 Hello and welcome to In the World of Winooski. This month I'm joined by staff from the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. We're gonna learn about programs and resources available to residents in our area around housing economic supports and other things. So why don't I have my guests introduce themselves? Karin. Hello, I'm Karin from the Champlain Valley of Economic Opportunity. I do education and outreach for the Fair Housing Project. Thank you. And Karin. Karin Ames, Housing Education Coordinator for the Vermont Tenants Program. Awesome, I'm really excited to have you here so that Winooski residents can learn more about programs and resources available to them. Karin, would you start with giving us a brief overview about CVOEO as we would call it? Yeah, sure, sure. So CVOEO is one of the five offices of Economic Opportunity in the state. You know, they're organized by region. So our typical coverage area for programs like weatherization, community action, head start, those sorts of programs is Addison County, Chittenden County, Franklin, and Grand Isle Counties. We offer three main services. I think that was three main buckets. One is our tenant hotline, which is 802-864-0099. And no matter where you live in the state, if you're a tenant or have a tenant question or thinking about being a tenant or planning to be a tenant, you can call and get a one-on-one consultation. And a couple of us monitor the hotline, but our main tenant advocate has been doing this job for like nine or 10 years, and it's been with CVOEO even longer. Wealth of information. That's awesome, yeah. So anyone who's renting or moving into a renting situation can reach this hotline to answer their questions. Absolutely. And one of the services that we provide is a lease review. So we'll read the lease, make sure you understand the terms of your lease, point out anything that you might want to try renegotiating with the landlord, things like that. So that's one main service that we provide. The second part is housing education. So our two main workshops are tenant skills, which covers rights and responsibilities for a tenant, as well as fair housing basics. And then finding housing. And finding housing covers what is affordable housing? How do you approach your story? How do you address barriers like I've never rented before, so I don't have a landlord reference, which can be a big barrier. I've got poor credit or I don't have any credit. What to do about that? I have a criminal background. How do I address that? And then just the nuts and bolts of where to look, how to pull together application materials, how to be organized, what to look for when you go out to a viewing, that kind of thing. So that's area, service area number two. And then number three would be advocacy. And that's at the local level as well as statewide, in the legislature. Oh, okay. So just general advocacy around housing issues or? Mm-hmm, around, particularly focused on tenants or fair housing or mobile home program. We forgot to mention that we are representing two of three programs in the housing advocacy program. We also, the third statewide program is the mobile home program. Okay, less relevant in Winooski, but a good program to have still. Absolutely, yeah. Corinne, do you want to talk a little bit about the Fair Housing Project in your work? Yeah, so I work very closely with Vermont tenants doing education and outreach for fair housing. And fair housing, what does fair housing really mean? It's the right to rent, buy, or finance a home free from discrimination. So when I'm speaking to renters, often times, if they have a question about their tenancy, I would actually first direct them to Vermont tenants just to see, talking over with a hotline advocate and better understand whether what they're talking about is maybe a landlord-tenant law issue. And then if it's a discrimination issue, they refer folks right over to me. And then it's important when we talk about fair housing to talk about who's protecting under fair housing. So fair housing is a federal law, which means that all across the country there are seven protected classes. That includes sex, religion. This is where I'm like, I want to make sure I don't get them wrong. Check your list. Seven federal protected classes. Country of national origin. Let's see, family status, that's a really important one. So often times when we're talking about family status, we're talking about having families with children. There's lots of discrimination that folks face when they have children, which are actually against the Fair Housing Act. And disabilities are really important federal protected class. In Vermont, we have expanded the Fair Housing Act to include seven additional protected classes. And that includes, one of the big ones is receipt of public assistance. So here in Vermont, it is legal to discriminate against vouchers, housing vouchers such as section eight, but also, you know, we had the CARES voucher program, which was a limited program. And there's lots of other public assistance that people receive like SSI and, you know, food assistance. All of these kind of subsidies are protected under the Fair Housing Act, which means in Vermont, it would be illegal for a landlord to say, actually, I don't accept section eight or I don't rent to folks on food stamps. And then, you know, this is a really short kind of segment. We do a whole workshop on Fair Housing alone. We also, as Karyn mentioned, have regular tenants workshops. So really focused on tenants rights and responsibilities. And that includes Fair Housing. And it has kind of a targeted lend for tenants to kind of understand what is actually a complex concept. Well, the concept is not