CVOEO's free Renters Workshops provide participants the skills, materials, and confidence necessary to find and maintain stable housing. Workshops are offered as 60-90 minute webinars and as fully self-paced, online classes, and can be taken in any order - take one class or the full series!
Participants who complete all three workshops (Tenant Skills, Finding Housing, and Sustaining the Rent) and attend a one-on-one financial coaching session receive a Preferred Renter Certificate. This certificate shows a landlord that the applicant or current tenant is invested in being a successful renter, knowledgeable about resources, and connected to service providers, such as a financial coach.
Experienced teaching teams from CVOEO’s Vermont Tenants and Financial Futures programs collaborate to offer the following free workshops and coaching experiences. Select the workshop blocks below to register for each session.
If you have questions, need help registering, or would like to schedule an interpreted workshop, please email classcoord@cvoeo.org or call 802-660-3455, ext. 205.
CVOEO staff are available to answer questions and provide follow-up coaching on tenant issues via our Tenant Hotline at 802-864-0099.
View video recordings of the Tenant Skills and Finding Housing workshops in Arabic, English, French, Nepali, Spanish, and Swahili.
Sustaining the Rent focuses on strategies to financially prepare for renting, including determining what "affordable" rent would be and comparing costs of apartments, and understanding how credit affects the ability to pay rent, as well as developing the knowledge and skills needed to track spending, build a budget, and find resources to help meet housing and basic needs.
Please join the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) and the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO) for the next Chittenden County Regional Housing Convening on Thursday, April 18th at 5:30pm at Hula (50 Lakeside Ave., Burlington)!
Emily Heymann, Senior Planner of Williston, will be sharing tools for effective community engagement in municipal decisions, and strategies for addressing citizen concerns. This workshop is open to everyone and will be recorded. Register in advance.
Monthly drop-in conversations for Housing Committee members to share resources, successes, and challenges. This month's conversation will focus on WORKSHOPS & RESOURCES housing committees would like to see in the new year.
This fully online, self-paced version of Finding Housing will help you to understand “affordable housing”, approach a housing search, establish a tenant-landlord relationship, work through barriers, navigate fair housing rights, develop application materials, organize a housing search, and negotiate a lease. *Click on the "Finding Housing On Demand" text above to begin the workshop.*
Sustaining the Rent focuses on strategies to financially prepare for renting, including determining what "affordable" rent would be and comparing costs of apartments, and understanding how credit affects the ability to pay rent, as well as developing the knowledge and skills needed to track spending, build a budget, and find resources to help meet housing and basic needs. *Click on the "Sustaining the Rent On Demand" text above to begin the workshop.*
Tenant Skills includes the fundamentals of tenant rights & responsibilities, leases, security deposits, repairs, health code violations, terminations, evictions, fair housing and disability law.
This fully online, self-paced version of Tenant Skills includes the fundamentals of tenant rights & responsibilities, leases, security deposits, repairs, health code violations, terminations, evictions, fair housing and disability law. *Click on the "Tenant Skills On Demand" text above to begin the workshop.*
Finding Housing focuses on strategies for overcoming barriers to finding housing (such as a past eviction, no landlord references or a criminal record), understanding the landlord's perspective and how to build a positive tenant-landlord relationship, and skills for conducting an organized housing search, including where to look.