Michael Monte, CEO of Champlain Housing Trust. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine
Who is Michael Monte, and why does everyone seem to love him?
For one thing, over the 46 years that Monte has worked in Burlington, he has dramatically changed the city for the better.
For another, at a time when almost the whole of the United States is experiencing a homelessness crisis and, on top of that, now a housing crisis as well, Monte, 71, is the CEO of the Champlain Housing Trust (CHT), the largest community land trust in the country.
A community organizer at heart, Monte is leading a housing nonprofit with 153 employees and a $30 million budget, which oversees 2,300 apartments and 675 shared-equity houses. CHT’s income is derived through rental income, homeownership sales, property management fees, development fees, donations and grants.
While CHT has made significant strides in addressing homelessness in Chittenden County, Monte concedes there is much work still to be done. He estimates that Burlington has more than 200 unsheltered individuals and 282 individuals living in motels, with all shelters currently at capacity.
Monte, described by colleagues as “humble,“ “creative“ and “a servant leader,“ appears to be a master of discreet planning, preferring to work behind the scenes.
So even when McKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, expressed interest in donating $20 million to CHT, Monte and the rest of the land trust’s management were initially surprised by her attention — that is, until the $20 million arrived.
Monte’s innate ability to build community stems from his upbringing in Brooklyn as part of a large, close-knit extended Italian family. In high school, he was a self-proclaimed “revolutionary change agent,“ organizing against the Vietnam War. His early career in upstate New York involved working in social service agencies. Upon arriving in Burlington, he was one of the first Directors of the King Street Center for disadvantaged children, which continues to thrive today.
Monte was drawn into Burlington’s political world in the early 1980s by then Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders, and Sanders’ mayoral successor, Peter Clavelle.
Photo: Monte, right, with Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle at City Hall, circa 1990. VermontBiz photo.
One of Sanders’ first ideas was to open the Lake Champlain waterfront to public recreation, which meant addressing the railroad’s ownership of much of the land bordering the lake. Clavelle credits Monte with being instrumental in realizing Sanders’ vision for the area.
“Michael was responsible for many key projects that reversed the degradation of the waterfront and brought people to the lake that they loved,“ Clavelle said.
Monte worked for the city of Burlington for 19 years, where he served as the longest-tenured director of the Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO). His tenure ended when Clavelle lost his reelection bid for mayor in 1993.
Not wasting a minute, Monte and a group of friends, including Tim McKenzie, Doug Hoffer, John Davis and Jane Knodell, formed Burlington Associates, a nationwide community development consultancy. Monte is still a partner at the firm, though not an active one.
At CHT, Monte is creating affordable housing — both rental apartments and home ownership opportunities — as well as community facilities, neighborhood parks and commercial spaces for local businesses.
“Everything we do is permanently affordable,“ he said. “Nothing is short-term; it’s all ’forever’ kind of stuff. The great thing about our size is that we have the ability to both respond to opportunities and keep up a good pace of development.“
For Monte, it has always been about building community.
Photo: Michael Monte, CEO of Champlain Housing Trust. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
“My board is made up of people who work and live in our housing, as well as people from the community,“ he said. “It’s not driven by who has the most money, or who is the most highly paid banker. It’s driven by folks who do community work. The different properties that we own can be communities, depending upon their size and location. All of that goes back to the community work that I started at the King Street Center. Community is what makes sense to me.“
Monte sounded wistful as he said that. It seems the farther he has gone in his career, the closer to his roots and original mission he remains.
“Actually, my office looks out at the King Street Center right now,“ he said. “I’ve worked at City Hall, which is one block away. So, while the location of my offices has changed over time, the kind of work I do has remained consistent. I still feel that what I’m doing is building community. For me, it’s about the people, and building community is key.“
Monte describes himself as a natural-born developer, who can handle problems as they arise.
“You wake up in the morning, and life happens,“ he said. “And what the developer does is take problems and solve them. We do that all the time. You say, ’Let’s build this building here.’ And suddenly you have 10 things in the way, and you have to figure out how to solve each one of those 10 things in order for that building to go up.“
Monte serves on several national boards and is a recipient of the Con Hogan Award for Creative, Entrepreneurial, Community Leadership, from the Vermont Community Foundation, and the Mollie Beattie Award, from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. These honors speak to Monte’s character and integrity as much as his leadership skills.
