HOUSING

Homelessness has increased 400% in the past five years, as the jobs that Burlington has to offer has at-tracted more people to the area. The booming economy, combined with the continuous pressure that students place on the housing market has led to a vacancy rate of 0.25%. For every 400 apartments in the city, only one is available to rent at any given time.

Housing is a critical component of sustainability planning, because the cycle of poverty is exacerbated by a lack of affordable housing. People who are negotiating their way between homeless shelters and soup kitchens don’t have time to look for a job – their focus is meeting their most basic needs. So, in Burlington, increased homelessness is occurring at the same time as jobs are going unfilled for a lack of workers.

Burlington has adopted a policy toward housing that makes use of well-established non-profit housing organizations to support what it calls the Housing Tenure Ladder. The Housing Tenure Ladder is a model that acknowledges all the incremental steps in the process of securing affordable and high quality housing, beginning with homeless shelters and working up to fee simple ownership.

Housing Tenure Ladder
Fee Simple Ownership
Community Land Trust
Limited Equity Ownership
Condominium
Limited Equity
Condo Cooperative
Limited Equity Cooperative
For-Profit Rental
Resident Controlled Non-Profit Rental
Non-Profit Rental
Rental with Support Services
Transitional Housing
Shelter Housing

Citizens and organizations in Burlington are supported at every rung of housing tenure, through the programs funded by the city and through the various businesses and non-profits that work to provide housing. People who find themselves in shelters are gradually encouraged to move into transitional housing. People in transitional housing move up to rental housing with support services. People who take advantage of the support services offered are better equipped to find regular employment that would allow them to move into housing that is provided by several of the non-profit rental organizations in the community. In turn, these organizations are actively organizing the people who rent from them to take more control over their living spaces, creating resident controlled rental housing. Of course, there also are rental units available by owners who are more traditional, for-profit investors. As people move up the tenure ladder, they are better able to pay market-rate rents.

Owning a home is an important value in our culture, and this is made possible in Burlington through a variety of ownership structures. Limiting equity in housing ownership makes it less possible for owners to profit from the fluctuations in the real estate market, and more possible for people to afford housing ownership for the first time. Land Trust housing ownership helps keep housing permanently affordable by controlling the ownership of the land and through limiting equity. All of these steps on the housing tenure ladder are supported in some way by the collective actions taken in Burlington. The value that having safe and affordable housing plays in the policies that have been developed over time is also reflected in the different documents included in the Legacy Project study:

THE PRACTICES:

Burlington Community Land Trust
City of Burlington/University of
Vermont Institutional Agreement
Committee on Temporary Shelter*
Housing Replacement Ordinance
Housing Trust Fund*
Inclusionary Zoning
NeighborWorks Home Ownership Center
Northgate Resident’s Association
Rental Opportunity Center
Section 8 Certificates for Home Ownership

* Interview included