By Matt Ryan, Free Press Staff Writer •

ESSEX JUNCTION — The owners of a student housing complex in Essex Junction have begun to plan for life after those students leave.

Last month, the New England Culinary Institute decided to move its 120 students living in the village to its Montpelier campus by September. Their departure will leave behind 13 buildings on Franklin Street near downtown Essex Junction — buildings village officials hope fill up soon.
Advertisement

Kurt Montgomery, vice president of 222 Franklin Inc. of Essex Junction, which owns the property, said his company intends to convert the nine dormitories into one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. The company has no plans for the four administrative buildings located in a mixed-use commercial zone, Montgomery said.

After a series of meetings with NECI officials, 222 Franklin Inc. agreed to terminate the institute’s leases, some of which ran through 2017. Construction of the campus began in 1996, when NECI moved to Essex, and continued through last year.

“It’s in our best interest to move forward and make these conversions,” Montgomery said, adding, “It is unfortunate for us.”

Converting the dormitories will involve moving around partitions and refurbishing the apartments, he said.

“I’m anticipating in six months, we’ll fill the units; that’s a guess,” Montgomery said. “We have other rentals in the area that have done well.”

Village trustee George Tyler said he welcomed more housing to the area, but wanted to see the administrative buildings put to good use.

“I would like to see some businesses in there as well,” Tyler said. “We need to expand the tax base.”

Village President Larry Yandow said he would like to see students from another school live in the dormitories.

“I would like to see another campus situation,” Yandow said. “NECI’s been awfully good down there. I would like to see the same situation.”

Montgomery said his company rents other property to Vermont Technical College students, and might consider renting the NECI campus to more students.

The Essex (formally The Inn at Essex) will retain NECI chefs and pick up 20 to 40 paid interns from the institute to fill the void of the departing students, said Jim Glanville, the culinary resort’s general manager.

Contact Matt Ryan at 651-4849 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it To get Free Press headlines delivered free to your e-mail, sign up at www.burlingtonfreepress.com/newsletters.

By Dan McLean • Burlington Free Press Staff Writer • April 16, 2009

You can get the report here: ON THE WEB at www.nlihc.org.

Vermont is the 15th most expensive state in the U.S. for renters, according to a report jointly released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.
Advertisement

Vermont’s housing wage has risen to $17.57 per hour, or $36,553 per year. The housing wage is the hourly wage a family must earn — working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year — to avoid spending more than 30 percent of income on rent and utilities for a two-bedroom apartment. The current wage is a 53 percent increase since 2000, according to the report, titled “Out of Reach 2008-2009.”

The report provides data for each state, metropolitan area and county in the country, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Vermont’s rental housing market has been among the nation’s tightest for several years, in part, because of low-vacancy rates that have pushed up rents. Many Vermonters also work in relatively low-wage jobs, creating pressures for households to pay for necessities, the report said.

In Vermont, the average two-bedroom apartment costs $914 to rent each month. The typical Vermont renter earns $11.31 an hour, or $23,524 a year. That’s $6.26 an hour less than is needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment, the report said.

Working at the minimum wage of $8.06 an hour, a family must have 2.2 wage earners working full-time, or one full-time earner working 87 hours a week, to afford the two-bedroom apartment.

“Even in a recession, it is becoming more difficult for low-income families to find safe, decent, affordable housing in Vermont,” said Erhard Mahnke, coordinator for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. “If we keep losing jobs, this situation is going to get worse. This report clearly illustrates the pressing need for more affordable housing development in our communities.”

Contact Dan McLean at 651-4877 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it To have Free Press headlines delivered free to your e-mail, sign up at www.burlingtonfreepress.com/newsletters.

WCAX.com
Burlington, Vermont - April 16, 2009

A new report says Vermonters who rent their homes are paying some of the highest prices in the nation. The National Low Income Coalition and the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition say the Green Mountain state is the fifteenth most expensive state in the nation for renters.

Vermont’s housing wage has risen to $17.57 per hour or over $36,000 a year. Housing wage is how much a family working 40 hours a week must earn to avoid spending more than 30 percent of their income on a two-bedroom apartment. The current wage has risen 53 percent since 2000.

The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Vermont is $914. But the average Vermonter earns $11.31 an hour or around $23,000 a year. That’s over $6 per hour less than what’s needed to afford the apartment.

Experts say the state’s low vacancy rates have pushed up rents and many Vermonters work in low-paying jobs.

