Press: News clips

First housing meeting draws crowd
by John Briggs
Free Press Staff Writer

Burlington's intractable housing problem — too few places to live, too expensive — is interesting enough, even in the abstract, that it drew 18 residents through a chill rain to a meeting Wednesday evening at C.P. Smith Elementary School in the New North End.

Karl Sklar, a homeowner who lives down the street from the school, said he dropped in out of curiosity about what the City Council might do to "make it easier for people to live here," given the high cost of housing in the city.

He had no personal complaints, he said, but he wants the city to stay "affordable for people who are coming along now."

The Wednesday meeting was the first of three public hearings scheduled by the council's "super" housing committee, so called to indicate that finding ways to expand affordable housing in Burlington is one of the council's top goals. The hearings move to H.O. Wheeler School in the Old North End on Nov. 17 and to Champlain School in the South End on Dec. 1.

The point of the hearings, said the committee chairman, Phil Fiermonte, P-Ward 3, is to obtain opinions and suggestions from landlords, tenants, developers or anyone who has an interest in the housing problem. The committee, he said, after digesting what it has heard, will put together an "action plan" for the full council next spring.

Only seven people moved to the chair in front of the committee to testify, but even that small sampling suggested the complexity of the problem and the emotions it can generate.

Robert Courcy, a landlord, wondered aloud why more tenants hadn't come to the meeting. He said his rental units are federally subsidized Section 8 houses. While he likes his renters, he said, "I'm not feeling very supported by the program." Subsidies are being cut, he said, and, beyond that, the rents he is allowed to charge are capped well below what he could get on the open market.

If there were some way the city could support the program or something like it, he said, "it'd be great."

Brian Everill, a University of Vermont professor, recounted problems he'd had with a landlord, who charged $1,000 for a house that, Everill said, had 26 code violations. The problem is widespread in Burlington, he said, citing conversations and e-mails from his students and colleagues. Renters "pay exorbitant amounts for places that are basically uninhabitable," Everill said. "Self-interest and greed has gotten out of hand."

Robert Foley, a landlord and attorney, followed Everill and said such conditions were "the exception, not the rule." Rental housing, he said firmly, has improved in quality in Burlington over the last few years.

What is needed, he said, is for the city to "remove barriers to housing production," in part by simplifying the bureaucratic processes that make Burlington so difficult a city for developers.

Contact John Briggs at (802) 660-1863 or jbriggs@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com.