Housing finance expert urges expanded TIF, longer tax stabilization and sales-tax relief to close Vermont's workforce housing gap

BURLINGTON, Vt. — David White, president of Weitenberg Real Estate Advisors, told the House Committee on General and Housing on Jan. 16 that the state's most important remaining obstacle to building workforce housing is a financing gap that leaves projects 'underwater' after construction and proposed an array of tools to close it.

White said his firm has worked across Vermont for more than three decades on downtown revitalization and public-private partnerships and that tax increment financing is the single most powerful community development tool the state has. "I am absolutely unequivocally a huge, supporter of tax increment financing," he told the committee. "I believe sincerely it is the single most powerful community development, economic development tool we have in the state of Vermont."

Why it matters: Committee members heard that many workforce projects generate rents that are too high for the local workforce but too low to…