Housing Vermont Squeezed by Shutdown
Another report from VTDigger concerning the impact the shutdown and sequester are having on housing in Vermont:
In September USDA Rural Development stopped making rental assistance payments to Housing Vermont for a 13-unit subsidized housing project in Springfield because it ran out of money at the end of the federal government’s fiscal year, according to report on the New Yorker blog by Kirk Kardashian... Now that the fiscal year has come to a close and the U.S. House Republicans have refused to fund the government into the new fiscal year, there is no predicting when the bloodletting for Housing Vermont, a Burlington-based affordable housing nonprofit, will end. The $13,000 a month mortgage bills, however, haven’t stopped piling up, Kardashian reports. Low-income residents pay $3,000 a month toward the cost; the rest is made up for by Housing Vermont, which at this point is drawing money from the capital fund to make the payments.
There are over 600 projects nationwide, serving over 15,000 households, that are similarly affected. Who says the shutdown’s not impacting anyone? If you haven’t had a chance, make sure you take the time to read the excellent New Yorker post referenced above. See also: The Shutdown’s Ripple Effects In Rural America (PDF); Vermonters operate in the uncertainty of the federal government shutdown