complex. Everyone should get equal opportunity to housing and housing choice. But what that actually means when it comes into practice can be really complicated to understand. The important thing to know is that when we talk about Vermont tenants, we're talking about tenants. That's a resource that's for tenants. And when we're talking about Fair Housing, the Fair Housing Project, which is my organization, that is for anyone involved in housing. So we do work with tenants. We also work with housing providers and municipalities. And really any kind of group or organization that's working towards housing inclusion and understanding their housing rights. That's great. And you mentioned tenants rights. Some people may not be aware, like there are certain things that a landlord must provide to give you quality housing. There's something called the warrant of habitability, which in order to rent to someone, the property has to meet a certain minimum rental housing health codes. Yep. So common questions that we get on the hotline include habitability a lot because Vermont's housing stock is so old. When you skis is particularly old. I was about to say, yep, yep, it's true. And habitability is a concern. So things like mold, pests, infestations, heat issues, structural issues like any damage to roofing or holes in the, you know, a porch, railing not being secure, just any number of things we get calls on. And that landlord access is another area we get a lot of calls on because when someone rents and they move in, they have a right to privacy in their home. And the landlord can only enter for specific reasons, you know, inspect, to do repairs, to provide a service. And with notice. And with notice, only between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., with 48 hours notice. Unless the tenant agrees they have a repair, they want something done at 7 a.m. when the worker's, you know, ready to do it, then great. But otherwise you have a right to privacy in your home for sure. And then what are the, getting a security deposit back? Security deposit is always refundable. And often tenants can struggle getting that back from a landlord. It's happened to me in the past, yeah. There can be disputes over, oh, well, I caused this damage, no, I didn't, or what's wear and tear? And security deposits, you know, can only be used for significant damage, not normal wear and tear. And what we recommend tenants do is take pictures and do a walkthrough and note down any damages when they move in and then repeat that at the end. And that way in Winooski, they would go to small claims court and if they've got that evidence, it would really help. For all of these things, our general approach is problem solving. First, try talking to your landlord. Very often we get calls and I say, did you try talking to your landlord? Oh no, I'm too, I'm too anxious about that. Or, you know, I'm unsure how to have that conversation and so feel free to call to like work through how to have that conversation on the hot, call the hotline for that. But that's always the first step because sometimes things can be resolved just with a conversation. And then if it needs something more, we have sample letters on our website which I probably should show you. Yeah, let's take a look. So let's say this is our main CVOE website and if you go to get help, oops, I keep thinking it's a touch screen, sorry about that. If you go to get help and then down here at Tenants Resources, you come to the main Vermont Tenants webpage and let's see, scrolling down. The hotline number is right here and then what you'll find in multiple ways but over here on the sidebar, there's a section called sample letters and those are super handy pre-formatted letters for you to use in communication with your landlord. Say for example, we touched on landlord access, this is a letter that you can download, print off or pick up at our office or call the hotline, we'll mail it to you, whatever technology, whatever you need and just fill it in and this just reminds the landlord, hey, we've had a conversation, I've notified you that you're not respecting my privacy, here's the law. And very often that'll be like, oh, okay, just done it serious and I'm gonna respect that. And it just lays the groundwork if you have to go even another step further. You know, so that can be really helpful and then other things on our website, probably this is a great first landing page, the Tenants Resources page under the get help section but if you wanna jump right to signing up for a workshop, you can go over here to learn and then there's another program around financial classes so that you'll see those but the renters workshops are where you can access our various workshops and we offer workshops, we're just getting back into doing some in person work for sure but for the past few years, we've been doing workshops over Zoom and also this past year, we provided our two main tenant skills and finding housing fully online self-paced on demand. I saw some videos on there so someone could go and check that information out. Yeah and it's all free. So this is like a free and easy way as long as you have access to technology in the language, which brings up another point. Not everybody in our state speaks English, we recommend that and we've always offered interpreted either Zoom or in person tenant skills classes or finding housing classes when folks need that but happily the past six months, good chunk of my job has been to make translated videos into so far five different languages, both our main workshops. So they'll be the same visuals that an English speaking person will see and then narrated more additional material than the visuals. So those videos, five of them are