The mission of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) is to finance and promote affordable, safe, and decent housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income Vermonters.
Embedded in that mission is the need to consider the holistic cost of renting and owning, meaning not just the upfront cost of housing, but also the cost of living in it long term.
Heating inefficient homes is a significant expense. This particularly hurts the most vulnerable Vermonters since very low-income households spend 23% of their total income on heating costs, on average. Add to that unexpected shifts in fossil fuel costs like we are now seeing as a result of the Ukrainian crisis, and even more pressure is put on limited Vermont budgets.