 Welcome to the Vermont Affordable Housing Show. Today we're gonna celebrate Northgate's 30 years of housing affordability and resident control. My name is Erhardt Monk, I'm your host today. I'm the coordinator for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. And with me today to my immediate right is Linda Romeo who is a longtime resident at Northgate Housing in the New North End of Burlington. And Linda's also the secretary of our resident controlled board of directors. And with me also on my far right is Carol Jaramillo who is our community builder at the Northgate Residents Ownership Corporation. So thanks to both of you for joining us today. Thank you for having us. We're gonna feature Northgate Housing, which like I said is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Had a celebration on Saturday, but before we get into that, I have a couple of quick announcements. Just a first reminder that this is a live call-in show our phone number is 862-3966. If you have any questions or comments on today's topic, please feel free to call in and we'll do our best to respond to your question or your comment. And in terms of a couple of upcoming housing related events, first and foremost, I wanted to make sure that folks out there are aware of the Mayor's Burlington Housing Summit which is happening next Tuesday, June 11th from 12 to five at City Hall. And then there's gonna be a town hall from six to eight in the evening also at City Hall. And there'll be a web link posted at the end of the show with more information on that. Also coming up in two weeks will be the annual release of our National Oncome Housing Coalition's annual out of reach report, which will provide sort of the latest information on housing affordability or how I should say how little our housing in Vermont is affordable. That's gonna be released next Tuesday, June 18th. And then lastly, for folks who are interested, there's been an ongoing look at the Burlington City's Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance. That started a couple of years ago with an Inclusionary Zoning Work Group. Then the City Council's Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization and Ordnance Committees looked at it and it's now been with the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission has marked it up and has some revisions ready for public hearing, which will be in three weeks on Tuesday, June 25th at 6.45 p.m. in conference room 12 in City Hall. So with those announcements having been made, I wanna turn to our topic for the day and talk a little bit about Northgate Apartments, the Northgate Residence Ownership Corporation and I'll turn to maybe first to Carol and say ask Carol maybe if you could tell folks a little bit, folks in the audience a little bit about Northgate. Folks, not everybody is necessarily gonna be familiar with Northgate and sometimes these shows get broadcast through the rest of the public access network around the state of Vermont. So maybe give us a little bit of an overview for our viewing audience, what Northgate is and what it means here to Burlington. Absolutely. At first glance as you're driving by Northgate, it's going to look like an ordinary apartment complex. It is actually the largest affordable housing complex in the state of Vermont. What makes Northgate unique is that it is resident owned, it is resident operated and directed. We have a board of directors comprised of 13 people, nine of whom are residents, four of whom are community reps and they give us expertise such as housing and social work, energy efficiency. Northgate is a community. So as you drive into Northgate, you're gonna see some beautiful housing. It's beautifully landscaped, but what people don't see and what they couldn't know just from looking at Northgate is that Northgate almost wasn't. There was a time when it was developed in the very beginning, the developers got a very, very special deal. I think it maybe was a 1% interest rate mortgage and they were able to build Northgate with the understanding that if they prepaid their loans, they could then sell it and do whatever they wanted with it. These were loans from housing and urban development. They were. And so in the late 1980s, that's exactly what was going to happen. The developers, the owners were going to flip the property and it was supposed to be made into a very upscale neighborhood. I've heard golf courses, condos, what have you. Wow, I never heard the golf courses. Right. But it's location in the North End of Burlington, like what's next door to Northgate. We're talking about like in the 80s, I think hadn't Northshore condos just been developed? Just beginning to be developed. I think they came in in 89, I believe. Northgate's right on the shores of Lake Champlain, so it's prime real estate. And frankly, Northgate was built with the understanding that it wasn't supposed to last. It wasn't supposed to be there. But that meant that 336 families would be displaced if they couldn't afford to buy their homes. And I just said this at our annual gathering on Saturday, and I hear it's not urban legend, but I thought it might have been when Bernie Sanders, who was mayor of Burlington at that time, heard that 336 families could be displaced, he said over my dead body. And that's when the wheel started to be in motion so that federal, state, local partnerships formed to save Northgate. Fast forward to 2019. It's been 30 years since the residents bought out, owned and operate Northgate, and I really do mean owned. It's owned as a collective. The board of directors at that time in 2009, I believe, was our last buyout. And the board of directors signed a transfer of ownership document. So what Northgate is, is it is a very unique community, resident-owned, resident-directed. The residents have say in everything. Maloney Properties is our property manager. They are very proud to be the property manager. They have been our property manager for 30 years. But what people don't understand, most people don't understand is that Maloney Properties does not own Northgate, the