“He is one of the most focused, thoughtful community development practitioners you’re ever going to meet,“ said Gus Seelig, executive director of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. “He is really good both at the big picture and at all the steps you need to take to realize the big picture. He’s a tremendous leader because he has so much empathy for both his staff and the people he’s trying to serve.“
Seelig added that Monte and his organization have been among the most effective and successful developers of affordable housing in the region.
“I think they’ve converted more motels and hotels into permanent housing than anybody,“ he said. “They have also completely embraced the idea of supportive housing. Eight or so years ago, he converted the former Ho Hum Motel into permanent supportive housing for people who were really moving in out of the woods.“
Photo: The new Braeburn Apartments in South Burlington opened last September. Crafted out of the former Ho Hum Motel, these 20 apartments are home to individuals who previously had no permanent housing, part of efforts to address the significant homelessness challenges Vermont faces. CHT photo.
Since the pandemic began, Monte has been leading the way in constructing housing in the northern part of the state for unhoused individuals. This work is not merely theoretical for Monte, Seelig said.
“It’s very much grounded in knowing what a difference it’s going to make in somebody’s life to have a home that they can rely on, that they’re not going to be evicted from,“ Seelig said. “Around Michael, it is always positive. The glass is always more than half full. He’s seeing the possibilities. He’s reaching to make things possible, where other people might see a caution sign or a stop sign. He’s asking, ’How do you get to the other side and achieve the goals?’ That sort of optimism is essential for any developer, but he has it in spades. He’s just tremendously creative, and that’s fun as well.“
Jeff Smith, senior vice president of lending at North Country Federal Credit Union and chair of the Champlain Housing Trust board, said he has relished having a front-row seat in watching Monte’s accomplishments.“
“I have tremendous respect for Michael,“ Smith said. “Often, when people think things aren’t possible, he looks and says, ’How can I make this happen?’ He has a really creative mindset that has allowed CHT to expand services to its residents. He’s also really passionate about CHT’s organization and its staff, to a degree that, when he talks about them, you can see the emotion on his face.“
Monte’s reputation extends far beyond Vermont’s borders. Lou Tisler, executive director of the National NeighborWorks Association, a trade organization on whose board Monte sits, characterized Monte as a “thought leader“ in affordable housing.
“He brings a wealth of knowledge he has applied to projects in Burlington and in Vermont that can be implemented all over the country,“ Tisler said. “One thing I find really refreshing about Michael is that, although he has a national presence, he’s a person that likes to listen as opposed to just hearing himself talk. He’s pragmatic. He looks for opportunities but manages expectations. He may be looking at a huge idea, but he wants to know what are the support systems around it that really make it feasible? His peers hold him and his accomplishments in high esteem, but he’s very humble about that.“
Monte’s leadership abilities impress Tisler.
“I’ve known Michael for some time now,“ Tisler said. “In his interactions with his staff and the things he does in Burlington and beyond, he is truly a servant leader in the way that he has developed staff, communities and national relationships.“
Monte took over the directorship of CHT from its first leader, Brenda Torpy, in 2021, when she retired. From 2007 to 2020, he was her CFO/COO. He credits her with building the housing trust. She credits him with building the systems that made the housing trust successful.
“Michael was a very critical architect for me in terms of creating this new entity,“ Torpy said. “He built a lot of the systems that made it successful. And for many years, we looked to him as my successor. I was very lucky that when it was time to go, I knew that the trust would be in a really strong hands.“
Monte is unique in many ways, Torpy said.
“He has vision,“ she said. “He’s a leader. He’s creative. He can assemble all the pieces and parts it takes to put something together and organize it systematically and engage all the partners — and these things are very complex and require tons of funding and lots of partnerships. He’s such a great guy, and people enjoy his company. He’s great with people. In his job description, we call him the Minister of Fun.“
Monte has always been an all-around great community leader, Torpy said.