By Adam Silverman
Free Press Staff Writer

The deal appeared to be a particularly good one: a two-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom townhouse with lots of amenities in Essex available for $900 a month in rent.

The listing on Craigslist, an Internet-based classified-advertising service, included four photographs of the property at 10 Stannard Drive, inside and out, and language that came straight from a real-estate agent. The agent even seemed to have signed the ad and included her e-mail address.

But the whole thing was a fraud, Realtor Kathie Desautels said.

An overseas scam artist had hijacked Desautels’ legitimate listing for the property, copied the text and photographs from another Web site and converted a for-sale ad into a rental proposition on Craigslist, the agent discovered this week. The scammer was trolling for cash, to be wired overseas.

“We are pleased and happy going to rent out our house to your family, you will be required to send a Security Deposit of $600 to enable me send you the neccssary paperworks and keys,” read a passage of an e-mail sent to a potential renter, according to a copy of the note Desautels provided Wednesday to The Burlington Free Press. Desautels’ name appeared at the bottom of the message.

“We are currently opening internatyional bank account here where the monthly rental fees will be paid into, but for the time being the Security Deposit will have to be sent to us via Western Union Money Transfer as it stands the fastest and most secured way for us to receive it until the bank account is ready,” the scammer wrote, adding the renter should wire money immediately to conclude the deal.

“Okay?” the e-mail concluded.

Not really, no, should be the answer to that question, Vermont Assistant Attorney General Elliot Burg said.

“Don’t send money — your payments, your security deposit, your first month’s rent, whatever — in any form that is not guaranteed,” Burg said Wednesday, encouraging consumers to use a credit card only once they have verified as much of a listing’s legitimacy as possible. “Once that money is gone, it’s gone. It’s like sending cash.”

The ad also asked people to provide personal information such as names of spouses and children.

Desautels, an agent with Remax North Professionals in Colchester, reported the spurious listing to Essex police and the Attorney General’s Office. She said she knew of at least 20 people who responded first to the ad and its phony e-mail address and then contacted Desautels directly, wondering why she hadn’t replied or raising concerns about the content of the communications.

“It’s all pretty eerie,” she said. “For me personally, for my reputation, this is huge, especially if people send a check.”

Desautels knows of no one who lost money, but she’s unsure how many people might have replied to the advertisement without notifying her. The people who spoke to Desautels at her office instead of or in addition to using the phony e-mail address did so because they knew her or feared a scam, she said.

Craigslist removed the posting shortly after Desautels discovered the fraud Tuesday afternoon after receiving a call about a rental listing. She doesn’t handle rentals, she said.

“Within the next hour, I had phone calls, e-mails, people saying, ‘Is this for real?’” she said. “Then I looked, and I saw this fake e-mail address, and I just knew it was a scam going on.”

There’s little law enforcement can do in cases like this, because the suspects usually are overseas, Essex Police Officer Damir Karadza said Wednesday. The best approach for authorities is to warn the public such frauds exist and to advise caution, he said.

“People just have to be aware, take their time and be careful,” Karadza said. “There’s very little we can do.”

A phone number provided in one of the e-mail responses to a rental inquiry contained an international prefix. An Internet search turned up conflicting information about whether the prefix led to Nigeria or a mobile phone in Pakistan.

In one e-mail, the scammers explained, “I am currently inn Nigeria and I will be here for sometime to take care of my missionary works here.” Again, Desautels’ name appeared at the bottom. She’s in Vermont, though, not on an African mission.

Desautels said she knows of at least one other local real-estate firm that fell victim to a similar hijacking of an online listing. Burg said his office is investigating the case of one Vermonter who lost $2,000 after replying to a Craigslist posting for an apartment in Washington, D.C., that turned out to be a sham.

“Fraud has gone global,” Burg said.

The Essex townhouse, meanwhile, remains on the market — for sale, not for rent — with an asking price of $283,000.

Contact Adam Silverman at 660-1854 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it To have Free Press headlines delivered free to your e-mail, sign up at www.burlingtonfreepress.com/newsletters.

Recently NPR’s Marketplace Money ran a segment highlighting the effects of the economic slowdown on the apartment dwellers of America. Increasingly we are seeing that apartment renters are also being squeezed by the recession.

TEXT OF STORY

Tess Vigeland: Of the many concerns that arise when you lose your job, keeping a roof over your head is primary. We’ve talked a lot about what a struggle that’s been for homeowners, folks who can no longer make the mortgage. But more than 36 million people rent and that number is growing as homeowners go into foreclosure and become renters.