like, just on the verge of being public and then we have another five languages to go in the next few months. In addition to that, I should mention maybe our definitive guide, which looks like this, that's the cover and that's the, ooh, there we go, there we go. That's the graphic to look for and you can also access it digitally. Yeah, the handshake and you can access that digitally on our website as well but this is sort of, it was originally done as a collaboration between Vermont Tenants and the Vermont Landlord's Association. Oh, that's excellent. So it's written so that you have tips for renters on one side and tips for owners and that can be really helpful to understand both sides. Sometimes a tenant doesn't understand what the landlord's perspective is. So having both present right there about an issue is sometimes really helpful and this piece we're also translating into those same 10 languages, it will be available. Is this distributed somewhere? How does one get a copy of this? Digitally, you can access it any time. We initially had these nice published pieces, yeah, but these are actually fairly expensive. So if folks really can't access it online, that's not a problem, they can come and we can make printout copies. Okay, that's good to know. With a copy or it's cheaper for us. Yeah, for sure. Most people do access it online that we're aware of anyway. Yeah, and usually I make copies for folks. Yeah, I mean, definitely we're always happy if there's a place where people are getting resources or dropping by a lot. We love getting our tenants rights or a fair housing material out. So in addition to this comprehensive tenants guide, which is both, oh, and this is the illustrated guide, which looks very nice, but it's also nice because the illustrations help us understand kind of what's happening. It just makes the wording and the law a little bit more clear. And this is another guide that is also offered translated. So if translated material, we're always happy to help get it out into the community, help people access it. If they need it printed, we can do that. I have it at our office. We can drop off material if there's a community center that you think would really benefit. And we have lots of one-pager resources like this that just kind of outline the quick and dirty for easy access. You know, one other thing we should mention because we have done these workshops in Winooski and different venues or in different partnerships is we really enjoy partnering with community organizations to offer sort of a dedicated know-your-right session, which is a combination of some basic tenant skills and some fair housing and a lot of Q&A. So for example, we might partner with a housing authority and offer that to a particular residential building for those residents to talk about the issues that are particular to them. We've done them for just particular groups and it can be, especially if there's translation involved there or it's our interpretation involved with those sessions, that can be a real great way for people to access it. If people call the hotline, there is a way for them to have interpretation but it's sort of a process. It is a bit of a barrier there. And so these tenant, these know-your-right sessions can be a way with interpretation to have more individual discussion and more time for Q&A. How long does a workshop last roughly? The know-your-rights can be typically an hour but they tend to go a little longer. I always say budget an hour and a half just to be safe. If people are really asking questions, we usually take that full hour and a half. And but if you're watching it on demand online, you could self-pace and spread it out. Oh yes, and take it at your leisure. And you can walk away and get back into it. You can go back and rewatch things. So that's a really handy tool. But of course with folks that need interpretation, that it's gonna be, you know, that's not an accessible resource but we do lots of videos will be and they're about an hour in length. Okay. And we do lots of live interpretive workshops that have been really successful. Yeah. And what about the other, I saw on the website when you were showing it some other housing resources. Okay. So let's see what, oops. Shhh. Let's see if we go back up. Maybe we can just get an overview. If you're looking for help. Yeah, just so folks know kind of what is out there. Yeah. So the housing resources and weatherization. So if you have an older home or you're living in an older home, even as a tenant, I think that you could, you know, work with your landlord. And there's, and you're paying for heat and it's super expensive and you know there's not great insulation. You could apply for a weatherization program and they come and help insulate your home. They do an audit depending on what's needed and all that. So that's one resource under there. The one other thing that we should probably highlight right now is heating, fuel and utilities assistance because that's, you know, we're in that season. Yeah. And so there's three main heating programs and one is a statewide program that you apply for up and, I think the application is up until February. Don't quote me on that. And then the other one is crisis fuel which each office of economic opportunity administers. And so for Winooski folks, they would call CVOO for help with that and then there's a warmth program. So if you're struggling to pay for heat and please call our community action office. And so that number is 802-863-6248. You can also find it just by coming here, get help, say, you know, you want heating fuels and overview and that number should pop up right over here on the right as well. And I should mention we also at WinooskiVT.gov we have a link, we