Sen. Patrick Leahy joined affordable housing developers and local, state and federal officials this morning to break ground on Thayer Commons in Burlington.

The project, in city's New North End, will create 33 new affordable apartments for seniors and 33 affordable apartments for families.

Cathedral Square Corp. plans to construct an additional 26‐32 senior apartments in a second phase of the development. Developer Eric Farrell is renovating the former Thayer School for commercial use and constructing a new building that'll add 47 more market rate apartments.

The Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) and the Chittenden County Metropolitan Planning Organization (CCMPO) will merge July 1.

CCRPC was created by 15 Chittenden County municipalities in 1966 and authorized by state law in 1968.

CCMPO was created in 1983 as a result of the population exceeding 50,000 in the Census defined Urbanized Area. The federal designation as a Metropolitan Planning Organization required the communities in the Urbanized Area to undertake more intensive transportation planning in collaboration with the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

Both organizations provide planning services for all Chittenden County municipalities.

This is the second of many profiles we'll be publishing over the coming weeks shining the spotlight on VHFA's participating lenders.

This past Tuesday's Governor's Summit on Housing the Homeless was written up in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

Read the article online (subscription required).

Like the other press we've seen about the event ("Homelessness summit draws crowd"), the Argus focuses on advocates' call for prevention of homelessness through assistance with delinquent mortgage payments and rent.