Throughout Vermont’s history, racist practices made it difficult or impossible for Black, Indigenous and other people of color to own homes and land.
Today, 97.7% of Vermont farms are white-owned. White Vermonters have a home ownership rate of 72%, compared to 24% for Black Vermonters. And in Burlington, Black residents are four and a half times more likely to be denied a home loan than their white counterparts.
Those statistics are a direct result of Vermont’s history of systemic racism in housing and land ownership, activists say. And now, they’re pushing legislation that would begin to combat those centuries-old disparities.
H.273 would create the Vermont Land Access and Opportunity Fund to promote racial and social equity in land access and property ownership. It would do so through grant programs, financial education and other investments targeted to Vermonters who have historically been discriminated against.
“It will mean that for the first time in my life … that folks who look like me, who are melanated like me, who are descendants of those who broke their backs and shed their blood on this very soil for our collective and greater good are able to shine their light forward in what feels like a very meaningful way toward a just land future for all of us,” said Steffen Gillom, president of the Windham County NAACP.
Members of the House Committee on General, Housing and Military Affairs looked at the legislation for the first time Tuesday afternoon.
The majority of the 25-page bill is a detailed explanation of Vermont’s history of systemically excluding Black, Indigenous and people of color from home- and land-ownership. The final few pages create the fund and the Vermont Land Access and Opportunity Board, which would oversee and administer that fund, financed by $10 million from the state’s general fund.
Gillom said establishing the fund would begin a restoration process so that Vermonters who are Black, Indigenous and people of color are able to obtain land and pass it down to the next generation in the same way white Vermonters can.
“I find it ironic that land that was taken over by colonizers in the past, that we as BIPOC people are now having to ask a group of white folks if we can have access to it,” said Beverly Little Thunder, a Lakota Elder and co-founder of Kunsi Keya Tamakoce (Grandmother Turtle Land). “The land to many Native people is sacred. It’s land that we survived on.”
Rep. Tiff Bluemle, D-Burlington, said every member of the committee received a “ton of emails” celebrating the bill, in anticipation of Tuesday’s hearing. She said almost all those emails pointed to the way the bill was drafted and how many different communities were heard in creating it.
Rep. John Killacky, D-South Burlington, said he finds the bill “very compelling” but a little incongruent.
The legislation lists the impacted communities as those who have suffered discrimination due to “race, ethnicity, sex, geography, language preference, immigrant or citizen status, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, or disability status.”
“That’s a lot,” Killacky said. “But then its findings are all about systemic racism for the BIPOC community and the board is primarily representatives for the BIPOC community.”
Killacky said he wonders if the focus of the bill should be refined or if the board makeup should be expanded to include all the listed communities.
However, activists said they think the BIPOC representatives on the board would be well-equipped to address a whole variety of concerns.
“I grew up in Vermont, and growing up in Vermont as a Black person in the ‘80s and ’90s is a little bit like having a disability,” said Kenya Lazuli, director of Everytown Vermont. “You are not treated the same. You don’t have access to the same things. We see you and we hear you, and your concerns will be addressed.”
The committee will continue to take testimony on the bill over the coming weeks.