A housing payment is a housing payment, whether it’s a mortgage or a rent check, and renters face tough questions as they decide whether in this economy they can still afford the place they call home.

Find our more: Link to Page or listen to the story Listen

Check out your renting profile based on your rent, your housing price increases, and the cost of buying your home! It is quite astounding that based on today’s estimated residential price appreciation rates, it may make more sense to keep on renting and save that extra money per month.

More and more real estate professionals are realizing the importance of offering Broadband internet to their customers.

Renters should be asking their landlord about their broadband options so YOU don’t get caught by surprise.

Areas with better and faster broadband are becoming more desirable than ones with slower access.

Real estate broker Edward Redpath of Hanover, N.H. said he has seen potential deals fall by the wayside once the buyer finds out a home doesn’t have broadband Internet access. Across the river in Norwich, Vt., the center of the village is the only place with cable.

“We have a lot of people that don’t go into the rural neighborhoods or consider the rural neighborhoods because they need the broadband,” Redpath told the AP.

“Our lifestyle demands speed.”

Many factors are at play in driving the trend, including our increasing reliance on broadband. Indeed, roughly 55 percent of Americans have broadband connections in their homes, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. However, more have service available to them and choose not to buy it.

But the growth of broadband is slowing, and providing connections to the remaining 10 percent of unconnected homes will be expensive since these homes are typically in small communities or in remote locations. As time goes on, the lack of universal broadband combined with higher gas prices might draw people from the countryside to cities and suburbs.

Redpath’s local phone service provider, FairPoint Communications Inc., is turning to unconventional means to connect the most remote Vermont homes. The company will begin using wireless broadband links next year to keep its promise of providing high-speed Internet access throughout its entire service area.

The most important factor for the location was the availability of reliable Internet,” Skripka told the AP.

The standard in luxury apartment buildings is to have at least two options for broadband Internet access, said Henry Pye, director of resident services and technology at JPI Partners LLC, which owns buildings throughout the United States. Pye’s job is to ensure the buildings have broadband connectivity, because you can’t rent out apartments without it, he said.

“It might as well be water,” he told the AP.

Andru Edwards, who runs Gearlive.com, moved from Seattle to a suburb last year so he could gain access to a fiber-optic connection from Verizon Communications Inc. While he had a cable modem at his old apartment, it took too long to upload high-definition video for his blog.

“It definitely took our business to the next level. I’ve never looked back,” he told the AP.

Link to original article

Students migrate back to Burlington
By Tim Johnson • Free Press Staff Writer • August 30, 2008

As Marcus Johnson sat on a stoop on Hickock Place on Friday, he swept his hand toward the surrounding apartments and offered a taut description of Burlington:

“Just a bunch of empty houses waiting for college students,” said Johnson, a University of Vermont senior.

Those houses were filling up Friday, and so were the dorms at UVM and Champlain College. This back-to-school weekend is right up there with marathon weekend for the number of visitors, said Tim Shea of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce. The difference is that many of these visitors stay on for another eight months.
Advertisement

UVM and Champlain undergraduates total more than 11,000 students, a substantial share of Burlington’s population. When they flood back at the end of August, they bring a vitality and a set of lifestyles that their older, more-settled neighbors can find jarring, even objectionable. Late-night noise and drunken misbehavior are the key flashpoints for discord in neighborhoods where the two groups live intermingled, especially in the Hill section.

Any doubt that the annual student influx will catch the community unprepared was allayed this week by a two-page “Quality of Life Initiative” news release issued jointly by Burlington Police Chief Mike Schirling and UVM Dean of Students David Nestor. They cite some of the “educational” materials distributed among students, including UVM’s 31-page “Off Campus Living Survival Guide,” and such institutional/neighborhood campaigns as “Have a Heart,” which puts groups of volunteers at intersections prepared to engage students about late-night noise.

Then there are the stepped-up UVM/police patrols on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights: roving foot patrols, bike patrols, extra cruiser patrols.

The overall goal, Schirling said, is to convey to incoming students: “You’re a member of the community now.” That membership comes with responsibilities that are enumerated, in detail, in more than 500 “welcome bags” that will be distributed in September to students living in Burlington neighborhoods.

Incoming students at Champlain College — which houses roughly half its students in campus dorms close by residential neighborhoods — get an earful about how they have to respect their neighbors. The message is repeated by resident assistants, head residents, and in group orientations by Rich Long, director of public safety. Long took that job after a career with the Burlington police, part of which he spent patrolling the Hill and responding to neighbors’ complaints.

