Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger Monday nominated a top state housing official, Noelle MacKay, to lead Burlington's Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO).
MacKay currently serves as the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development.
She said housing in Burlington will be one of her biggest challenges if the city council confirms her nomination.
"From a state perspective – my current job – we see that as an impediment," she said. "If you don't have a home, you can't really do anything else. So from folks that don't have a home to folks that are really struggling to meet their rent."
Burlington's aging housing stock and low vacancy rates have led to what a 2014 report called an "affordability crisis." Weinberger's administration faced criticism in 2015 for restructuring CEDO's housing work across multiple divisions within the department instead of the previous arrangement which put an assistant director of CEDO in charge of housing.
MacKay said there's more work to do to improve housing in Burlington.
"It's a really tough issue to tackle and you've got to think about the spectrum of incomes and also how do you integrate new housing into the city. And I think there's lots of great work that's been done and there's lots of stuff that we can do," she said.
Weinberger said he plans to ask the city council to confirm MacKay at its May 16 meeting.
If confirmed, MacKay will resign from the state in June and start the new job in August, according to a release from Weinberger's office.
