Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak chats before a groundbreaking ceremony at the Cambrian Way housing complex in Burlington in August 2025. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger This story by Chris Mays was first published in the Brattleboro Reformer on July 21, 2026. BERLIN — An additiona l $25 million is now available in low-interest financing to help spur new housing, job creation and affordability across Vermont.  “Our state continues to be in desperate need of more housing,” Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak said Tuesday at a news conference. “Housing in Vermont is simply too expensive, whether you are a renter, whether you’re a first-time homebuyer, or whether you’re somebody that’s lived in your home for 30 years and is trying to maintain the home and trying to keep up with property taxes.” The financing is available through the treasurer’s Invest in Vermont program, which uses 12.5% of the state’s average daily cash balance to provide low-interest loans for housing and economic development projects without spending tax dollars. A request for proposals went out Tuesday. Proposals are due Sept. 4.  The program was formerly called “10% in VT.” The Legislature recently expanded the program’s lending capacity by 2.5 percentage points in this year’s major housing bill, S.328. Now, the program has been renamed Invest in Vermont.  To date, the program has been used to invest more than $130 million into housing and other initiatives across Vermont, according to an announcement.  “Without spending a single tax dollar, those investments have leveraged over $600 million in outside capital, supporting nearly 1,700 units of high-quality housing for Vermonters of all kinds, including working families, seniors, and those exiting homelessness,” the announcement states. The funding is also credited with creating nearly 200 permanent, good-paying jobs.  When Pieciak was first elected treasurer 3½ years ago, his office looked at what tools are available to confront the housing issue. He said his team knows that “there is so much more that we need to do.” “We went to the Legislature and asked if they would consider giving us even more authority to expand our 10% in Vermont program to 12.5%, and that is exactly what they did,” he said. “We want to thank the Legislature for their support and their confidence in us to invest this money wisely.” Pieciak said the investments allow projects to move forward at a more affordable price. In March, he announced The Village at Winston Prouty in Brattleboro would receive $4 million in financing through the program.  Alex Farrell, the commissioner of housing and community development, said the governor is “extremely grateful to the treasurer and his whole team for the partnership that they have displayed, not only with Invest in Vermont and really focusing these funds on housing, but also on some of our initiatives to create more innovative ways to deliver housing.” “We are going to continue to push on the front to find new ways that large and small projects can have a fast track through the regulatory process,” he said, “because it’s so important that residential construction can happen in rural Vermont.” Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont expands housing investment program. ...read more read less