“When I first went to work in the city, he’d been working with youth in the King Street neighborhood,“ Torpy said. “And that organization is still going strong today. Even in the very early days of CEDO, with Michael’s work on the waterfront, he spent a lot of time and effort assembling the land and negotiating with the railroad, which owns a lot of it. All that wonderful parkland? We owe so much to Michael for that. There’s the boathouse park at the bottom of College Street. And now the bike path he developed extends everywhere. He’s fully multi-talented. He will take on a new project that looks like it will be good for the community, get everybody on board and get it done. And, as I say, have fun doing it. We’re lucky he’s there. I’m always looking forward to his next innovation.“
Clavelle calls Monte “a humble and wonderful man.“
“He’s very competent,“ Clavelle said. “He’s got a great sense of humor. He gets things done. He’s a good manager of people. And he has passion. He has that passion in his current job as CEO of the Champlain Housing Trust. He had that same passion working for CEDO. He’s got the skills necessary to develop very complicated projects. He can build relationships with a cast of characters: developers, bankers, staff, activists, bureaucrats and homeowners. He can build relationships that are fundamentally based on trust and giving everyone the dignity and the respect that they deserve.“
Monte sees housing as a basic human right, not as a commodity, Clavelle said.
“Everyone should have a right to safe, decent, affordable housing,“ Clavelle said. “And Michael carries that commitment to work every day. He’s a good friend. A wonderful colleague. A fabulous person.“
Early Life
Monte’s grandparents were born in Sicily; they landed in New York after immigrating to the United States.
Monte was born in Brooklyn when the borough was much more rural than it is now. Farms, riding stables and dirt roads were all around. Brooklyn was also just 20 or 30 minutes away from Broadway and the best museums in the world, and another 20 minutes away from some great beaches.
Monte’s mother was a housewife; his father was a mason and bricklayer.
“My father had a company with his uncle, brother and brother-in-law,“ Monte said. “And they would hire other masons to pour foundations. They actually poured foundations for a lot of the Trump homes that were built in Brooklyn in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s.“
(Those were Fred Trump homes, by the way, not those of his son, former President Donald Trump.)
The Montes’ family business slowed down in the ’60s, when construction moved out to Long Island.
“They weren’t really able to compete,“ Monte said. “They were a small company, though it made a decent living.“
Neither of his parents went to high school, he said.
“Most of my friends were very working-class,“ he said. “Their parents were postal carriers or bus drivers, or maybe there was an entrepreneur who had opened a tailor shop. So there wasn’t any deep intellectual thinking going on in the house. But from my neighborhood and from my family, I learned a deep love for people. I always would say that my father taught me how to enjoy life, how to laugh, how to be with family, how to be with friends, and how to have a much simpler approach to the world. My parents’ thinking was a bit more based in Italian society and culture. They were first-generation here.“
Monte is the youngest of four children.
“All my siblings were born pre-World War II,“ Monte said. “I am the only baby boomer. I came at the end, and my 12-year-old sister basically raised me.“
He started working at age 12.
“First of all, because I’m Italian, everybody’s an uncle or an aunt no matter what, right?“ he said. “So I worked at my Uncle Joe’s miniature golf and archery center on the edge of Brooklyn, which is where Kings Plaza is now. I worked there when I was 12 or 13 for $10 a day, handing people the balls and the arrows. I actually got pretty good at archery. Then I worked every Sunday at my Uncle Frank’s stores, which were milk stores that sold fresh farm produce, fresh raw milk and other goods. He had three stores in the Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I worked at those places throughout the summer and on the weekends.“
He also spent two teenage summers working in the Catskill Mountains at a Borscht Belt resort, like the one in the movie “Dirty Dancing.“
“I tried to be a busboy, but I didn’t like it, so I worked in the kitchen,“ he said. “I never got any money from my mom and dad. And I was working basically, you know, three or so different jobs throughout high school.“
His high school was Jesuit-based.
“That probably has something to do with how I think about the world around me,“ he said. “I’m not a practicing Catholic, but there was something in that work. At my high school, the Jesuits taught dialogue, conversation and challenging core beliefs as a way of learning who you are in the context of service, community and people. That was key for me.“
On the first day of his freshman year in high school, Monte said, his teacher asked him, “If you’re the pilot of a military plane and you are ordered to drop bombs on a village that you know, what do you do?“
“And that question still sticks in my head,“ he said. “Of course, I had just come from an elementary school taught by Dominican nuns, where you do what you’re told.“
In high school, Monte got deeply involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement.
