Governor-elect Peter Shumlin appointed Noelle MacKay (pictured) Commissioner of the Department of Economic, Housing and Community Affairs.

MacKay has been Executive Director of Smart Growth Vermont in Burlington for the past five years. The non-profit organization works to understand the factors changing Vermont, and develop creative land use and development policies.

The Census Bureau released new estimates yesterday that provide information about the characteristics of residents and homes in every Vermont community during 2005-2009.

These estimates are based on the annual American Community Survey (ACS), which asks a sample of Vermonters questions about their home and household members living there.

Here’s a sample of the types of information collected through the ACS:

VHFA's Maura Collins helped present the Burlington Community & Economic Development Office's (CEDO) fair housing report to the Burlington City Council last night.

You can watch the meeting on Channel 17/CCTV Sunday night at 8. The station will eventually post streaming video of the meeting on its Web site.

The report was researched and written by VHFA Research Analyst Leslie Black-Plumeau and returning University of Pennsylvania’s Warton School intern Casey Klyszeiko, under Maura's direction.

We've had a chance to tally up the evaluation forms collected at the Nov. 18 Vermont Statewide Housing Conference, and are pleased most attendees were pleased with the event.

A total of 233 people completed evaluations at the event or after the conference through our Web site. They gave the conference an overall rating of 4.3 out of 5.

Our three highest-rated workshops were: