March 1, 2007

Committee Members Present: Carl Bohlen, Alan Norris, Julie Pierson, Donna Constantineau, Dale Wernhoff.

Also Present: Kathy Beyer of Housing Vermont, Bruce Wheeler.

The meeting came to order at approximately 7:10 PM.

Presentation by Kathy Beyer of Housing Vermont (HVT): The Affordable Housing Committee (AHC) gave Kathy some background on what we have done so far. Kathy then provided her background. Per their web site (www.hvt.com), “Housing Vermont, a nonprofit syndication and development company founded in 1988, creates permanently affordable rental housing for Vermonters through partnerships with local organizations, public agencies and the private sector”. Most of Kathy’s work has been on rental units but the last four years she has worked on for sale units. She has also worked for a couple of for profit developers but most of her work has been on the non profit side. She noted that rental projects get more subsidies because they serve a lower income group.

Kathy likes to review a town’s zoning to see how easy it is to build affordable housing. She believes the biggest problem for Hinesburg is sewer capacity/allocation. Hinesburg may want to think about giving preferential sewer allocation to a developer that has affordable housing in their plan.

HVT starts a project by finding a local partner for financing (for Hinesburg this would be Champlain Housing Trust, or CHT) although once in a while they get a deal on property for whatever reason (motivated seller, right time, luck). HVT would be very interested in building in Hinesburg if they can partner with CHT for funding.

Kathy provided handouts on property sale data for Hinesburg and a spreadsheet on what it would cost to purchase a $265,000 home in Hinesburg, both with and without CHT help. Donna pointed out that CHT didn’t always have subsidies available and wondered if local banks might be willing to reduce mortgage rates for affordable housing. Kathy didn’t think they would. Kathy also presented site plans of projects that include affordable housing (Johnson Housing and Putney Village) to show how it could be done.

Other business: AHC discussed how the inclusionary zoning model works. Alan still sees problems with it. Donna and Julie summarized the 2/28/07 Planning Commission meeting they attended. Town Meeting on 3/5/07 – due to lack of time and a low committee turnout we decided to skip having a table with affordable housing information without having the input of the full committee.

Next Meeting –

April 5^th – PowerPoint presentation by Julia Curry of Vermont Interfaith Action and start thinking about what direction the AHC wants to go in next.

Respectfully submitted

Dale Wernhoff