residents do. It's a very inclusive, diverse community, and we're very proud of that, represented by, I think, 22 different countries. Wow. So yeah, I mean, knowing Northgate as I do, I know it's probably one of the most diverse communities in the entire state. So turning to Linda for a second. Linda, you've been a longtime resident. Tell us a little bit about, what you've been doing as a resident, tell us a little bit about, how long have you been at Northgate? Tell us a little bit about, I know you were there pretty much at the beginning. Talk about that a little bit and what Northgate's meant to you and to your family. Okay. I have been a resident for 48 years. Wow. So I was in that original beginning. I raised my family there. In the very beginning, we had some pretty tough times. The people who owned it didn't take care of us. I mean, didn't take care of the units. Our electric heat used to run us more than our rent. And we used to have sewage that would back up into our units. We could call and it'd be days on end with no answers. It just was a pretty tough going. And then when we discovered this rumor, as it started out to be, that they were going to be sold from out and under us, we decided we were going to get help. And we went to city council. We took our bills. We protested what was going on. And luckily we won, but it's a community. I raised my family there. My family has now got a family of their own. They're very, very lucky to have, they're very proud. We have a good school district. We're right on the bus line. And as Carol pointed out, we're represented by 22 different nations. And it's a special place to live. And helping the residents as a board of director, it's helping the residents to understand that they do own it. So as a resident board leader, how do you see your role and how does that work? It's just very important to know what we need, what we want, what we would like to see done and be able to bring it forth, bring it to volition. And we do those things. And... So when somebody has like, let's say a problem with their apartment, what happens? We just, we call in the office and within, within two hours, someone is at your unit. It's taken care of immediately. We don't have any problems to worry about because the minute you call it's addressed. And it's just wonderful to know that we don't have to put up with any kind of deterioration. As people probably have seen Northgate lately, we're in a rehab again. We're redoing our apartments. Yeah, it's almost, I mean, as a long-time board member myself, I know it's almost constant. There's always something going on. Yeah, it is, something going on. And well, we'll maybe see a little bit of this later. Maybe if we can show folks some before and after shots, people who may not have been around 30 years ago don't remember what it looked like. I know when I was on the city council back in the 80s, I saw you guys down there all the time with the issues that weren't getting taken care of and the outrageous electric heating bills that... Oh, that they were, that they were. Just crazy. I mean, it was a decision whether you had to eat or you were gonna pay your rent or eat. I mean... Your traditional heater-eat choice, yeah. I remember you telling me also that something, I don't know if this was you or Kathy Miles or some of the other long-time residents used to talk about how you'd have like frost buildup in your kitchen cabinets. I used to be, I used to have to shovel snow out of my kitchen from between the glass doors. Yeah, I mean, it was really very poor conditions, very poor. Oh, and that's all been taken care of, I remember. And we have, no, right now, I mean, my heating bill is under $40 a month. Wow. I really couldn't ask for a better place to live. I have a community around me that's supportive and I know that if I have questions, I'll get answers. Wow, that's the way, you know, those of us who were involved in making sure that Northgate didn't displace 336 families who were involved back in the day. This is kind of the vision that we had and I'm so glad to have seen it come to fruition for over the last 30 years. So this past weekend, we had a special event at Northgate. Maybe if both of you could kind of fill in, tell our audience a little bit about what we were doing up at Northgate this weekend. Absolutely. We just celebrated 30 years of resident ownership at Northgate. And we did have a celebration. We mixed it into our annual meeting so that we could reelect our resident directors. But we felt that it was noteworthy that we celebrate this 30 years. We talk about affordability a lot and there's more to housing than simply affordability, which is very, very, very important. But one of the things that we wanna celebrate and that we do celebrate at Northgate is not only affordability, but decent housing, safe housing. Just because something is affordable doesn't mean it has to be in an unsafe neighborhood or you can't have curb appeal. And I always say to folks that everybody wants affordability. If you've ever had a mortgage for a house, you look for the lowest rates you can, you refinance when you can. That's a person searching for affordability. And so it's not just people who happen to live in rental units that want affordability. Everyone wants that deal. Everyone wants affordability. But at the same time, you want a decent place to live. You want quality too. You want quality. You want it to look nice. You want to be able to allow your children to go out to the playgrounds without having to worry about them. And that's what we do have at Northgate. And so is it all low income? No, Northgate is multi-income, multi-generational housing. And so we have quite a robust youth population, but more interestingly right now because people are aging in place, we now have more people 50 and older who are at Northgate. And so we're very lucky enough to have a budget that allows us to also have programming at Northgate, special events and programming. So we do have things like play dates for toddlers, but we're beginning to have more programming for our over 