The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced today another $1.4 million in federal funds are coming to Vermont for affordable housing.

This latest allocation of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds includes a total of $309 million distributed to seven states:

• $34 million, Arizona
• $16 million, Connecticut
• $95 million, North Carolina
• $3.6 million, North Dakota
• $41 million, Pennsylvania
• $118 million, South Carolina
• $1.4 million, Vermont

The funds are intended to jump start development or renovation of qualified affordable housing for families.

VHFA's Socially Responsible Committee has announced the next speaker in its Community Awareness Program (CAP) series.

Tracy MacLean from MOBIUS, the mentoring movement, will present to staff Sept. 24.

She'll talk about the MOBIUS mission to increase high-quality, adult-to-youth mentoring relationships in Chittenden County.

The Socially Responsible Committee is a group of VHFA staff members helping assure the Agency conducts its business in a socially responsible manner.

The CAP is a voluntary program that encourages VHFA staff members to gather on designated lunch hours to hear from a variety of presenters speaking on issues pertinent to our community.

Our friends at Smart Growth Vermont in Burlington have a job opening for a Program Director.

You can see the full job description on their Web site.

Smart Growth Vermont is a non-profit organization that works to develop creative land use and development policies to increase prosperity and protect Vermont's distinctive landscape.

Considering the unprecedented economic downturn focused on the housing market, VHFA wanted to better understand the values of the homes underlying its single-family mortgages. It’s clear Vermont has among the lowest delinquency and foreclosure rates, but how VHFA-financed properties were faring was important to understand.

The Agency hired a third-party expert in home valuation, First American Core Logic, to provide an unbiased estimate of the value of VHFA’s active single-family portfolio. The results were astounding: