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By Guy Page
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders was confronted by a blunt question about housing affordability during a visit Friday, January 9 to Mount Mansfield Union High School in Jericho, where a student asked how young Vermonters are supposed to afford a home amid rising property taxes and housing costs.
The question, which Sanders later recounted in a message to supporters, drew loud applause from nearly every student in the room and quickly became the focal point of the discussion. The student said the issue was one his grandmother worries about, underscoring how housing costs are affecting multiple generations.
Several students voiced concern that without major changes, they may never be able to buy a home in Vermont.
The average cost of buying a home in Jericho $552,410, which has seen a slight decrease of 0.3% over the past year. Jericho has seen a 91% increase in the cost of home sales since 2010. According to homestratosphere.com. Neighboring Underhill has a $566,000 average home sale price, according to Zillow. That figure has declined 4.5% since last year.
Sanders accurately responded that the housing crisis and high property taxes are driving young people out of the state and warned that Vermont risks losing an entire generation if affordability is not addressed.
As for solutions…..Sanders called for a more progressive tax system and a significant increase in the construction of affordable housing. In other words, Sanders said Vermont should solve the problem by increasing taxes on the income (and likely other assets) of the upper middle class and wealthy, allowing for the reduction or at least stabilization of property taxes , and building more affordable housing.
In Vermont, building ‘affordable housing’ usually looks like new, downtown multi-unit buildings comprised of small, mostly rental units costing $500,000 – $700,000 to build. Often the builders are NGOs and the funding comes directly from the government, or through government-backed loans.
What Sanders did not specifically call for is reducing the demand for property taxation by cutting spending.
Nor did Vermont’s senior senator suggest making new home construction less expensive by relaxing regulations on rural housing density, or scaling back ‘green energy’ building codes. Promoters of new affordable housing, including Gov. Phil Scott, say both measures would incentivize construction of large numbers of new, affordable.
The housing exchange was part of a broader question-and-answer session in which students raised issues ranging from artificial intelligence and tax policy to health care, education and climate change. Another student asked how Americans can better understand people with whom they disagree in an increasingly polarized political climate, prompting a discussion about finding common ground and building community.
Sanders praised the students as “smart, engaged and thoughtful,” saying their questions reflected a deep awareness of the challenges facing Vermont and the country.
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Have you seen the lead story on Vt.Digger????? cHIP funding????where they take tax money from new building OTHERWISE KNOWN AS SCHOLL BUGET MONEY!!!!!!!!! To fund their agenda 2030 projects of rental housing??????
They are calling this a once in a life time opportunity????Yeah because when people find out how screwed over they are being it will be utter chaos!
How do the teachers support this? How does the governor champion this??????????
I THOUGHT HE WAS THE FISCAL ADULT????? lol…
We are being scammed out of hard earned money to pay NGO’s. Lobbyists and capital cronies for anothe pet project.
Corruption ie rampant in this state we ar just more sophisticated than Minnesota but no different.
How many days in office does to take for tha average Vermonter to be screwed? Apparently zero, they have it all planned with their little oligarch before the session starts, who the f are they? Come on Guy, let’s have an interview on them!
Typical Demoncrat, avoid the question, give no real solution, claim we can just keep taxing the working class. I want real reform, cut taxes, control the spending, of which mind you, government makes no money, they spend it only. Eliminate fraud and abuse, get rid of illegals, right the ship. If this cannot be achieved, then why? Tell me Bernie, you leftist, socialist, communist, garbage human being. It’s really not that hard.
Sanders, yeah had nothing to do with losing 20 million homes in two years. Palisades is a huge housing crisis, right? Think about this, we lost all the homes in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts in two years! ++++
That’s how many homes were LOST to ILLEGAL immigration! They didn’t burn, but they might have well as burned, because two people can’t occupy the same space.
We lost all the funding to support the illegal to the tune of billions and now perhaps trillions of dollars scammed by people who vote and think like Bernie, who think like the epic loser Carl Marx.
And who do Carl Marx and Saul Alinsky follow????? An even bigger epic loser.
We need to be wiser than snakes and more innocent than doves.
Remember when Bush enacted the idea of supporting faith-based organizations? Many of us were calling out, it’s a bad, bad idea. Well now we know their true plan, they were used to bring in illegal immigrants by the millions and bring them to all parts of the United States. Just like the Vermont grift mill, many, were making serious bank by keeping people poor and breaking laws. It’s a rats nest of corruption of the tax dollar, surely.
They don’t want us in homes. They want us in “planned developments”.
Tell those students they can buy a very nice 3 rm 2 bath , 2 car garage with pool in Port Charlotte , FL for $325,000 with $4800 per year taxes. Plenty of work available.
Bernie should have asked the students if they know how to build a house and 4800.00 taxes per year is not a good deal.