Save the date Friday, May 16 for an all-day workshop on Building Greener Affordable Housing in Vermont presented by VHCB.

The workshop will feature Andy Shapiro of Energy Balance Inc.

Andy's provided energy and other green building design consulting services for 25 years. He's also the Scientist-in-the-Classroom for the Vermont Energy Education Program, training teachers and students from elementary to high school since 1994. He holds an Engineering degree from Brown University and is the author of a number of energy-related publications.

The workshop will be held at the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce in Berlin.

For more information, contact Rick DeAngelis, VHCB Associate Housing Director: 802.828.3526.

The Champlain Housing Trust (CHT) is a finalist for the World Habitat Awards, sponsored by the Building and Social Housing Foundation, an international organization dedicated to innovation in affordable housing.

The awards are given as part of the United Nations' World Habitat Day and recognize "practical and innovative solutions to current housing needs and problems." Two staff members from the U.K.-based foundation will visit Vermont next week.

The special Fair Housing Month edition of Mike McNamara's HUD show we mentioned in yesterday's post ("April is Fair Housing Month") is now available for listening online.

Listen now.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Rinnai America Corp. recently announced a voluntary product recall of certain direct-vent wall furnaces.

VHFA is helping bring the recall to the attention of homeowners — and owners and managers of multi-family properties — who might have such furnaces installed in their units.

So far Rinnai has received nearly a dozen reports of carbon monoxide leaks from the furnace models in question, but no injuries have been reported.

For more information about the model numbers affected and how to to get further help, visit the recall's Web site.