“I got the Tilden Teachers for Peace Award because of an all-day strike I had organized with a young reverend at the high school at the time, Al Sharpton,“ Monte said. “We organized a walkout, a one-day strike and a big anti-war protest.“
Upstate New York
For college, Monte chose the State University of New York-Oswego in upstate New York.
“I picked it because it was the farthest state college away from New York City that had low tuition,“ Monte said. “My grades were pretty good, and I focused on history and social sciences. I continued my anti-war protesting there. My draft status was a high number, so I didn’t have that issue to deal with.“
When the war ended, Monte felt school really wasn’t giving him a direction. So he left and started volunteering at a place called the Farnham Crisis Center, which was basically a hotline, drop-in center and crash pad run by young people for young people.
“Now it is a much larger drug addiction agency,“ Monte said. “I volunteered while I was working and doing odd jobs. Then I got hired as a staff person full time. I eventually became director for about a year and a half. It was a place with three full-time staff members and about 20 volunteers, who basically did drug counseling and crisis intervention for young people.“
At the same time, Monte resumed his education.
“I’m an early adopter of remote learning,“ Monte said. “I focused on counseling and education during that time. I did a semester or two of different kinds of courses and workshops, and basically learned how to communicate, listen to and respond to people’s needs. But I wasn’t an MSW or a fully fledged licensed practitioner of any kind.“
After he left the crisis center, he worked alongside a builder.
“I did six or nine months of carpentry construction,“ Monte said. “I learned a couple of skills that way.“
Coming to Vermont
By then Monte and his soon to be wife was a home health care nurse. They were both having trouble establishing career paths.
“In upstate New York,“ he said, “you worked at the nuclear plant, or you helped build a nuclear power plant. Those were the choices, really.“
The couple decided to find a new place to live.
“So we looked at a map of New England, picked five cities that had colleges where we could finish our education and that also had a decent-sized population,“ Monte said. “It was Bangor, Portland, Burlington and a couple of other places. We never got past Burlington. Basically, we took a ferry over, landed here, looked around, went back to upstate New York and packed our bags.“
Monte started off his Vermont life doing odd jobs, until his social justice instincts pulled him in another direction.
“I volunteered at Spectrum Youth and Family Services, which got me close to the people who are doing youth work in the city,“ Monte said. “That got me leading a crew of kids who were painting and doing some light construction, which got me the job as the director of the King Street Center.“
At that point, Monte started a remote-learning program at Goddard College to finish his degree.
“It allowed me to work at the King Street Center and go to school every third or fourth weekend,“ Monte said. “Again, I was an early adopter of remote education, continuing to work my job and also get my college degree.“
The King Street Center
Monte gave that wistful look out his office window at the nearby King Street Center as he talked about it.
“When I got there, it was a new and much smaller place on Maple Street, in a building that the Champlain Housing Trust now owns,“ he said. “It was a living room with a pool table and a pingpong table, some sitting areas, and a kitchen and a small office. And that was it. I got there as the director in 1977. It was me, another staff person who took the kids on trips and stuff like that, and three parents — women who had been there since the beginning.“
The field trips were to do things like skating, camping or attending baseball games.
“And it was a drop-in center where kids could hang out,“ Monte said. “It was a neighborhood-based kind of place. People in the neighborhood called it ’The Center,’ and it really was the center of the neighborhood.“
While the kids were playing, the adults talked about their issues and problems.
“We had a weekly coffee group where the neighbors got together,“ Monte said. “We would meet with the police, city officials or bar owners to talk about different issues. It was a place to do some community organizing.“
For example, around issues like the King Street Neighborhood Revitalization project.
“It was a housing development that preserved about 200 units of affordable housing in the neighborhood, which was critical,“ Monte said. “Pizzagalli Construction had bought what was the Bobbin Mill on Pine Street, and they wanted to turn it into a festival marketplace — basically, a mini-mall. And the people in the neighborhood petitioned against that. They argued, ’No, we don’t need that in this neighborhood. What we need is more affordable housing.’ It made me understand that having a genesis that is community-based or neighborhood-based is really important.“
Soon other communities wanted to replicate what was happening at the King Street Center.
