Chapter 18 - The Best Things in Life are Perpetually Affordable: Profile of the Champlain Housing Trust, Burlington, Vermont - Brenda M. Torpy (read by Susan Alancraig)

In 1984, the administration of Mayor Bernie Sanders helped to create the Burlington Community Land Trust, the first municipally initiated and municipally supported CLT in the United States. Now known as the Champlain Housing Trust (CHT), it has grown into the country’s largest CLT with a real estate portfolio of over 3000 units of permanently affordable housing and over 160,000 square feet of nonresidential space, scattered across a three-county service area. CHT’s story is told by its founding president, Brenda Torpy, who later became the organization’s longest-serving executive director.