This press release from the Vermont Futures Project shares their new white paper on housing challenges and solutions in Vermont. VHFA assisted with research on the project.

In 2016, The Vermont Futures Project set a target for 5,000 new and retrofitted housing units per year to meet the critical need for homes across Vermont. This was a need five years ago, and as we strive to recover from the pandemic-caused economic downturn, the health of Vermont’s housing market is under more stress than ever.

This commentary appeared in several news outlets as part of the Vermont Proposition Initiative with the Vermont Council on Rural Development.

As a white kid from suburbia growing up in the ‘80s, I thought everyone was in the middle.

I assumed, probably rightfully, that my neighborhood, my church, my classmates, and my extended family all fell in the same middle place as my own family. As a child I knew I couldn’t get everything I wanted, but I didn’t worry that there wouldn’t be enough.

Mom clipped coupons, knit our winter wear, and we all worried each time dad’s company was bought out by another big firm.

Fair Housing Month continues, with many events still to come through the Fair Housing Project of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO). VHFA has compiled a reading list of resources to learn more about how housing discrimination continues to impact Vermonters and our nation as a whole. 

In case you missed it

The Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan includes a program that would bring $8 million in housing tax credits each year for affordable homeownership in Vermont. Unlike one-time stimulus programs also in the works, the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act (NHIA) would be an ongoing new federal tax credit generating new equity investment dollars for the development and renovation of starter homes in distressed and rural neighborhoods.