every 1,000 apartments in the city, just 13 are available for rent at any given time.
"A 5 percent vacancy is considered healthy for a city; anything lower than that is considered “tight."
Bromage, who experienced the city's difficult market himself when he recently moved here with his wife from Connecticut, quotes VHFA's "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Housing and Wages in Vermont" in his piece:
"A family would have to earn $36,550 a year to afford (the fair market rent), assuming a third of household income is spent on housing. But 52 percent of Vermont’s non-farm employees — 151,000 people — earn less than that."