[B]RATTLEBORO – During the past 30 years, the organization now known as Windham & Windsor Housing Trust has operated under three names and has expanded into two counties.
But there’s been just one executive director.
Connie Snow retired from that post as of Sunday, and she’s garnering praise for her stewardship of an organization that has made affordable housing more accessible for thousands of area residents.
But Snow’s dedication to the job – and her relentless focus on the future – might be best summed up in the final line of a recent retirement speech she delivered in downtown Brattleboro.
“This has been a powerful partnership,” she said. “I love you all. Do not relent.”
Snow had worked on housing issues in three states before arriving in Brattleboro in the late 1980s. At that time, the town Selectboard had convened a committee to take a closer look at housing issues.
“I know there was a feeling that we were losing affordable housing. There were investors purchasing multifamily buildings,” Snow said.
“I actually moved over here right as this was unfolding,” she added. “I was working in Keene (New Hampshire), actually for a startup community land trust. But I had my eyes on Brattleboro.”
A community meeting in early 1987 led to the incorporation of the Brattleboro Area Community Land Trust later that year. Initial conversations centered on three Canal Street buildings that were slated for demolition to make way for a mini-mart.
“They were affordable housing really by virtue of their very dilapidated condition,” Snow said. “I think these three buildings became sort of emblematic of what the problem was.”
With Snow at the helm, the land trust focused first on purchasing and rehabilitating those three structures. The trust’s other early housing projects were located in the same general area – Canal, Clark and South Main streets in Brattleboro.
The model was revitalization without gentrification or displacement. The trust bought buildings, moved people out, renovated and then offered former residents the first option on the newly refurbished apartments, Snow said.
“The first 15 or 20 years, a lot of our work was focused on housing condition,” she said. “There was so much substandard housing.”
“There wasn’t a lot of money in the early days for staffing,” Snow said. “And that’s always been a hard part of the budget. These days, all of the resources that we tap into are very, very competitive and oversubscribed.”
Nevertheless, the trust has continued to grow.
The organization’s name changed in 2007 to Windham Housing Trust, which better reflected its nearly countywide reach. By that point, there had been housing projects completed in outlying Windham County towns like Putney, Wilmington and Dover.
Four years later, the organization expanded again by acquiring the struggling Rockingham Area Community Land Trust. That took the Windham trust into Windsor County and “practically doubled our portfolio,” Snow said.
The trust also had been expanding its programming. While the emphasis remained on rental properties, administrators had begun working to boost homeownership fairly early in the trust’s existence.
That happens partly through a shared equity program, wherein the trust offers grants to income-eligible home buyers and then retains ownership of the land.
“We have about 136 homes on land owned by the housing trust,” Snow said. “The owner basically agrees to share equity with the next buyer of the home, so they do get a portion of the appreciation during the time that they’re there.”
“The whole idea,” she added, “is really to have a stock of homes that will be permanently affordable.”
The trust also started a homeownership center that includes educational programs and low-cost loans for home repairs.
Windham & Windsor Housing Trust’s 30-year body of work is clearly visible throughout the area. In Brattleboro, it can be seen in well-kept, standalone residential properties as well as in larger structures like the Wilder Building and the Daly Shoe Building, which hosts apartments and the trust’s headquarters.
The trust also was a partner in the new Brattleboro Food Co-op building, which features apartments above the store.
Projects like the co-op, Snow said, are 70 percent investor-funded through low-income housing tax credits allocated to the housing trust by the federal government. It’s a tried-and-true funding method that has kept the trust going.
“I think, without this program, it would have been almost impossible to do these projects,” Snow said. “This work has been fueled by private investment.”
Many also would say that it’s been fueled by Snow herself.
Katie Buckley, the state’s housing and community development commissioner, said Snow has been “laser-focused” on her work and has “found the right balance of creativity, risk, patience and persistence to make the unthinkable, thinkable.”
Buckley, a Windham County resident who worked with the housing trust on projects in Guilford, listed a variety of successful housing initiatives that stand as a testament to Snow’s work and ability to build relationships.
State Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, is a Putney resident and noted two new Windham & Windsor Housing Trust projects currently happening in her town – Putney Landing and Noyes House.
Those who were involved in the early stages of the Brattleboro land trust “could never have dreamt it would make the impact it has,” White said.
“There is a lot more housing available for working people now that is affordable,” she said. “And Connie took some pretty daring steps – purchasing buildings no one else could fix, moving outside of Brattleboro to areas that weren’t being served.”
The trust’s executive director baton is being passed today to Elizabeth Bridgewater. She’s been the organization’s homeownership director for more than three years, and she’s had more than a year to prepare for taking over as the trust’s top administrator.
“Some people come into an organization, and there’s a lot of things that need to be fixed,” Bridgewater said. “That’s not the case here. This is a really strong, stable, well-run organization.”
Bridgewater, who has previous nonprofit management experience in Massachusetts, said she’s been “doing a lot of listening and learning” while also formulating a list of priorities.
Those include maintaining the trust’s housing development pipeline while also navigating a federal funding environment that can seem “hostile” to affordable housing, she said.
Bridgewater also will be spending a lot of time in the coming months on the housing trust’s Great River Terrace project, which is converting a run-down Brattleboro motel into a complex designed in part to serve the homeless.
“That’s a major project and a community resource,” Bridgewater said.
Snow said the Great River Terrace project, along with a continued gap between wages and housing prices in southern Vermont, is evidence that there’s “still a big need” in spite of the progress the housing trust has made.
Surveys of the area’s population centers show that two-thirds of all renters would be eligible for the trust’s housing based on their income, Snow said.
“They aren’t living in our housing. We don’t have that much affordable housing,” she said. “Most of them are living in market-rate housing, and they’re hanging on by a thread – hoping that the car doesn’t break down.”
