The Burlington Housing Board of Review is being asked to expand the services it offers to tenants — who comprise a majority of the Queen City’s population — and landlords. A committee of the Burlington City Council is tasked with helping determine what more the board can do, if anything.

At a Wednesday night virtual meeting of the City Council’s Community Development & Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, Burlington resident Caryn Long wondered if the Housing Board of Review can be an active part of the cleanup process in certain neighborhoods — particularly, neighborhoods in which large numbers of University of Vermont students live. “I would really like my streets to not have loads of trash and mattresses and couches, and we just go around and around with this every year,” she said. “Maybe it’s just impossible with the college campus life or something; I’m not sure.”

The purpose of the City Council committee meeting was to examine what the Housing Board of Review does. The coordinator of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition said that while the board may play a part in such cleanup efforts, it’s a small part. “I do think some of the complaints and some of the comments that folks have about the Housing Board of Review are kind of mixed up with people’s thoughts about code enforcement and how code enforcement is working these days,” Erhard Mahnke said. “We might want to just keep that separate.”

The Housing Board of Review is essentially a judicial body. It hears disputes about security deposits and appeals of code enforcement matters involving rental properties. The Burlington Tenants Union, a community group of renters, has asked for it to do more, and a City Council member wanted to know if that’s possible. “It is great that this is a low-cost legal option for tenants, but I feel like deposits aren’t the only low-cost legal option that tenants need, so I would be interested in having a conversation about what other options,” Councilor Zoraya Hightower said.

A former chair of the Housing Board of Review said he was willing to step into that conversation. “I can certainly volunteer myself as a former board member,” Ben Traverse said. “I had a lot of ideas in the five years I was on there that I didn’t feel comfortable voicing because I didn’t want to be seen as favoring one side or the other, so certainly I can volunteer myself.” With Traverse’s involvement, city officials will hold that conversation in the weeks and months to come.