by Miro Weinberger
In Burlington, we have over 900 homes recently built or in construction now, and I recently announced new milestones in three major projects at the VFW, Cambrian Rise, and CityPlace that will ensure 180 new homes are permanently affordable. Last year, we created the South End Innovation District to legalize housing for the first time on 81 acres in the south end. This month, a new housing agreement with UVM will be before the council that would clear the path for 1,500 new student beds on three new campus housing sites. Before I leave office, we will bring forward the Neighborhood Code – which will legalize older forms of neighborhood-scale housing like duplexes, triplexes, and cottages city-wide. And – two weeks ago we opened our third low-barrier homeless shelter since 2020.
Amid a housing crisis so acute that over 200 people sleep outside every night in Burlington, when renters are subjected to a vacancy rate of less than 1% and historically high rents, and when so many of our young families are unable to buy a home in this community, we are long past the time for more debate, it is time for comparable state action to address wasteful and exclusionary state land use and housing policies. It is time for the state to:
- Eliminate double-regulation of Burlington properties: Eliminating the redundant layer of state permitting imposed by Act 250’s land use regulation on Burlington projects would address the biggest regulatory barrier to new homes. This could be done either through the newly-proposed “tier” system and/or through “municipal delegation” that Burlington proposed last session. Regardless of the mechanism, Burlington projects should be fully exempted from duplicative permit review this session and the state must avoid subjecting this overdue policy to a long and unneeded implementation schedule that threatens to delay the impact of this reform for another five years. We need new housing now.
- Create adequate emergency shelter: AHS’s fall 2023 proposed shelter plan for the end of the motel program is inadequate and inhumane. The state urgently must create a plan, coordinated with municipalities, for new transitional, supportive shelter that is appropriate to the needs of families with young children, elderly people, people living with disabilities, and people in recovery and experiencing SOUD.
- Fund additional Coordinated Entry case management services: Burlington has dramatically increased outreach personnel, yet there is a 6-8 week wait from enrollment in CE to assignment to housing case management. There are over 740 households in CE currently; this represents 1 in 100 households in the county, which is unprecedented.
- Control homestead tax rate increase: An 18% education tax increase, per early projections, would worsen the state’s affordable housing challenges.
Warmly,
Miro Weinberger