50 crowd, because that's 28% right now of our residents. Well, Linda, you do a lot of volunteering. So what are some of the things that you get engaged in? And what are some of those services that we're providing, especially for seniors? We, like I said, Carol said we have a play date for toddlers. We've gotten our seniors together. We go to lunch. We have a senior evening where we all get together. We cook a meal. We sit down and we eat and we visit. We have a food pantry. We deliver commodities to our seniors. You've got a van too. We have a van that, yes. When folks need to go shopping down the avenue, the van can take people. Or if they've doctor's appointments, anything that they need, all they do is call in and the van is free. It's a ride to wherever you need to go. So one of the things that has impressed me about Northgate, especially 30 years afterwards, Carol, you mentioned the mixed income aspect. And I know we have a fairly complicated rental system, but one of the things that's always amazed me is that we're able to steward Northgate and even our, quote unquote, market rents are way below market. Way below market. I don't know the exact number. And I'm not sure if you know the exact numbers, but I... I'm not sure about the exact number, but it's at least 50% lower than what's out there in downtown Burlington for, say, a three bedroom apartment. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think our two bedroom apartments are roughly, what, $1,000 or something like that, maybe? Oh, for market? I think they're even lower than that. For our market rates are below, two bedroom apartments below. I could be wrong, but when I did a cost comparison, you'll see on our timeline, our rents, there's a little, there was an advertisement about what our rents were back in 1969. And this is before even the residents owned it. So, you know, Northgate was built in 1969 and 1970. So the property actually is 50 years old this year. It's been controlled and owned by the residents for 30 years. But it's always been affordable. Yeah, right, right. And that was thanks to the sort of that long term, low interest, HUD loan and the annual operating subsidies that basically filled the gap between what low income residents could afford and what it costs to operate the property plus, you know, a certain amount for reasonable amount for profit and for setting money aside. What I love about that too, it's a very cooperative type of structure. So that all of our rents go into our operating budget. And there's no, you know, fat cat landlord that's getting rich off of the rents. The rents are always done to support the salaries of the property management company and to improve the... Right, so we have a long range capital plan where, you know, the roofs get replaced on a regular schedule. I know all of the heating systems have been replaced again because the major renovations happened in the early 90s during, you know, right after the residents bought the property from the former owner. And 20 years later, we had to replace all those because heating systems only last so long and roofs only last so long and siding only lasts so long and fences, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, I mean, I will say, you know, as someone who's worked in affordable housing for over 30 years now, you know, Northgate is one of the, I would say, really well maintained. And if you look at it, you know, compared to other, you know, non-affordable market rate rental property, it's certainly really well kept. I remember the first time I walked into Northgate, I saw those beautiful hardwood floors and... Oh my God, I mean, if I'd still been renting, I would have applied for to live at Northgate. I had a friend visit from New York one time, upstate New York, and this was back when we first moved in in 1993. And she said, this is affordable housing. Yeah, right. So you've been a resident also. Yes, I am still a resident. And you're still a resident, right? 26 years. And also a former board member. Former board member. I should have mentioned that. Now retired and doing a second job. Yes, it's my... Your second career. That's right. Great. Well, we're, you know, the 30 minutes that we have goes by really fast. We've got about 10 minutes left. I'd like to turn to our most recent project. We recently completed a major project at Northgate, kind of a retrospective or a timeline. And Carol actually has a laptop over here and she's gonna show us a couple of highlights from that. So if folks in the back room there could put that up there, it's on screen. So Carol, wanna guide us through what this is all about. And let me just, before you do, let me just also give huge credit to CCTV here, Channel 17, which we at Northgate hire Channel 17 to help us sort through just reams and reams of photographs. After a bidding process. Yes, that's right. That's right. It was not a sweetheart deal. That's right. Unlike the old Northgate. So we put out bids, got competitive bids and CCTV won that. And so they sorted through free press clippings, photographs, archival video. And so Carol, take it away. Gargantuan task. And to tell you the truth, we didn't realize how big it was. We totally underestimated this whole project. But this is our timeline. Here it is on the computer screen. What we did, we wanted to capture what Northgate was all about. We didn't want to lose the history. And 50 years ago, that's a long time. And we realized that many of the folks who remembered what Northgate is and was, they are either aging or they're not around anymore. So we decided that we had to capture this. What the timeline does is it goes through the different major events. As you can see in the late 60s here, it says that there was a housing crunch, much like today. And so it kind of goes through the different articles from the free press kind of outlining what had to happen. That headline could have been written today. Yes, absolutely. There are many headlines in here that could have been, yeah, employment boom. What are we having today? An employment boom. One