[B]URLINGTON — The New England Federal Credit Union has made a $500,000 donation to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency to help address the region’s affordable housing shortage.
NEFCU president/CEO John Dwyer Jr. and VHFA executive director Sarah Carpenter announced the donation at a Tuesday morning press conference. The funds from the donation will go toward renovating an apartment complex for seniors in Bristol and building an affordable duplex in Jericho.
Carpenter said private donations like the one from NEFCU have a significant impact on the ability to build more affordable housing.
“Most of our resources from the federal government and the state government are limited, and there’s a large queue to use them,” she said. “When you put together these packages, sometimes there are gaps and the federal/state money doesn’t get you there. So these are the kinds of donations that we’ve had over the last couple of years that really just fill the holes that we need to fill.”
NEFCU, the largest mortgage lender in the state of Vermont, donated $1 million to VHFA in May 2017, which went toward projects including the Allard Square project in South Burlington and the renovation of the French Block building in Montpelier.
“NEFCU is certainly aware that housing is a critical component to people’s comfort, confidence and our overall community,” Dwyer said. “We need places for people at all income levels and all capacities to have safe and stable housing.”
This new donation will go toward renovating the Pleasant Hills complex near downtown Bristol, which includes 16 housing units for seniors. Housing Vermont and the Addison County Community Trust are working on the property.
The renovations will make Pleasant Hills more handicapped accessible and more energy efficient.
“Everyone gets excited about new construction because there’s such a demand, but we’ve built stuff over the last 20 and 30 years that gets tired,” Carpenter said. “And the way the funding programs work, there’s not always enough money as you go along each month to do the renovations.”
Retired truck driver Harvey Hart has lived at Pleasant Hills with his longtime girlfriend for two and half years.
He said the renovations will enlarge his unit. The larger bathroom will be more convenient for him and his girlfriend, who had a stroke before they moved into the complex, he said.
“It seems like there will be much more space for us in a little tiny place,” he said. “The work they’re doing is fantastic.”
The funds will also contribute to ensuring that one of the three duplexes in Jericho on Morgan Road near Mount Mansfield Union High School is affordable to a low-income buyer. The Champlain Housing Trust is partnering with a private developer on that project.
The funding will lower the sale prices of two homes to around $160,000. The houses will have three bedrooms with a monthly cost of approximately $1,400, which would make them affordable to a household of four making 53 percent of the area’s median income.
Chris Donnelly, the director of community relations at the Champlain Housing Trust, lauded NEFCU for the donation and noted that TD Bank recently gave a $125,000 donation to the Champlain Housing Trust.
He said that donations from private institutions can be the difference between a project happening and not happening. But he said that more state funding is necessary to address the state’s affordable housing shortage.
The Building Homes Together Campaign, a coalition of organizations working on affordable housing, set a goal of 3,500 new homes, 700 of which are permanently affordable, within five years. While the campaign is on track to meet its goal of 3,500 new homes by the end of 2020, it is falling short of its goal on affordable housing.
Through two years, 191 permanently affordable homes have been created, short of the 280 needed to remain on track.
“We have hundreds of apartments we could develop right now, but for the lack of resources,” Donnelly said. “We’re scratching the surface.”
Donnelly said charitable donations from private companies can send a message to others in the community about the necessity of prioritizing affordable housing.