“It was successful in terms of other people in the city seeing it as a good model for empowerment,“ Monte said. “We were able to get some money to expand the work into other neighborhoods in the city in 1980 and 1981. We started organizing at the Lakeside neighborhood, and the Old North End and Franklin Square, and other neighborhoods in the city.“
Monte’s organizing made the city recognize it had to step up and address some of the needs of the community.
“That didn’t seem to be happening under the previous administration, which helped lead to the election of Bernie Sanders in 1981,“ Monte said.
This was the start of a progressively awakened Burlington. Monte was going to play a big part in it.
“I wasn’t politically affiliated with Bernie at the time,“ Monte said. “What Bernie did was try to respond to the needs of people. And we were creating the sense that people’s needs weren’t being met, whether it was because of this being built, or that not being constructed, or because public safety was involved — there were a range of issues. But Bernie and I weren’t necessarily old political colleagues or friends.“
Sanders, however, occasionally dropped in for events.
“He came because we would have parties in the center,“ Monte said. “He might have been running for something at the time. He was running for a lot of things in the ’70s.
“The youth center activity was a very important part of my own development,“ Monte continued. “It was about understanding that the neighborhood really knows what it needs, that the people in the neighborhood can provide their own leadership if given support. You can build and create great resources for the neighborhood to support itself.“
Working for Burlington
Things heated up in 1981 when Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington by 10 votes. (That’s the same year the nation’s first urban community land trust was founded in Cincinnati. And if you’re looking for irony, it was the same year Ronald Reagan became president.)
“Bernie had just gotten elected mayor, and this was a chance to participate in what he was talking about,“ Monte said. “But the city had a commission form of government. The directors of the departments were appointed by a commission, which was controlled by Democrats and Republicans. They did not support the idea that a mayor, especially one like Bernie, could have power. And the planning department was in opposition to Bernie.“
Monte worked in the city planning office for a short time — 1982 to 1983 — then left to work for the state of Vermont. He became a community development specialist for the state’s Department of Housing and Community Affairs, working in a brand new program.
It took about two years and another election, which Sanders won by an incontestable majority, before the mayor could wield real power. In 1983, a city council resolution founded CEDO. It gave Sanders the power to move projects along.
“Peter Clavelle was working with Bernie as a human resources director,“ Monte said. “As a way of creating a more robust and energetic community development agenda for the city, they got CEDO founded, and Peter moved over to run it.“
Monte came back to work with Clavelle in 1983.
“Peter was co-director, and I was responsible for doing waterfront development,“ Monte said. “For three years, we focused a lot of our work on creating the community bike paths, waterfront, parks, all of that. Other things have happened since, like the marinas and skate parks, which are valuable as well.“
One project was the Burlington Boathouse.
“It was a crazy idea to buy this barge in Texas, bring it up the Atlantic coast and into Lake Champlain, and then build a structure on it,“ Clavelle said. “It was a landmark project in terms of inviting people to use and enjoy the waterfront.“
In 1989, Clavelle ran for mayor and won. Monte became CEDO director, remaining there until 1993, when Clavelle lost a mayoral race and Monte lost his job.
That was when Clavelle, Monte and a few others formed Burlington Associates in Community Development, doing consulting on a national level.
“Although I have not been active in it for the last decade or so, I worked as an independent consultant for a while,“ Monte said. “Between 1993 and 1995, two things happened. One, I became a city councilor in 1994, serving one term. And I became very active politically, trying to get Peter back to being mayor. I led his political campaign in 1995, when he won again. But I didn’t go back to being appointed by him.“
People might have thought Monte was running Clavelle’s campaign to get his old job back. But it wasn’t true.
“I liked being an independent consultant,“ Monte said. “I was doing fine. It was great. I enjoyed not being back. It wasn’t that the job wasn’t interesting. I loved working in CEDO. But I was also doing pretty well on my own.“
Monte became interested in coming back when the center of Burlington lost its only supermarket. He was intrigued by the prospect of solving that problem.
“By then, Peter had a number of CEDO directors, and he was willing to give me the opportunity to be director again,“ Monte said.
It was 1999, and Burlington’s supermarket environment was changing.