of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. That's right. So we go through these different panels. I want to slowly scroll down here. We did an interview with some of the major players like Gus Ceeley and Brenda Torpey and Peter Clavel. And this is a video here. And it goes throughout the timeline. It's very, very interesting as these key players really talk about and remember their experiences. Because one of the things about Northgate, if I might just add, is it's very significant in sort of the overall, not just a significant resource for Burlington and a significant part of Burlington's housing history. It's part of state housing history. And Northgate was instrumental in getting those of us who were involved in housing statewide back in the day to understand that because of these potentials for private sector developers that were developing HUD funded housing because of their ability to opt out of their affordability restrictions, we needed to make some major changes in state policy which involve making the housing that we invest public dollars in permanently affordable as opposed to just affordable for 15 or 20 or 30 years. So Vermont's kind of unique. When I look around at the country, around the country to other states and how they do affordable housing, Vermont's pretty unique in that. And we learned this lesson from Northgate and from a couple of other, couple that got away, a couple of projects you used to live out in Essex at Indian Brook, which was condominiumized. And- And I was displaced. And you were displaced. So that was a hard lesson learned in the 80s. And that was one of the reasons why we made such an emphasis on saving Northgate, but then embedding the lessons learned from that in state policy and state funding policy. And they've been there ever since. And this timeline, we're hoping to get this out to more people than simply Burlington. Northgate's a national model. And people in California know more about Northgate than some people in Vermont do, which is quite interesting. But I just want to, if you see one bedroom, $90, two bedrooms, $104, three bedrooms, $117. Wow. And I'm not sure what the structure was for that, but it's not that much more, depending on the tier that people are in. And down here, there's our friend Linda. And this is what Northgate looked in when it was very bad. Can you magnify that for a second? I can. That beautiful dark brown, dark brown sighting. This is what the residents were saying. There was no insulation. It was horrible. There was so much wrong. I remember reading a letter from Burlington Electric at the time to the property management beforehand, who said, we can't do anything with these windows. Nothing fits. It was horrible. I noticed from the headline that you, the article that you just showed, another thing I remember was, people didn't want to go to Northgate because it had a stigma. I mean, look at it, the way it looked is kind of the way people thought about it also. It was depressing, it looked depressing. It was depressing to live there. People were paying through the nose on their heating and the housing was not in good shape and it was also not really safe. There were, it had a real stigma. Nobody wanted to go to Northgate. If you lived at Northgate, you had a stigma attached to you almost. And I think that people were losing hope. Let's see. I just wanted, I showed you the horrible one. Northgate today, I did just want to, this was one of our barbecues. This is our kid's fishing derby. This is the Northgate. That's the entrance, right? This is the entrance today. Our harvest festival. This is fire safety day. This is one of our, yep, our young girl who decided to raise money for Christian Kababu's memory. If you can see in the background, this is what Northgate looks like today without the snow, of course. A little different. Yes. A little different. And this is one of our playgrounds. So this is what Northgate looks today. It's beautiful. It has great curb appeal. People have hope. Very diverse. Very diverse. And one last thing that Bernie Sanders, of course, was mayor of Burlington at that time. And I know we have, there's our Mayor Peter Clavel. He is here. Here's what many people claim, Bernie was our hero and is. And this is him saying that you can't displace the 336 families. It's just wrong on every level. Wow. And, yeah, imagine how transformational it might be if he becomes our president, but we're not gonna make political statements now. So any parting thoughts? Linda, you still live at Northgate? I do. And I plan to live there until someone calls me home. Oh, well. It's my home. That's gonna be a long time from now. I know you've got, she's got more energy than I do. And probably Carol put together. So Carol, any, we've got about a minute left. Any parting thoughts from you? I guess my parting thoughts are that Northgate is a gem. And it is the best kept secret, I think, of Burlington. People, we need more Northgates. My brother just moved to Oregon and they just instituted rent control there. And he said they're not doing a very good job about it. They need more Northgates. And for more Northgates, what we need is we need more federal and state funding. Because without the public resources that go into this, we will not be able to save more Northgates or build new Northgates. So one quick plug, I'll just say, if you, anyone in the audience is looking for a great affordable community to live in, call 658-2722. That is the phone number of Maloney properties. They'll tell you how to apply. There is a waiting list. Depends on how long it is, depends on what the bedroom size is that you're looking for and whether or not you need affordable unit or not. But call them or go to the website and we've got some resources that are gonna be posted here during the credits at the end and I'll just say thank you and tune in again on Wednesday, August 7th at 525 and we'll have the next Vermont Affordable Housing, next edition of the Vermont Affordable Housing Show and thank you both for being here today. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you.