BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – An increase in homelessness and a shortage of housing are pressing issues across Vermont, but nowhere more than in Burlington, where the candidates for mayor have made it a top focus of their campaigns.
You don’t have to look far to see the housing needs in Burlington. Hundreds of people on the streets live in tents or vie nightly to find shelter space in the city’s downtown. The leading mayoral candidates differ on what to do about the crisis.
“I want to make sure we have a city where people can afford to both live and work here with economic dignity,” said Emma Mulvaney-Stanaks, the Progressive candidate for mayor. She says as the city and state work to create more shelter space and permanent housing, the city needs to change its camping on public lands policy to allow designated camping spots with services. “There could be multiple places we could think about as options for an organized location for people to exist until we can get people into a better, liveable, safe place to live.”
Enabling more camping is not an idea Democratic City Councilor Joan Shannon supports after her experience with the trash-strewn Sears Lane encampment in her South ward that the city dismantled in 2021. “I do think that we need compassion and we need solutions. And we also need to, you know, protect our community spaces at the same time,” she said.
Shannon says she can abide temporary tenting on public lands — other than parks — but that organized encampments don’t work. “It is better to tell somebody as they’re pitching the tent, ‘No, I’m sorry, you cannot stay here’ than it is to tell them that months after they have settled in and collected all of their belongings there,” she said.
Both candidates say Burlington can’t do it alone and they implore other communities to help with the city’s shelter and housing needs. They also both want to see more transitional housing with support services to assist people in transitioning out of homelessness.
Housing is not only an issue for the homeless. Both agree that Burlington has become prohibitively expensive for many renters and homebuyers, with a vacancy rate as low as .6 percent. Mulvaney-Stanak wants to incentivize landlords who keep prices low with a break on taxes and make municipal property taxes income-sensitive, like school taxes. “I’d like to explore adding that so that we have a parallel structure where we can support working families and people on low, on fixed incomes, be able to be able to stay in their homes and make sure that folks who can pay more pay more into a system,” she said.
Shannon is more focused on easing housing prices through increasing supply. She says zoning changes currently under City Council review will make it easier to build housing in Burlington. But she also wants to make it easier for developers to build condominiums to promote home ownership. “I do think that we need to provide a variety of housing options and the opportunity to stabilize housing costs through home homeownership,” she said.
Related Stories:
Burlington mayoral candidates weigh in on public safety
WCAX Investigates: Burlington’s intractable homeless crisis
Burlington mayoral candidates participate in public forum