“The challenge was how to create another market for Burlington,“ Monte said. “When I think about my legacy and the things I did, engaging in that work, to me, was good.“
The lost supermarket’s replacement, City Market, is, of course, still going strong today.
The Housing Trust
The original land trust concept in the U.S. dates to 1969, when New Communities, Inc., was founded near Albany, Georgia, by African Americans. Under fierce opposition by the white community, it lost its land to foreclosure in 1985.
But the idea of community land had taken root. In 1977, Cathedral Square, a senior affordable housing nonprofit, was founded in Burlington.
Sanders, looking at skyrocketing rents, decided that any funds the city spent on housing would have to be on permanently affordable housing.
It was a sea change that brought about the community land trust movement in Vermont.
The nonprofit Burlington Community Land Trust was founded by CEDO in 1984 to put people into houses. That solved part of the problem. Also in 1984, CEDO established the nonprofit Lake Champlain Housing Development Co. to help renters. The two nonprofits merged in 2006 to become the Champlain Housing Trust.
Meanwhile, by 2006 Clavelle was no longer mayor, and Monte was getting restless.
“I worked for the new mayor, who was a great guy, for about a year or so,“ Monte said. “But I had really enjoyed my working relationship with Peter. I was missing that. I needed something different. I had worked for the city, off and on, for about 19 years. I was the longest-serving CEDO director. But I had done the job long enough. CHT was a new opportunity. I had the leadership skills, organizational skills, financial skills and development skills that seemed to be what CHT needed. So I became its chief operating and financial officer in 2007.“
By then, because of the merger, most of the management team had left.
“I was the fresh blood trying to see how we could make it work,“ Monte said.
There is no question that Torpy and Monte made it work.
Photo: Michael Monte took over the reins as CEO of Champlain Housing Trust in January, 2021 from Brenda Torpy, who had led the organization for nearly 30 years. CHT photo.
“Over time, CHT has gotten involved in everything from homelessness to homeownership,“ Monte said. “We’re 153 people, so the depth and breadth of what we do is substantial. We have 2,300 apartments. We have 675 shared-equity homes. We have five different loan programs. We do counseling and education. We have 20 people who do maintenance. We have 25 people who do department management. And some of the innovations that we’ve implemented over time, including shared-equity homeownership and the notion of permanent affordability, have influenced other programs across the nation.“
CHT made news in 2023 when it received a donation of $20 million from MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
How did Scott learn about Monte and CHT?
“We work on both a statewide level and on a national level,“ Monte said. “Converting 11 motels during COVID made us an industry leader. I was doing workshops nationwide during COVID about how to quickly do this. The shared-equity program, the notion of permanent affordability, our own growth — when Scott started focusing on affordable housing, our name kept coming up.“
The last step in the donation process was an interview around a table with six people.
“They’re all smiling at us the whole time,“ Monte said. “And I thought, ’This is weird.’ We had no idea who they were, what they were doing or why they were calling us. We didn’t know who the donor was. But they had clearly gone through information about us. They just asked us a few questions to clarify some things. Which we did.“
What did CHT do with the money?
“We invested in the community,“ Monte said. “Basically, it was a pretty phenomenal gift. We allocated it to a variety of things internally and to supporting properties that needed some help. We put some money aside for refinancing. What we earn off that, we put toward residents’ services. Before, we did not have nearly enough staff. Now we have 12 resident services people doing the work. The needs of our people and our housing are greater than they have ever been.“
CHT has grown into a sophisticated organization, Monte said.
“We are many different kinds of corporations,“ he said. “That is typical of most nonprofits now in the state. Because we are large and because of some of the things we have done, we have a national impact. Next week, I’ll be going to Seattle and Denver, to two different national leadership conferences, to promote national policy as well as some efforts that will support the work we do here. We act on a local scale, on a statewide level and on a national level.“
Statewide, CHT has a mobile home lending program and a home ownership equity program that provides down payment assistance to people of color. It also has a farm worker assistance program.
“Although what we do is mostly up in northwest Vermont, we’re also doing some statewide stuff,“ Monte said.
Photo: Monte discusses a hotel’s conversion into affordable housing on Zephyr Lane in Williston in October 2023. VermontBiz photo.