“I know exactly what the neighbors’ pain is,” he said, and that helps in his new role as educator.
September special

Neighborhood tensions are inevitable in any community that’s home to large numbers of college students living off campus. UVM expects first-time students to live on campus their first two years, and 39 residence halls accommodate about 5,000 students. That leaves more than 4,000 upper-class undergraduates who rent quarters in or near the city, often in neighborhoods where student apartments are commingled with other residences.

The most problematic times for noise and intoxication? Spring and fall when the weather is nice. The month that draws the most citations citywide? September.

“Fall is always worse than spring,” said Lt. Jennifer Morrison, who covers Wards 1 and 2.

According to the Burlington Police Department’s monthly breakdown of tickets issued for municipal violations in 2007, September was the No. 1 month for these infractions: noise from parties and social events (74), general noise (25), minors in possession of alcohol (113), open containers in public or in vehicles (45) and public urination (10).

Efforts to avert these sorts of problems have been under way for a long time, but by some accounts, the campaign to smooth student-neighbor relations has ratcheted up over the past few years. UVM’s Office of Student & Community Relations promotes an array of campaigns and initiatives that encourage responsible and respectful behavior.

City councilors Ed Adrian, D-Ward 1, and Andy Montroll, D-Ward 6, commended the preemptive efforts of UVM and Champlain College. Montroll said that he’d seen “a steady level of improvement” over the past few years and that complaint calls to him from his constituents “have gone down quite a bit.”

Longtime residents’ accounts vary. A resident on University Terrace — a mix of professionals and student renters — said that some of her student neighbors have been considerate, that others don’t care, and that problems have worsened over the past two years.

By contrast, Ed Bemis, who has lived on South Union Street for about 40 years, said the past two years had been “much better.” He attributes this in part to neighbors’ having complained as a group to City Council, which apparently prompted a landlord to get the word to tenants.

“The students that landlord has have gotten much nicer,” Bemis said.

From some students’ point of view, the city’s “quality of life” patrols are hard to ignore in spring and fall.

“They hand out noise violations like it’s candy,” said Sam Davidson, a UVM junior. “I could not count how many of my friends have gotten noise violations.”

A noisy party can draw a fine of $400 for a first offense, up to $500 for a second.

The Burlington Police Department has no statistics on complaints about students per se. Deputy Chief Walt Decker does, however, keep track of the city’s total number of complaints about noise and about intoxication logged on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights — the peak times. Noise complaints totaled 343 in 2005, then dropped to 272 in 2006 and 239 last year. Decker said when UVM began sending e-mails to off-campus residents each spring and fall, reminding them to respect their neighbors, that appeared to have had an impact.

On the other hand, intoxication complaints went up after 2005 (216), to 295 in 2006 and 274 in 2007. UVM’s dry-campus policy, banning alcohol from residence halls, dates from 2006, so some student drinking might have been shifted off campus.
Getting started

Ted Trautman, a UVM junior, has been living in the Buell Street neighborhood since July. There have been a few parties, he said, but mostly it’s been pretty quiet. He’s heard that police get stricter once the school year starts. He hasn’t received the UVM e-mail message yet, but he knows what it will say: “Be quiet, respect your neighbors.”

UVM and Champlain encourage students and neighbors to get acquainted, exchange phone numbers and so on.

“If we have a barbecue, we’ll invite the neighbors,” said Kerry Kaye, a resident assistant at Bankus House, home to 45 Champlain College students on South Willard Street.

In between welcoming new Champlain students to Sanders House on College Street on Friday afternoon, head resident Julie Capen gestured toward a next-door apartment building. “This building loved us,” she said of the experience last year. “Our students helped them change a car battery.”

Back on Hickock Place, UVM student Meghan Ustianov said that last year, she was the only student living in a five-unit apartment building, yet there was some tension nevertheless — when she held a party, or when her friends were hanging out there.

She said police patrols were common in this neighborhood and that Friday night would likely be the first big night for parties.

“Tonight will be interesting,” she said.

Contact Tim Johnson at 660-1808 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Judge: State must enforce housing rules

August 29, 2008
By Wilson Ring Associated Press

MONTPELIER — For years a division of the Vermont Department of Public Safety failed to enforce the state’s building codes by relying on voluntary compliance by landlords, a practice that in some cases forced tenants from their homes, a judge has ruled.

