This chapter of the Consolidated Plan presents an overall assessment of the community and its housing and community development needs. It describes what currently exists to meet those needs, and what the gaps are. It provides the foundation for establishing priorities and for allocating CDBG and HOME funding to address the identified needs.

I. GENERAL DEMOGRAPHICS

Burlington, with a population of just under 40,000, is Vermont's largest city. Burlington is the regional hub of Chittenden County for commerce, government, education, arts, entertainment, and health, legal, financial and social services. It is the only entitlement community in the state.

Population

The city’s population is growing, but slowly. Population growth within the city is limited by the fact that the city is largely already built out. Nonetheless, the city is committed to achieving continued growth through infill and increased density. The county, in contrast, is seeing significant population growth.

Many of the biggest shifts in the composition of Burlington’s population occurred between 1970 and 1980. Drops in the proportions of family households coincided with increases in the proportions of college students and single-person households. There has always been a substantial difference between the overall number of families in the city and the number of families who have children.

College Students

The city is home to two residential institutions of higher learning (the University of Vermont and Champlain College) and currently also to two additional educational institutions with substantial student populations (the Community College of Vermont and Burlington College). The college population in Burlington grew from 5,877 in 1970 to 10,163 in 2000, and over 25% of Burlington’s population is now enrolled in college or graduate school. That contributes to the city’s vitality (and makes the city’s demographics younger than the rest of the state), but also puts pressure on the local rental housing market and on the quality of life in many neighborhoods – especially as 60% of Burlington’s college students do not live in dorms.

Enrollment at the University of Vermont and at Champlain College is expected to continue to increase:

Age

Because of its large college student population, Burlington has many young adults. The number of children has decreased significantly since the 1960’s, but that downward trend – together with the birth rate – appear to have stabilized.

The number of seniors is increasing, and is projected to increase further: According to projections from the AARP Burlington Livable Communities Project, there will be a 50% increase in the number of Burlington residents age 55 to 65 between the years 2000 and 2010, and a similar increase in those age 65 and older beyond 2010.

Racial and Ethnic Diversity

Burlington has become more racially and ethnically diverse over the last 25 years. In 2000, 9.1% of city residents identified themselves as something other than white and not Hispanic. (The 2000 Census allowed people to identify themselves as multi-racial for the first time.) In 2000, the city's largest single minority group was Asian; among that group, Vietnamese are the largest subgroup.

You can view this information in a table format here.

Burlington is much more diverse than most of the rest of Chittenden County. Burlington accounts for about 27% of the county's population, yet the city's percentage of racial minorities is considerably higher in each racial category:

You can view this information in a table format here.

Burlington’s diversity is continuing to increase, and is in marked contract to the rest of the state. The chart below shows the public school population in the 2006-07 school year:

Immigrants and refugees contribute substantially to Burlington’s increasing diversity. The 2000 Census showed that almost 5% of city residents (1,925 people) had entered the country in the last ten years – and 1,345 residents had entered the country in the last five years. Major refugee resettlement groups have included Vietnamese, Bosnians, Sudanese, Congolese, Bantu refugees from Somalia and, most recently, Burundians and Iraqis. The Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program anticipates the arrival of 457 refugees during federal fiscal year 2008, with Burlington as a principal destination.

Income and Poverty

Chittenden County is the most prosperous county in Vermont, with a HUD-estimated median family income of $70,100 in 2008. Median income in Burlington, however, lags below that of the rest of Chittenden County (with the exception of the city of Winooski) and behind the state as a whole. As of the 2000 Census, 57% of Burlington’s residents were “low- and moderate-income,” meaning that they were living in households whose income was 80% or less of the area median income. The table and the map show income differences as of the 2000 Census.

Click here to view a map of city census tracts to see where the tracts listed above are located.

More recent data – a comparison of median adjusted gross income for taxpayers by school district in 2006 – similarly shows that income in Burlington lags behind other Chittenden County communities and behind the state as a whole.

Families living in poverty are concentrated within Burlington and the adjoining city of Winooski. As of the 2000 Census, 43% of the county’s impoverished families were living in Burlington, although Burlington had only 20% of county families overall. Burlington’s Old North End neighborhoods had the highest poverty rates of any census tracts in the state. The Old North End includes census tracts 3, 4, 5 and part of 10; click here to view a map of the city’s census tracts.

You can view this information in a table format here.

The 2000 Census showed that the poverty rate in Burlington was 20%. However, the overall poverty rate in Burlington is skewed by the city’s large population of college students. Fifty-one percent of those enrolled in college were living in poverty, but that is most often a temporary condition. Excluding those enrolled in college, the overall poverty rate in Burlington in 2000 was 11.2%. Source: CHAS Table A13.

For families, the 2000 poverty rate in Burlington was 10.4%. Not unusually, poverty is particularly pronounced among women raising their children as single parents: Seventy-two percent of families with children living in poverty were households headed by women. In the Old North End neighborhoods of Burlington, where there are a high proportion of female-headed households, 60% of those households – and 39% of children age 17 and younger – were living in poverty.

Poverty is not synonymous with not working. Forty-nine percent of families living in poverty had at least one working adult in the household, and 11% had at least one adult working full-time, year round.

Poverty Trends

Poverty rates for families, families with children, and female-headed families with children decreased in the 1990’s after increasing – sharply, in some cases – in the previous decade. For seniors, the poverty rate continued to decline over the last 20 years.

Twenty percent of the children (those under age 18) in Burlington continued to live in poverty in 2000. That compared to a national rate of 16.6%, a state rate of 11.4% and a county rate of 8.4%. For seniors (those age 65 and older), there was less difference between the poverty rates in Burlington (10.5%), the nation (9.9%), the state (8.9%) and the county (8.2%).

You can view this information in a table format here.

Income and Poverty by Race and Ethnicity

Just as poverty disproportionate affects women raising children as single parents, it also disproportionately affects minorities. Both individual and family poverty rates are significantly higher among most minority groups in Burlington:

Income disparities by race have grown enormously since 1980. In 1980, the median family income for black city residents was 81% of the median family income for white residents. By 2000, the median family income for black residents had dropped to 54% of the median family income for white residents. And whereas in 1980, black families in the Metropolitan Statistical Area had a higher median income than white families, their median income dropped to 63% of white families in 2000.

In the Economic Opportunity section of the Plan, there is additional information on income disparities for other groups, such as persons with disabilities.

Areas of Low-Income and Minority Concentration

Within Burlington, families living in poverty (as defined by the Census) are concentrated in the area bounded by North Street, Pearl Street, North Winooski Avenue and North Champlain Street, where over 35% of families are living in poverty.

Given the relatively low numbers of minority residents in the city, there are no geographic areas of minority concentration. As of 2000, over 80% of the residents in all census tracts in the city were white and non-hispanic:

Although there are no meaningful concentrations of minority residents in any area within the city, there is a greater diversity among residents in the Old North End (within census tract 3). To view a map of the city’s census tracts, click here.

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