The Housing Crisis
Vermont has a housing crisis, which comes with a homelessness crisis.
“From just a pure development perspective, which affects nonprofits, private developers and affordability overall, there are complex factors at work here,“ Monte said. “High interest rates, high cost of labor, high cost of materials and difficulty in getting permits are all critical parts of not having enough housing or not having enough housing at an affordable price.“
A large influx of second homes and Airbnb-like short-term rentals are also negatively impacting the state, Monte said.
“In particular, they are impacting the more popular places for people,“ Monte said. “A lot of housing stock is being pulled off the regular market. There’s a story about some guy from New York City who has bought 19 homes in Vermont and basically Airbnbs them from his place in New York City. And those houses are now no longer available to regular homeowners.“
The COVID pandemic did not help the situation. People who were doubling up or couch-surfing during the pandemic were pushed out of their makeshift homes.
“A lot of people weren’t too sure about what was going to happen next,“ Monte said. “They were laid off. They were unsure about housing. They didn’t know what they could do if the relationship they were in broke up. Where would they move to? There was no place to go. Everybody was staying put. It was hard.“
CHT led the way in pioneering the use of motels for the homeless.
“They were put into a motel program in order for folks to be safe during COVID,“ Monte said. “Market forces pushed the vacancy rate low. The vacancy rate in other places is 6% or 7%. In this area, it’s about 1%. Development cannot happen fast enough. But the cost of development is so high that people are charging more, so development becomes less affordable. There are more homeless folks because they can’t afford housing. The market is so tight, there’s simply no place for people to live.“
The drug problem is another factor. CHT has a strict anti-drug policy.
“We have zero tolerance for people who are dealing drugs,“ Monte said. “The nature of the drugs that people are taking now, fentanyl and others, create a different level of havoc than alcohol and heroin create. It’s a different set of conditions, in which people are unable to make a conscious choice to get better.“
As a state, we don’t fully recognize how difficult life can be for many Vermonters, Monte said.
“You’ve got a mix of not having a place to live, things being really unaffordable, the influx of people and the low vacancy rate. Then you have to mix in the trauma some people suffer and the drugs.“
Creating more affordable housing is essential.
“We have a plan in place to create the level of affordable housing we think we need,“ Monte said. “In the meantime, we need transitional programs, like the motel program, to continue. We’ve done everything we can to create new housing forms that are less expensive and can be more rapidly put into place than traditional construction. It requires a lot of different initiatives. But ultimately what people who are homeless need is housing and some level of support and services.“
CHT keeps many balls in the air.
“We run Harbor Place, which is a motel for people who are homeless,“ Monte said. “We operate the pods, which shelter people who are homeless in individual units. We have three buildings that are used by other agencies to provide shelter. We own and manage the buildings. We have built housing — mostly in the conversion of motels — and created special-purpose housing for folks who were formerly homeless.“
And CHT always has a contingency plan if things go awry.
“No matter what happens with a real estate idea that you have, there is an opportunity to do something good out of it,“ Monte said. “Even if the first idea really wasn’t what you thought it was going to be, you always have the opportunity to do something different.“
Take the Harbor Place project, for example.
“At the very beginning, we’re buying a motel that was going to focus principally on housing homeless people,“ Monte said. “We were going to do it for a third of the price that the state was paying with services. So we said, ’Let’s try this. And let’s make sure that whatever we’re doing, in a year we have a way to bail. And let’s make sure we have a second plan or a third plan.’ So we wind up always making sure there is a contingency to everything we do.“
Photo: CHT’s Harbor Place. CHT photo.
The solution to the homeless problem is probably a combination of housing and health care, Monte said. The legislature needs to act on this.
“Some people say housing is health care, because after you have the housing, you still have to have health care in order for people to be successful,“ Monte said. “I think that is sort of recognized. There’s a lot of support in the House. There is some level of support in the Senate. I think next year the legislature will take up another opportunity to be able to build higher-level housing than what is available for funding right now.“
The high level of federal money that came into the state during COVID is now dropping off.
