[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 20002]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      TRIBUTE TO AMY BURKE WRIGHT

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to recognize 
the accomplishments of Amy Burke Wright on the occasion of her 
departure from the Lake Champlain Housing Development Corporation, 
LCHDC.
  For 22 years Amy has been working to provide affordable housing to 
low income and disabled families in Vermont, and she has done it in 
such a way as to build respect and self-esteem among those she has 
helped. Amy has been the lead developer for twenty-five housing 
developments in eleven Vermont communities. I don't know of a single 
one of those projects that fit the stereotype for ``low-income'' 
housing. More than once in attended the ground-breaking or ribbon 
cutting for one of the housing developments Amy has managed, I have 
wished I could live there. From her ground breaking work on the Thelma 
Maples and Flynn Avenue Co-ops in Burlington to the wonderful 
redevelopment of an old school at the Marshall Center in St. Albans, 
Amy has changed the face of affordable housing in Vermont. For that, I 
and the hundreds of people who have benefitted from her work, thank 
her.
  And it is not just that Amy has brought affordable housing into the 
mainstream, it is how she has done it-- with a creativity and 
determination to go where no affordable housing provider has gone 
before. If a project utilizes an innovative approach to ownership, or 
an organization forms to address affordable housing in new and exciting 
ways, more likely than not, Amy was there. She established and directed 
the first congregate housing project in Vermont, was a founding member 
of the Burlington Community Land Trust, the first non-profit in the 
state to actively promote long term affordability and community control 
of housing, and is a member of the Board of Directors of Richmond 
Housing Inc. which recently sponsored the first project in Vermont to 
provide home office space to support resident economic development. And 
these examples only scratch the surface of her work.
  During one event to celebrate the opening of yet another affordable 
housing project she had shepherded to completion, Amy gave me a wand 
for, she said, the magic I had done in bringing some federal financing 
to the project. For all that Amy has done to bring quality affordable 
housing within reach for countless Vermont families, she deserves a 
super hero cape.

                          ____________________