Bernie Sanders’ ‘Radical Ideas’ Made Burlington, VT A Success

“Everyone’s Scared!” blared a headline, quoting a top Vermont Democrat, when Bernie Sanders became the mayor of Burlington. The UPI article began:

“Self-described socialist Bernard Sanders… has invited the city’s business and political leaders to join him in creating ‘a rebirth of the human spirit.’ ” Readers could have been forgiven for concluding that some Pol Pot in Birkenstocks had just established a beachhead in Burlington, Vermont….

But now, 34 years later, as Sanders launches a campaign for the presidency, many of the radical solutions he imposed — free arts and culture for the masses, local-first economic development, wresting money from rich nonprofits, and, most shockingly, communal land for affordable housing — have become mainstays of the American municipal governance playbook.

Such policies “would be unexceptional today,” said UCLA urban planning professor Randall Crane, noting that urban policy in general has become broader and more creative in the decades that followed, as more people returned to city neighborhoods…

Early in Sanders’ tenure, his treasurer discovered $200,000 in the city’s coffers and the mayor determined to plow it into a bold initiative. Inspired by the garden cities of England, Isreali kibbutzim and Indian communes set up by the followers of Gandhi, he proposed to buy land and hold it in a communal trust for affordable housing, while the housing itself would be owned by occupants.

An opposition group, Homeowners Against the Land Trust, or HALT, labeled it a “communist scheme.” But the plan went through. In 1984, the Burlington Community Land Trust became one of the first affordable housing trusts in the world, and the very first to receive municipal funding. Today, there are over 250 such trusts in the United States — in places like Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Boston and Chapel Hill, North Carolina — most of which receive some form of government funding…

In 1988, toward the end of Sanders’ four-term tenure — long after a local Democratic leader predicted the movement that swept Sanders into office would be gone in a decade — the U.S. Conference of Mayors named Burlington the most livable city in the country with a population of under 100,00 (in a tie). Then Sanders’ director of community and economic development succeeded him in the mayor’s office and Inc. Magazine named Burlington the best city in the Northeast for a growing business.

And what about the guy who told UPI “Everyone’s scared” when the Lenin of Lake Champlain first stormed to power in 1981? That was the state’s then-Democratic Party chairman, Mark Kaplan. Today, he’s on board with a socialist in the White House.

“I actually donated to him,” said Kaplan. “I’m kind of excited about it.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.