Residents of Windy Hollow Cooperative in Castleton are celebrating the successful purchase of their mobile home park, which was assisted by Vermont Housing Finance Agency. The creation of the housing co-op will help retain affordable homes for 44 households.

Yesterday, Ryan Rush-Booth, a Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) borrower who lives in Stamford, VT, testified at the State House in support of doubling VHFA’s Down Payment Assistance program funding. Rush-Booth works in IT at Southwestern VT Medical Center. When they first moved to Vermont six years ago, Ryan, his wife, and their two young children moved in with family because they could not find affordable housing.

A new report from the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that lenders across the United States are denying conventional mortgage loan applications for African American and Latino applicants at higher rates than comparable White applicants.

Chittenden County has the biggest imbalance between its share of VT jobs and homes, according to recent VHFA analysis. Although 33% of the state's jobs are in Chittenden County, the state is home to only 28% of the state’s workers and only 25% of the state’s homes. This is likely caused in part by workers living in Franklin County, where the share of homes outnumbers the share of jobs, who commute to Chittenden County for work.