Workforce Shortage Imperils Burlington Weatherization Goals

Burlington set out in 2021 to help tenants and fight global warming by requiring landlords to seal leaky windows and insulate drafty attics — a practice known as weatherization. But more than three years later, only a handful of rental properties have been updated.

Officials are blaming the statewide shortage of qualified workers for the delays.

Both the city and state plan to offer training programs that would bolster the “green” workforce, but in the meantime, the city won’t meet its self-imposed timeline to weatherize hundreds of homes. Enforcement of one of Burlington’s marquee policies is effectively on hold until councilors figure out new deadlines.

“If [landlords] made best efforts and they couldn’t get the work done, it wouldn’t be right of us to fine them for that,” Councilor Mark Barlow (I-North District) said.

Councilors passed the ordinance following a 2019 housing summit that aimed to make the city’s rentals more affordable for tenants. The rules apply to buildings that use 50,000 or more British thermal units, or BTUs, per square foot to heat the space each year. An insulated 2,000-square-foot home in northwestern Vermont heated with natural gas, for instance, typically uses 40,000 BTUs each year, assuming an indoor temperature around 70 degrees in winter, according to Tim Perrin, director of energy management at VGS.

“If [landlords] made best efforts and they couldn’t get the work done, it wouldn’t be right of us to fine them for that.” Councilor Mark Barlow

The city works with utilities such as VGS, which provides natural gas used to heat the majority of Burlington rentals, to determine a building’s usage. If a property is out of compliance, landlords could take steps such as insulating crawl spaces or installing new windows to make the building more efficient. The ordinance says landlords only need to pay as much as $2,500 toward these projects, though they would have to spend more if their first effort doesn’t bring the property into compliance.

At a council meeting in 2021, then-mayor Miro Weinberger said the ordinance would lower fossil fuel use, edging the city closer to its goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. Calling the rules enforceable, Weinberger said the effort would “support job creation and retention for weatherization contractors and help the broader Vermont clean energy economy.”

That vision hasn’t come to pass. The city estimates that about 730 of the city’s 3,070 rental properties need to be weatherized. More than half that number should have been weatherized by now but are instead on a waiting list, either for an audit to assess their energy use or to hire a contractor to do the work, according to Burlington code enforcement director Bill Ward. Buildings that use between 50,000 and 59,999 BTUs still have until January 2025 to comply, though it’s highly unlikely they’ll meet that deadline.

“There definitely isn’t a weatherization workforce … able to keep up with the demand.” Tim Perrin

Owners can avoid fines by documenting that they’ve made “good faith efforts” to hire a contractor or get bank loans for the work. As a result, the city has only fined seven landlords who didn’t respond after being notified that their building needed to be weatherized, Ward said. All of them have since taken steps to come into compliance.

A council subcommittee chaired by Barlow is considering more realistic deadlines for property owners. Whatever they land on, it will take years to weatherize the apartments. At VGS, customers are facing a three-month wait to schedule an energy audit. Champlain Valley Weatherization, a program for low-income renters offered through the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, has a yearlong wait for weatherization work.

“There definitely isn’t a weatherization workforce … able to keep up with the demand as the city council had originally envisioned,” said Perrin of VGS.

The utility has audited 70 Burlington properties this year. The next wave due to comply “is projected to overwhelm our team,” Perrin said.

The problem extends beyond VGS. Energy Action Network, a nonprofit that analyzes Vermont climate policy, estimates that the state needs hundreds more workers to meet its goal of weatherizing 120,000 homes by 2030.

Building the workforce is no easy task, said Dwight DeCoster, who runs the weatherization program at CVOEO, one of six agencies that offer the work for free to low-income tenants. Pay tends to be higher in similar fields, which generally offer better working conditions, he said. Weatherization crews often toil in stuffy attics and damp basements.

“I say that I’m sending my crews to hell every day. It’s either a hot hell or a cold hell,” DeCoster said. “It’s just not comfortable work.”

Before the pandemic, federal and state funding for programs such as DeCoster’s was spotty, which led to layoffs in the past — not a strong selling point for potential recruits. In any given year, CVOEO loses 40 percent of workers on its weatherization crew. DeCoster’s team has six vacancies, which he hopes to fill by next June. “I’ve been saying that for the last two years,” he said.

Both the city and state are trying to address the issue. Next year, the state plans to open a weatherization training center using a $2 million federal grant. Over three years, officials anticipate training more than 1,100 people — online at first, then at an as-yet undetermined physical location in central Vermont, according to Geoff Wilcox, director of the state’s weatherization program.

Agencies serving low-income Vermonters will be able to send workers there for free, and other companies will pay tuition for current or would-be employees, Wilcox said. The state will help market the classes.

Meanwhile, the city is preparing to launch its own training program. A $22 million federal grant to rebuild Cherry and Bank streets downtown also included $1.5 million to train construction and heavy equipment workers. Seeing the shortage of weatherization workers, however, city officials got permission to include them in the program.

The city will contract with a third party to provide the free training, an arrangement the city council is slated to vote on later this month. Once approved, the city will start recruiting people for a class that could start in January, according to Kara Alnasrawi, director of Burlington’s Business and Workforce Development office. She estimates that as many as 100 people could learn the weatherization trade over the three-year grant period.

“I absolutely think it will make a difference,” Alnasrawi said. “This is all to help staff up any of these companies that are facing this backlog.”

Former city councilor Jack Hanson, who spearheaded the ordinance in 2021, thinks the city could be doing more. He pointed to a proposal from the city’s Community Economic and Development Office earlier this year, which sought to use a $76,000 federal grant to create an intensive training program for clean energy jobs, including weatherization. CEDO estimated a dozen people could be trained in about 18 months.

The city instead opted to replace windows at the aging Central Fire Station on South Winooski Avenue. Joe Magee, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, said the city has limited money for building maintenance and that the project helped improve firefighters’ living conditions and made the station more energy-efficient.

Hanson, who runs the advocacy group Run on Climate, called the decision a missed opportunity.

“It’s an economic boon when you’re talking about investing in people who are underemployed or unemployed,” he said. “I’m frustrated that the city hasn’t leaned more into this because … the benefits that the community gets, economically and otherwise, are much greater than any costs.”

Councilor Barlow thinks the council has already invested a lot in climate work. Last year, the body agreed to assess carbon impact fees on developers of newly built or renovated large buildings that are heated with fossil fuels. Barlow’s subcommittee is working on an effort to measure thermal energy use in smaller buildings.

Like Hanson, Barlow agrees that there’s an opportunity to reduce energy use in a city of renters who live in old, drafty buildings.

“It’s some of the lowest-hanging fruit we have,” he said, “if we can figure out a way to get the work done.”

The original print version of this article was headlined “Cold Discomfort | Burlington’s goal to weatherize hundreds of apartments is imperiled by a lack of workers”