Fair Housing Month is an opportunity to explore ways to promote housing opportunity throughout the year. Communities play important role to play in fair housing because many local practices or policies that seem outwardly reasonable can promote housing discrimination or segregation. The Vermont Housing Data website’s Housing-Ready Toolbox includes resources to help municipalities comply with fair housing laws and create more equitable, inclusive communities.

Executive Director Maura Collins announced that VHFA has selected Gale Proulx of Burlington as its new IT Support Specialist. 

Proulx is a 2020 graduate of Champlain College, where she received a B.S. in Data Analytics and worked as a Windows Administrator Assistant. Recently she has worked remotely as a data science associate for a New York company that provides managed IT services for financial firms. She has also worked for the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and Vermont Public Radio on data analytics projects.

"We’re excited to have Gale join our IT Team," Collins remarked. "Her experience with analytics will be a valuable asset to the Agency as we strive to make data from our programs more insightful and accessible."

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.