Housing affordability challenges in high-cost cities often overshadow the enormous housing challenges in rural America. Though the situation is more extreme in metro areas, rural areas and small towns also face significant shortages of affordable and available rental housing, as most very low-income Vermonters well know.
Patenaude to be nominated for HUD Deputy Secretary spot
The White House announced today that it intends to nominate Pamela Patenaude to serve as Deputy Secretary for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Patenaude is currently president of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for America's Families, an organization that seeks to elevate housing's place on the political agenda.
Patenaude has held a variety of housing policy positions in both the public and private sectors. She served as Director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Housing Commission and had the opportunity to hear about Vermont’s housing issues at a national hearing in Maine in 2012. She also spoke at the Vermont Statewide Housing Conference in 2012.
Children's Literacy Foundation has opportunities for rental housing and other service providers
The At-Risk Children grant is open to social service providers, community centers, afterschool programs, refugee services organizations, shelters, low income housing programs, Head Start programs, early childhood education programs, and a wide range other groups throughout Vermont and New Hampshire that serve low-income or at-risk infants and children up to age 12 (or a portion of that age range).
The application deadline is May 15, 2017 for programming that will take place in the Fall of 2017.
VHFA awards millions in affordable housing tax credits for upcoming construction but rental housing proposals outweigh available credits 2 to 1
On Monday, April 17, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) Board of Commissioners committed federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) and Vermont Affordable Housing Credits that will provide almost $37 million in upfront equity to construct and renovate housing for low-income Vermonters over the next several years. The $2.5 million in ten-year federal capped credits, $610,000 in ten-year federal uncapped “bond” credits and $485,000 in five-year state credits will support the development of 272 affordable apartments in 11 communities across the state.