In the latest chapter in the long-running legal case, Franklin County Superior Court Judge Ben Joseph issued a summary judgment in favor of Vermont tenants, represented by Vermont Legal Aid, ordering the department to come up with a plan to enforce the building codes as intended by the Legislature.

He said that between 2002 and earlier this year, state inspectors found more than 4,000 violations and collected fines in three cases.

“It is obvious that landlords in Vermont know that no direct punishment will be imposed for housing code violations in rental properties,” Joseph wrote in the ruling released last week.

“The harshest consequence of this practice falls on the tenants, not the landlord,” Joseph wrote. “Tenants are thrown out of their homes when the department finds that serious housing code violations are not corrected… These enforcement powers were meant to protect the tenants’ safety, not to punish tenants when their landlords fail to correct code violations.”

Building codes governing such things as plumbing and electrical systems are enforced in Vermont by the Division of Fire Safety, a part of the Department of Public Safety.

Legal Aid Attorney Geoffrey Walsh said the decision would put teeth into code enforcement.

“When (tenants) call up code enforcement officials they don’t have to worry about the inspector evicting them,” Walsh said. “They know the landlord isn’t going to laugh about it.”

Assistant Attorney General Michael Donofrio, who represents the department, said officials were still evaluating Joseph’s ruling and hadn’t made a decision on how to proceed. But the next step will be to hold a hearing in Superior Court to outline how Joseph’s order will be implemented.

Donofrio said the department wanted to focus on the future rather than the past.

He said the enforcement landscape changed a few years ago when code enforcement moved to the new Division of Fire Safety within the Department of Public Safety.

The case grew from a St. Albans situation in which a building at 13 High St. was inspected seven times between 2000 and 2002. Inspectors found “numerous and serious hazards,” including defective smoke detectors, lack of self-closing doors, unsafe stairs and improper railings as well as undersize windows.

But the owner didn’t make repairs until after the department had gone to court and ordered the tenants evicted. Legal Aid kept the tenants in their apartments and the repairs were finally made.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2002, but it was dismissed by the Franklin Superior Court in 2004. In 2006 the Vermont Supreme Court reinstated the case. In 2007 it became a class action suit on behalf of all Vermont tenants.

Last week Joseph issued a summary judgment in favor of the tenants and issued a “writ of mandamus.” In the decision Joseph cited a 1960 Rutland case to define the term: “mandamus takes an official by the coat lapel and orders him to do what, up to that moment, he has felt he had no right to do and was under no compulsion to do.”

In court papers filed last month, Donofrio said that since the lawsuit was originally filed the Department of Fire Safety has implemented a new system of following up on violations by working closely with landlords.

“The inspector enters into a dialogue with the landowner and attempts to move the landowner closer and closer to compliance with the codes,” Donofrio said Thursday.

So few enforcement actions are needed.

“Of course there are situations that arise where conditions are discovered at a building that are so hazardous the only way to ensure safety of tenants are to ask them to vacate,” Donofrio said.

Legal Aid Attorney Maryellen Griffin said most landlords will correct problems without the need to resort to fines. “There are a few bad apples out there who won’t do the right thing,” she said. “You need to have a consequence.”

Corinne Bluto, 55, has lived at 13 High St. in St. Albans, the building that started the lawsuit, for 22 years. In years past, the water froze and her stove broke.

“It was just a mess, all and all,” Bluto said.

Now her building has a new owner.

“Things have gotten better. It’s all been renovated and carpeted,” Bluto said. “Everything’s pretty well up to date.”

Guest Post as shown in 7 Days
By Mike Ives [08.27.08]

Every fall, when thousands of college students arrive in Burlington for the new school year, one of the nation’s tightest housing markets gets even tighter.

The greatest pressure comes from the Queen City’s largest academic institution, the University of Vermont, which this year is expecting nearly 9300 undergraduates — at least a third of whom will live off campus, according to estimates by city and university officials.

UVM has made a “pretty good attempt” to keep up with the housing needs of its growing student body, said Brian Pine, assistant director for housing at the city’s Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO). Still, with a vacancy rate of just 1 percent, the Burlington housing market struggles to keep pace with the influx of several thousand renting students every year.

“I’d say we’re reaching a point where the need for greater student housing is pressing,” Pine noted.

