The Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and the Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness have merged to form a single organization — the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont — and appointed Frank Knaack as its inaugural executive director.
Knaack joins the alliance from the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, where he served as executive director for the last four years. He has also held positions at the Montana Innocence Project, the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, the ACLU Virginia and the ACLU of Texas. Knaack is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds a master's degree in international human rights law from The American University in Cairo.
As a merged organization, HHAV will help to unite voices from the housing and homelessness fields and leverage the expertise of its board and 60-plus member organizations to meet the needs of vulnerable Vermonters.
“As the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, we will have a stronger and more unified voice in the Statehouse, a larger staff with more capacity and more stable and sustainable funding streams,” said alliance board member Jess Hyman. “The new organization will work toward a future in which all people living in Vermont have opportunity and choice in their housing.”