Today is the registration deadline for Vermont Housing & Conservation Board's Dec. 16 workshop "Updating Capital Needs Assessments."

The workshop will present today's "best practices" for use and in-house updating of Capital Needs Assessments (CNAs). It's designed for housing managers, asset managers and other housing professionals who are trying to more fully integrate CNAs into their asset management system and who wish to update in-house CNAs that've been prepared by independent consultants.

Presented by affordable housing consultant Tom Dillon. A manual detailing a systematic approach for updating and using CNAs will be provided to those who attend.

AmeriCorps*VISTA member Marissa Fischer has joined the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition (VAHC) for a 1-year term of service.

Marissa is a June 2009 graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology/Anthropology.

Since graduating, Marissa has worked as a Project Supervisor for Amigos de las Américas in the Dominican Republic and Honduras.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from everyone at VHFA.

Our offices will be closed Thursday and Friday for the holiday.

The Rutland Herald and Times Argus published a piece yesterday about the global credit crisis and its effect on the ability of Vermont organizations such as VHFA to serve first-time homebuyers.

"It's diminished our ability to serve those low-income homebuyers that are our mission to serve," Executive Director Sarah Carpenter says in the article. "In the big picture, it's meant less opportunity for Vermont borrowers."

Read the article online.