April is National Fair Housing Month—Do you know your rights?

Jessica Hyman is busy. Prepping in her office for the 56th National Fair Housing Month, she has a table full of supplies that will be used to help educate folks in the Winooski area on their housing rights. Every April, the passage of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 is celebrated and Hyman has been working on a month full of events.

“Our goal would be to work ourselves out of a job,” said Hyman, associate director of housing advocacy programs at CVOEO, who works to help increase inclusive affordable housing in Vermont. According to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, 70 percent of the households in Winooski are renters compared to only 30 percent in all of Vermont.

The mission of the nonprofit Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity or CVOEO in Burlington, Vt. is to address the fundamental issues of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice and work with people to achieve economic independence. Hyman, who started part time with the Fair Housing Project doing education and outreach, is now one of 11 staff running programs throughout the state. She recently paused to talk about the challenges faced by renters in Winooski.

What are your main goals with the housing advocacy programs?

I primarily focus on our education and outreach for renters, for people experiencing discrimination, for housing providers, service providers, and municipal officials. I do anti-discrimination work and training for folks and I work with community partners and organizations to increase the amount of inclusive affordable housing in Vermont.

How do you classify something as affordable?

A home is affordable if you’re paying no more than 30 percent of your income on rent or mortgage and associated costs. So, in Vermont, this isn’t going to be the exact numbers but roughly half of renters are paying more than 30 percent of their income, and a quarter of renters are paying more than 50 percent of their income on rent or expenses. So that standard definition of affordability is a little bit irrelevant because it just doesn’t exist, or it’s harder to find.

Can you share some examples or scenarios of the challenges faced by renters in Winooski?

Winooski renters face similar issues to what we see all over the state. Some of these are the result of the current housing crisis, such as large increases in rent and the lack of housing choice and mobility.

This means that people are being priced out of their homes and don’t have many options if they want or need to move.

Other issues are caused by poor conditions or inattentive landlords, such as repairs not being done and health and safety issues.

You said that residents in Winooski were getting verbal or printed notices that weren’t clear or weren’t legal notices, and they were confused and scared because a lot of them don’t speak English as their first language?

Since there are no laws in Vermont that require private landlord to make important documents available in other languages, this puts ESL [English as a Second Language] residents at a disadvantage. Tenants have been told repeatedly for months that they have to leave because the buildings are being torn down, but they have not received the actual legal notice that is required by law to terminate a rental agreement.

Vermont Landlord/Tenant law is very clear on how a landlord is supposed to give notice. Without that legal notice, given within a specified timeframe, tenants are not required to leave. Many renters don’t know this.

Have you seen this in other towns as well?

We see this all over the state. The housing market is so tight there’s a really low vacancy rate. The state-wide vacancy rate is hovering around three percent and, in the Chittenden, Winooski and Burlington areas, the vacancy rate is hovering around one percent. What that means is that for every 100 apartments that exist, less than one is available at any given time.

Winooski has been doing a really good job at supporting new housing development. As a small city, they’ve put a lot of time, energy and investment into making sure they’re allowing affordable housing to be built. There’s the Winooski Housing Authority, which provides hundreds of subsidized apartments and vouchers all over the city.

What do you mean by subsidized housing?

There are various supports and programs that are available at the state and federal level that provide some help for people in paying rent that is generally income-based. So, people who are of lower income, people with disabilities, seniors, and other groups can have access to different types of vouchers. These vouchers give someone the ability to get help with their rent. Generally, and this is a big generalization, if someone has a housing voucher, they’re only required to pay 30 percent of their income as part of the rent or sometimes it’s 30 percent of the rent.

Some vouchers are place-based so because they live there, they get that support but if they were to move, they would have to pay whatever rent somewhere else. There are also housing-choice vouchers which used to be called Section 8. Those, people can take with them. No matter where they live as long as certain criteria are met, they can take that voucher with them. But there are also huge waiting lists to get vouchers and to get into buildings.

Are you ever not able to help someone?

All the time, and it’s heartbreaking.

There are a lot of situations that we can’t fix. We can tell them what their rights are, we can give them information, we can help guide them through making whatever that next decision is in their life, but you know we can’t do it for them and we shouldn’t.

Being able to call a landlord to talk to them about an issue can be really helpful. A lot of the clients and people we work with are struggling economically, with mental health issues, and with substance abuse issues and we don’t address those issues, our partner organizations do.

But even if we can’t help someone, we want to make sure that they’re heard and seen and aren’t just passed from one person to another.

Ada Jones studies Digital Media and Communications at St. Michael’s College and is a member of the Alpine Ski Team.