That much was clear a decade ago, when the city and UVM first tried to get a handle on the university’s impact on the local housing market. In 1998, UVM commissioned an economic analysis that found students occupied more than 16 percent of the city’s 8100 rental units. At the time, about 2566 UVM students were living off campus — 90 percent of all students in the rental market.

The study concluded that student demand “serves to inflate rents and lower vacancies” in Burlington. Indeed, students living off-campus increased rents in Chittenden County by 10 to 15 percent, according to the study. In Burlington’s prosperous Hill Section, where more than half of all students lived, the price of rental housing was as much as 30 percent higher.

Tom Gustafson, UVM’s vice president for campus and student life, said that the low vacancy rate in Burlington can’t be attributed solely to increased student enrollment. For example, he said, vacancy rates were low in the mid-1990s, when UVM’s student population was significantly smaller than it is now. Moreover, two years after the housing analysis, UVM agreed to add 400 beds on campus. In fact, the university has added 1456 new beds since 2000 — for a total of 5544 — including the 800-bed University Heights complex.

Gustafson said juniors and seniors are responding more favorably to on-campus housing options than they have in the past. “We’re opening very full this fall,” he said, “which we take as a good sign in terms of how popular our residence halls are.”

Mark Brooks, of the real estate firm Allen & Brooks, which helped conduct the 1998 housing analysis for UVM, applauds the university’s campus housing initiatives. However, he said, continued growth in enrollment is bound to have an impact on the local rental market no matter how many residential halls are built.

“A lot of students prefer to live off-campus no matter what you do on-campus,” Brooks said. “It’s just a fact.”

As the number of students who seek housing off campus has continued to increase, both the Burlington City Council and housing advocacy groups have tried to force the issue with UVM. In 2005, the council’s “Housing Super Committee” directed city officials to “secure a pledge” from UVM limiting the number of students living off campus to 3100.

Pine and Gustafson acknowledge that pledge never materialized. Instead, according to Gustafson, the two parties agreed to meet regularly to develop “creative” solutions to housing problems.

“I think we all sort of informally agreed, ‘Let’s just keep working and not worry about doing agreement after agreement,’” Gustafson recalled.

A year after the council committee’s directive, Vermont Interfaith Action, a consortium of religious congregations, sought its own agreement with UVM by pressing Gustafson to commit to an update of the 1998 housing analysis. He declined, but agreed to discuss an increase in on-campus housing, said Kathy Bonilla, the president of VIA’s board of directors.

Bonilla said it was eventually decided that the best short-term solution would be for UVM to build 50 units of affordable housing for university employees on land it owned in South Burlington.

“At the time,” Bonilla recalled, “they were saying their debt ratio was maxed out, so they couldn’t create any more student housing.”

Bonilla said her organization is satisfied with the employee housing because it’s a needed addition to the local rental market. “In a way, it was more effective, because if you create more student housing, then you have to hope and pray that students actually move into it,” she said.

UVM isn’t the only campus in town struggling to house its students. Earlier this year, Champlain College overcame opposition from its neighbors before winning approval to tear down the Eagles Club, at the corner of Maple and St. Paul streets, to build 200 student apartments.

The school’s eventual goal is to build housing for as many as 600 students. In the meantime, Champlain has agreed to lease space for 272 students at Spinner Place, a downtown Winooski complex, through 2011.

David Provost, Champlain College’s vice president of finance and administration, said leasing rental housing in Winooski isn’t consistent with the college’s goal of housing its students in Burlington. But, he said, it was a necessary response to a “desperate need for beds.”

While about 30 UVM students will live at Spinner Place this year, that’s far fewer than expected when the $23.6 million complex was proposed. At the time, the idea was that UVM would aggressively market the complex to its students.

Gustafson said that although Spinner Place is advertised on the university’s website, UVM never made a formal commitment to house students there. The apparent lack of interest in the complex by UVM students is not creating problems in the local housing market, he said. The students who live at Spinner Place take pressure off the Burlington housing market, no matter where they attend classes.

Gustafson said that, while the growth in UVM’s undergraduate population is expected to taper off, the university is moving forward with a complex on the Redstone Campus in Burlington’s Hill Section that will house up to 394 students.

Pine said the city is “optimistic” that UVM shares its concerns about the local rental market, and that the university understands the need to increase options for its students.

“When they have students who are forced to take units off campus that are perhaps cheaper, but are substandard, that concerns the students and their parents, I think, and rightly so,” Pine said. “But when the university is able to offer high-quality, comfortable, state-of-the-art living units, that gives them an edge, and I think they see it that way.”