"You can tell somebody all day long that we want to help you with your down payment, or we're going to give you a loan to offset it, but you still have to jump through those first hoops," Mark Hughes of Vermont Racial Justice Alliance told Seven Days last week. Vermont housing providers are responding to the significant gap in BIPOC homeownership, from 0- interest loans to BIPOC borrowers from Champlain Housing Trust, to down-payment assistance to first-generation home buyers from Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA). But advocates argue that this is not enough. Racial covenants historically governed who can live in Vermont, with neighborhoods finding records of these discriminatory policies still in place as recently as the 2000's (although unenforceable), and a tight housing market makes discrimination even harder to prove. U.S. home prices appreciated at a record rate in 2021, squeezing out potential buyers with lower incomes. "Folks who are more likely to have an all-cash offer are probably going to be white, upper-class people," said Burlington City Councilor Zoraya Hightower. https://www.sevendaysvt.com/.../new-programs.../Content...
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