What if Burlington City Council Does What NYC City Council did with Veto Proof Vote to Suddenly Spend 6% of Budget for Fed Housing Vouchers

The VT Housing Finance Agency vhfa.com seeks comments on $1.5 million to be spent on covid relief without addressing the underlying income gap. Below are my comments submitted today, May 29, and the address for anyone to submit comments, etc. https://www.vhfa.org/news/blog/dhcd-seeks-public-comment-recovery-housing-plan COMMENTS: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Plan for use of federal recovery funds received by Vermont. This opportunity to comment was provided by a VHFA tweet in the last day. First and foremost as anyone knows who even takes a cursory look at Vermont governmental activity in the area of housing, there is no comprehensive housing plan and the pandemic has held up a Agency of Human Services doing even a plan for older Vermonters. The housing "problem" is summed by the Center for Budget Priorities as a need for an additional 16,000 fed type "affordable housing assistance" (shelter security at 30% income max rent) for Vermont (not including homeowners and mobile homes on rental sites) with 14,000 units in place serving on in five renters. Vermont so-called "affordable housing" (tax credit non-profit and Burlington "inclusionary zoning') is best described in the annual HUD report of tax credit housing where 24% of households pay in excess of 30% of income and 6% pay over half their income for rent. So, no plan for Vermont and a need which is clearly not addressed. The use of any public for funds for homeownership makes no sense while the 1,000 households, for example, sit on the Burlington Housing Authority waitlist, for example. New York City's City Council remarkably this week passed a veto proof budget with 6%--for the first time--set for affordable fed type Section 8 assistance vouchers (30% income max rent). There really are no such City budgeted units like this today! Vermont and BTV also do zilch here while doing "pretend" short term treatments, sort of like having an emergency room of housing with no wards for longer term treatment. If Burlington employed 6% of their general fund for fed type vouchers it would create about 600 vouchers, end homelessness overnight and address a good chunk of our Housing Authority waitlist. It is also time for Vermont state government to stand up and act like an adult in the room. The 30% requirement for a household income needs to be dropped to 25% as it was until the Reagan administration--30% if frankly confiscatory and exploitive of the lower income classes. The entire are of providing transitional assistance where there is no promise of longer term assistance is in itself cruel and unusual aid--depressing to those who administer the funds and those who received them. We must--as then Sen. Harris' Rent Relief Act called for--make Section 8 type aid as universal and not dependent on the drugs you do or do not consume. Drug addiction is a health issue not a housing issue. Finally I would refer you to Mathew Desmond's book "Eviction" and particularly the 60 or so pages of notes which comprise a graduate course in housing policy--and note that he like myself subscribe to universal vouchers--when we reach that point the behavior issues can be handed off where they belong--in the human services and health fields! Thank you for the opportunity to comment and this program design--it is not a plan. There is no housing plan for Vermont or the City of Burlington. That must also be addressed! Yours truly, Tony Redington