The Champlain Housing Trust’s award winning shared equity homeownership program continues to get noticed. This time, CHT’s program is a finalist in the inaugural Renewal Awards, which seek to recognize innovative solutions to American communities’ pressing challenges. Presented by Atlantic Media and Allstate, the Renewal Awards will be presented to six organizations at the National Summit on Local Innovation in Des Moines, Iowa next January. Each winner will receive a $10,000 award, plus recognition at the summit. As part of the selection process, online voting is available until November 2 — we encourage people to vote for the Champlain Housing Trust to help share with America what success we’ve had here building a stock of permanently affordable homes.
CHT’s shared equity program, launched in 1984 under then-Mayor Bernie Sanders, has been long seen as a sustainable, innovative approach to affordable homeownership. A winner of the United Nations World Habitat Award in 2008 and a grantee through the Social Innovation Fund, shared equity homeownership, where buyers of limited means share market appreciation when they sell to keep homes affordable, is increasingly being seen as a way to better invest limited public funds to help people attain the American Dream.