A new campaign called Thriving Communities: Building a Vibrant, Inclusive Vermont has just been launched. The Fair Housing Project of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity serves as a central organizer of the campaign. This effort is a comprehensive and multi-organizational statewide campaign to promote affordability and inclusiveness as a mainstay of flourishing communities across Vermont and beyond. This campaign will reach out to public officials, ordinary citizens, planners, developers, business owners, entrepreneurs and others.

The latest Vermont Department of Health survey indicated that nearly 60% of Vermonters would be more likely to choose living in a smoke-free building over a similar building in which smoking was permitted.

There was even greater support for limiting smoking in building entryways; roughly 80% of survey respondents supported limiting or outright prohibiting smoking in entryways. 

Although Census surveys show a clear decline in the national homeownership rate, they don’t show a similar decline for Vermont.   At least not yet.  Second quarter 2015 estimates show Vermont’s rate at 72 percent, nearly eight and a half percentage points higher than the national 64 percent rate. 

Economists expect the national homeownership rate to reach a turning point soon, as the economic recovery and gradual credit standard loosening bring first-time buyers back to the market. 

Few housing units in the U.S. are accessible for people with disabilities and even fewer are both affordable and accessible, according to a recent comprehensive study from HUD.   About a third of housing in the U.S. is potentially modifiable for a person with a mobility disability, currently less than five percent is accessible for individuals with moderate mobility difficulties and less than one percent of housing is accessible for wheelchair users.