have a page with housing resources and there's a link over to your space. And thinking earlier about the housing quality, you know, we do local code enforcement. We do. And if there's, you know, if somebody has a problem in their house, they can contact the city as well for help with the, you know, if the landlord isn't cooperating. Yeah, I should have followed through on the further steps. You talk to your landlord, you send a letter. If there's a repair issue, especially if it's what's called a major code violation which is something that is a violation of that rental housing health code that I mentioned. The serious major health code violations affect your safety and health. The next step would be to not only alert your landlord but call your town health officer or in the larger communities like Winooski, your code enforcement office. And they come out and do a full inspection and they give a report to make sure that as a tenant you ask for that report. And then they give a report to the landlord and they kind of say, well, this is serious. You have X amount of time to finish this. This is not so serious. You have a different amount of time to complete that. And so they should be there to facilitate the repairs being done for both the tenant and the landlord. What about the, I saw there were some financial programs as well. Yes, and those are so helpful for people. So I'm glad you pointed that out. I'm just gonna skip to learn because that probably will be the place. Personal finance classes, including keys to credit and spend smart are the two that I'm super familiar with and the Financial Futures Group has made, has transferred their programs online as well, although they do do some Zoom-based classes. One of the things that we've been doing for a number of years is pairing the financial classes, some financial classes, including credit budgeting with the housing classes in a program that results in a preferred renter certificate. Oh, interesting. So that is a way for tenants who either they're brand new or they've got a barrier, they're struggling, they have poor credit, so they're getting turned away. It's a way for them to take the classes, understand the basics, and then one of the key components of that program that is really helpful is Financial Futures does financial coaching. So that's a meeting half hour to an hour with someone that they pull your individual credit, your credit, not just talk about credit, but your credit and make a plan for either repairing or establishing credit and then they will work with you on a budget as well. And that can be really helpful when you're going to a landlord. It's one thing to say I've got some income, it's another thing to say here's my income and my expenses and here's how I plan to meet my rent payment. That's really interesting because you might have a landlord, oftentimes they do a credit check and if they're being dicey about wanting to rent to you, you can proactively say, I know my score is not great, but here's what I'm doing about that. Exactly, and especially in those cases where the landlord is like, well, how are you gonna afford this? Which I think we all know rents are high right now. It's lots of people are severely cost burdened by the rent and so having that budget that CBOO helps you put together really shows that you're thinking proactively around your housing stability. And then they have other programs as well in financial futures, micro-business. Which I actually can't really wanna plug the micro-business program, especially for anyone that has a self-employment income, it's been a, I've gone through that program, it's been really helpful resource, especially getting in touch with grant programs for micro-businesses. And around COVID they've gotten access to some funding that they've been able to help people connect with and they help you put together your business plan and connect with financing. So that's a really great program. And then there's of course, if we do free taxes in the spring, that's a great program for folks that need that support doing their taxes. And I've certainly relied on that a lot in the past. And yeah, are we missing anything? There's 11, I think, programs, so I'm sure we are, but Head Start, Head Start, that comes to mind. I mean, there's just a lot of resources and support out there once you know about it. And so I'm really grateful to have you come on today so that we can help spread the word and continue to get you connected and when you ski, so folks know what's available to them. Do you wanna remind us the website, the hotline, all that good stuff? Yes, so the website is www.cvoeo.org. The hotline is 802-864-0099. And I think I'll leave it at that. I mean, it could give you more contact information, but if you call the hotline, Mattle is just gonna refer you over to wherever you need to go. And I think just like the no I'd love to end on is if you're struggling financially, you should reach out to CBOEO, see if there's a resource for you. And if you have any questions about your housing, anything that doesn't feel quite right or just wanna go over your lease with someone, anything like that, you should just call the hotline to be err on the side of safety. It's better to call before there's an emergency and know what's out there than to wait until that real emergency moment, which you can also call us for. That's great. It sounds really flexible and like there's a lot of support options. I really appreciate the work you do, the work of Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. And thank you for coming in tonight. Hope we can get more Winooski residents connected to this great work that you're doing. Yeah, thank you so much for having us. Thank you.