Housing nonprofit officials and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday celebrated the completion of 38 new affordable apartments in downtown Burlington.  The five-story building on South Winooski Avenue will house a handful of veterans, people exiting homelessness and workers who would othe rwise be unable to afford a Burlington rental. The ground floor will serve as a new home for the Chittenden County Community Justice Center and VFW Post 782, which occupied the building that was torn down to create the new complex. The 46 new residents — four of whom are veterans and 10 households that are moving in directly off the streets — are mostly people who already work in Burlington, Champlain Housing Trust CEO Michael Monte said.  A dozen or so people work in the retail and service industry at places such as City Market, Santiago’s and Leunig’s Bistro. More work just outside the city at McDonald’s, Chili’s and other restaurants. Others work for nonprofits such as the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, at local banks or as laborers.  Monte said one of his staff members wrote to him in a note: “From what I can tell, the people we are housing, the people we serve, are often the ones who serve our community in return.” “That was beautiful for me. This is what this project is about,” he said.  The project has been long in the making. The VFW first approached Champlain Housing Trust five years ago, and construction got underway two years ago. Housing nonprofit Evernorth was a codeveloper on the project. The building cost roughly $24 million, primarily due to the expense of remediating contaminated soil at the property, which was considered a brownfield. Champlain Housing Trust spent seven times the amount on soil remediation and development costs as it did at its 40-apartment Cambrian Rise development, in Burlington’s north end, according to Champlain Housing Trust spokesperson Chris Donnelly. Those cost would have likely made the site unappealing to a private developer, he added. Sanders, who helped break ground on the complex two years ago, was on hand Friday to help christen the new “Post Apartments.” He secured $1 million in federal funding for the project.  In his brief remarks at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Sanders praised Monte and the housing trust along with the restorative justice programs facilitated by the community justice center. He called for greater federal investment in affordable housing and criticized President Donald Trump’s ongoing military action in Iran.  “This is a model of what should be done all over this country,” he said. “Maybe instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war that we never should have gotten in, we might want to be investing in low-income and affordable housing and putting millions of people to work.” The project was accomplished through a partnership between Champlain Housing Trust and the VFW with further support from Evernorth; the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, the City of Burlington; and the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. The post Nearly 40 Affordable Apartments Open in Downtown Burlington appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less