During the next program year, the city will continue to implement its Inclusionary Zoning and Housing Preservation and Replacement ordinances; to provide CDBG and HOME funding to nonprofit housing developers to develop, renovate and preserve affordable housing; and to support the Burlington Housing Authority as the lead agency in facilitating the transfer of ownership of housing with expiring subsidies from the private sector to nonprofit ownership, thus assuring their perpetual use as affordable housing.

Burlington was recognized by HUD as a model for reducing regulatory barriers that drive up housing costs. There are, nonetheless, several actions which can be taken to reduce further reduce barriers, which include the following steps. These are recommendations of both the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force in 2002 and the City Council Housing Super Committee in 2005:

• Adopt a flexible rehab sub-code that provides clear guidelines for each category of rehabilitation, increases the predictability for property owners and reduces the cost of rehabilitation.
• Provide annual training to the Development Review, Design Advisory and Conservation Boards to ensure that members of these review boards fully understand their roles, proper meeting protocols, the rights of all parties and to ensure impartial project review on the part of board members.
• Explore a pilot project for on the record development review hearings for downtown zoning districts as determined by City Council.

Subprime Lending and Foreclosures

Subprime lending and foreclosures have, fortunately, been less of an issue in Burlington than in other communities across the country. The city’s 2008 Consolidated Plan analyzed data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, provided by DataPlace™, http://www.dataplace.org, December 7, 2007. That data (available through 2004) showed that overall, there are not many subprime loans in the city. There was a sharp spike in subprime lending in Burlington in 2004 and based on national trends, it is reasonable to assume that this upward trend continued through 2007. (There was also a spike in refinancing in 2000 and 2001, when interest rates were very low.) However, even in the 2004 spike, there were only 42 subprime conventional home purchase loans and 70 subprime conventional refinancing loans in the city.

Foreclosure and delinquency rates are lower in Vermont than nationally, although the number of foreclosure filings in Chittenden County is rising. Through October 2007, 27 of 138 county foreclosure filings involved Burlington properties, roughly proportional to the number of homeowners in the city and county. Fourteen of the 27 Burlington foreclosure filings involved single-family homes, five were residential condos, and the rest were multi-unit properties. The properties were scattered throughout the city, showing no concentration in any one neighborhood.

Median home sales prices in the city rose from 2006 ($250,000) to 2007 ($256,000), and continued to rise through available data in 2008 ($257,500). Abandonment is not an issue in Burlington; the number of vacant buildings is currently estimated at less than six.

The city will continue to monitor foreclosures. However, at this point, neither the initiative of funded foreclosure prevention efforts nor changes to funded homebuyer programs appear to be warranted.

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