“We did well for two or three years,“ Monte said. “Those funds have enabled us to create resources to move people into better shelters or more affordable housing. The legislature really needs to pick up a new source of funding to continue that growth.“
Housing theory runs in cycles, Monte said. He didn’t want to use the word “fads.“
“People say, ’No, we shouldn’t have transitional housing anymore. It should be permanent housing,’“ Monte said. “But the truth is, right now we really need a lot of transitional housing. Not just the motels, but something short-term that’s relatively inexpensive until permanent housing can be put into place.“
Monte and his wife have two sons, one who is 35 with autism and a second son who is now 47 who is an artist/craftsman. Their daughter is adopted. Monte is working with other families on a project to set up neighborhood housing with services, where his son and others with disabilities can live safely within a community.
“There’s pushback, where people are saying, ’No, you can’t put all these people together in a building. You’re just labeling them,’“ Monte said. “But this is about putting people together so we can create community and they can get supported in a better way, and live with some affordability and some decency. That’s what we’re talking about. Right now, we’ve identified a building, which we’re working on. We’re trying to make sure we understand how to build it, what it costs, and the programming part — probably the most difficult aspect at this point.“
Photo: The Butternut Grove Condominiums construction site. CHT photo.
Photo: Champlain Housing Trust celebrates completion of Butternut Grove Condominiums in Winooski. CHT photo.
The Future
Burlington has a new mayor now, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak. Monte has some advice for her.
“I think the new mayor has to remain flexible for the opportunities that private development wants, but also continue to look for new resources for the nonprofit sector to build housing,“ Monte said. “I think everyone in the state of Vermont needs to pay attention to the impact and costs of Airbnbs and the importance of ensuring that people are not displaced because of gentrification and increasing rents. We need to be looking at ordinances that protect tenants, and looking at ordinances that preserve affordable housing.“
Think of it as the “Three Ps.“
“First, there’s production, because you need to build,“ Monte said. “Then you need to make sure tenants are protected from the vagaries of the market. And then you need to preserve — take whatever is affordable now, and make sure it remains affordable forever.“
Monte describes himself as “a pretty emotional kind of guy.“
“I’m human,“ he said. “I cry often and easily. I’m pretty emotional when I get to talking about people and the work we do here.“
Monte is happy about CHT’s future.
Photo: Monte with staff member Antoinette Bennett-Jones at a recent CHT Members' Day Picnic. CHT photo.
“The great thing about being part of this organization is that we have lots and lots going on,“ he said. “We have a groundbreaking at Bay Ridge in Shelburne, which will be a combination of rental apartments and homeownership opportunities, with about 92 units altogether. That’s going to be starting construction in the next couple of months. We have something downtown called Post Apartments, which will have a Community Justice Center on the ground floor, and a Veterans Center and 38 apartments above it.“
Also in the pipeline are 65 apartments in three buildings in Colchester, two building phases of homes and apartments in Hinesburg on 100 acres that were donated to CHT, 40 apartments and 30 shared-equity condos in Burlington, some work with Habitat for Humanity, a community center that offers health and dental services, a new city library, a new event hall and new nonprofit office space in Winooski, among other projects.
“In the city of South Burlington, in the South End, we’ll probably do about 130 units over the next five years,“ Monte said. “And we’re looking right now at a handful of shelter-like buildings in St. Albans. We also have a lot of community facilities. For example, we own the Feeding Chittenden building, which is a food shelf. We own buildings that house day care centers, senior centers, family centers, gymnasiums and children’s theaters. So we have a wide variety of commercial community developments and spaces as well as housing.“
Although it may take a while to get construction started because of the cost, CHT has hundreds of units coming online over the next two or three years.
“I feel pretty good about how we’re going to be able to respond,“ Monte said.
Retirement appears to be the furthest thing from Monte’s mind.
“I feel pretty young, and I’m physically healthy, more or less,“ he said. “I work with a great organization. I work with great people. I’m in love with the work here. I’m in love with the people I work with. And it’s hard to imagine, but I’m — shall we say — useful? I’ve been pretty successful, and sort of moving things along and doing well. So I don’t have a plan to retire.“
Joyce Marcel is a journalist in southern Vermont. In 2017, she was named the best business magazine profile writer in the country by the Alliance of Area Business Publishers. She is married to Randy Holhut, the news editor/acting operations manager of The Commons, a weekly newspaper in Brattleboro.
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