WEST BRATTLEBORO-As Brattleboro Housing Partnerships celebrated $1.75 million in federal funding Oct. 6 to rebuild Melrose Terrace, a senior housing complex battered by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., said that the struggles of rural communities cut across party lines — and that those shared struggles are how federal money still reaches small towns despite gridlock in Washington.
“I would say rural is rural is rural,” Balint said at the event. “Rural Vermont is rural Kentucky. Rural Michigan. We are all struggling with the same issues.”
The congressionally directed money, which Balint secured, is part of a roughly $19 million project that will replace the complex’s remaining buildings outside the floodway with 30 energy-efficient apartments for residents 62 and older.
The rebuilt property will be called West Brattleboro Terrace.
Other funding includes $3.8 million from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, $1 million from the National Housing Trust, $815,000 in equity, and nearly $3 million in tax credits.
Christine Hazzard, executive director of Brattleboro Housing Partnerships, said she expects to break ground in the next few months and a ribbon cutting in early 2028.
Balint called the redevelopment “a smart community development project” and said it is about “making sure that people can retire with dignity in a beautiful place, a place that feels like home.”
“It is absolutely everything to me,” said Balint, who began her public service as a Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting member before serving in the state Senate and, for the past four years, as Vermont’s lone representative in the U.S. House.
“I was heartbroken, as I know many of us were here in town, when we thought we were going to have to abandon [Melrose Terrace] entirely from ever being housing again,” she said. “So I’m just so thrilled to have a part in bringing this back to life.”
Balint, who is raising her children in Brattleboro, adding she promised herself as a state legislator and again after reaching Congress, to keep “a special eye for the southern part of the state.”
“I know oftentimes we feel like we get forgotten down here, so this is exactly where I want to be today,” she said.
Sixty years, one flood
Melrose Terrace opened in 1966 with 80 households as “the first property developed by the town-formed Brattleboro Housing Authority,” Hazzard said.
The complex housed many of the town’s lowest-income elderly residents and, beginning in the late 1990s, adults with disabilities.
“Vermont’s only example of mid-20th-century garden apartment design with winding walkways and ample green space, this property has been loved by most people who have lived here,” she said.
After Tropical Storm Irene heavily damaged it in 2011, residents were relocated to Brattleboro Housing Partnerships’ new Red Clover Commons developments.
Hazzard said communities across Vermont will have to find ways to preserve historic downtowns, village centers, and housing along the floodway “by creating space for the water to go.”
Completed flood mitigation work along the Whetstone Brook has changed the flood map and is expected to protect the new housing while restoring floodplain capacity.
“This will hopefully create parcels of land across Vermont outside of the floodway for future use,” she said.
She credited Christine Hart, former executive director of Brattleboro Housing Partnerships, along with her agency’s board of commissioners and local developers M&S Development of Brattleboro, for not giving up on Melrose Terrace.
“Fifteen-year projects need a champion, and Brattleboro Housing has been that champion when making every major decision on this project,” Hazzard said, adding that Balint also took part firsthand in developing Red Clover Commons One and Two and “has undoubtedly supported the progress each step.”
“It takes a lot of people to bring a project like this across the finish line,” Balint said. “And although we’re not at the finish line yet, I’m grateful that we are working together every step of the way.”
‘When the cameras aren’t rolling’
Asked how she finds common ground with Republican colleagues amid what she called dysfunction in Washington, Balint pointed to shared pressures on housing, rural healthcare, senior care, and addiction treatment.
“When we are able to put politics aside and just talk about the issues that are threatening our communities, it’s all the same,” she said. “Whether it is making sure seniors have a life of dignity, whether it’s making sure that people who are struggling with addiction have access to treatment and also have wraparound services, it’s the same.”
The work, she said, happens largely out of public view.
“I’m going to continue to do what I do. When the cameras aren’t rolling, you reach out and you talk to [political adversaries], and you take every opportunity to get to know what’s happening in their districts,” Balint said. “That’s how these kinds of programs continue to work, even when you’ve got forces that would like to make it so that we don’t get anything done.”
Those relationships matter most before the House Appropriations Committee, she said.
“You’re saying these are important for this little town in Vermont, in this little town in Kentucky. It’s all the same. We are trying to represent our people well back home.”
Hazzard said the financing problem behind projects like Melrose Terrace is the same in red states and blue states.
Apartment complexes, she explained, are valued on their net operating income — “how much do they collect for rent, how much does it cost to run the place, and what’s left over.”
The finished Melrose Terrace property has been appraised at about $3.5 million. A bank lending 80% of that value would not come close to covering the cost of the work, she said.
“You can’t rehab 30 apartments and historic site work and replace the electric and the water and stormwater [utilities]. You’re not even going to come anywhere close,” Hazzard said. “That’s a major recurrent story in Vermont, but it’s also a major recurrent story in Kentucky, Tennessee, and all these other places, so I think that’s a common ground.”
Bringing federal dollars home
Balint said rural areas risk being overlooked in the national housing conversation and that small towns cannot close the funding gap on their own.
“Places like Bennington and Brattleboro and Fairlee need us to bring the federal dollars back home, because if we’re just relying on local residents to raise the money to rehab housing or build new developments, it’s not going to happen,” she said.
Balint cited a visit about a month ago to Fairlee, where she announced $1 million this summer for the 19-unit Bridge and Main housing project. She also secured federal money for the Benn High Redevelopment, which will convert the old Bennington High School into 39 “incredible housing units,” 17 of them for low-income tenants.
“For me, it’s making sure that the more rural areas don’t get forgotten when it comes to rehabbing housing and building new housing, because we have the same struggle that is happening in Chittenden County,” she said.
She estimated that Brattleboro needs approximately 500 new housing units.
“We have a very low [vacancy] rate, and so it’s very obviously very special for me to be able to do this here in Brattleboro, but I feel that way whenever we are able to invest in housing, because I know it’s one of our biggest challenges right now,” Balint said.
She added that her office has returned $15 million to Vermonters through constituent casework on federal grants and programs and has secured $25 million for projects like Melrose Terrace.
“So even in the midst of all that dysfunction, we have been able to deliver directly to people,”she said.
With additional reporting by Commons News Editor Randolph T. Holhut.
This News item by Virginia Ray was written for The Commons.