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by Stephanie Gutmann
Vermont is at a tipping point. Vibrant little towns like my beloved Wallingford—where one still sees mothers pushing strollers, school kids trooping home with their backpacks, and deer hunters hanging out in driveways to show off their trophies—could become frigid, exquisitely-maintained mausoleums inhabited only by one or two affluent summer people whose children have long since left.
I have just come from living in a town like that—in Northeast Iowa, of all places. In the summers I walked the streets agog at the period homes with landscaping that seemed designed to be a feature in Architectural Digest.
I admired the strategically-planted shade trees, the decks, the wrap-around front porches, the fire pits…Until I began to realize I’d never seen anybody using those immaculate Weber grills, never seen kegs on the lawn, never heard the noise of parties where the dogs run off the leash yapping with joy and the children shriek and chase one another.
There were very few energetic, cook-out loving people around because younger people, especially younger people with children had been priced out of Decorah, Iowa. The residents of those heritage-site houses were either too old to make much use of their properties or were merely using them as pied a terre, for the rare occasions they hosted the grandchildren. Still, they could afford to live in Decorah and younger people without say, the pension wealth, couldn’t.
Ultimately I left that town and convinced my husband, a life-long Iowan, to leave too because the place gave me the creeps.
And that is my nightmare vision of what could happen to Wallingford, (where I am a third generation property owner) if we allow more stultifying regulations like those hiding out like cockroaches in Act 181.
Yes, there has been an exhilarating demonstration of People Power which has managed to shave off the most egregious parts of 181 like the “road rule.”
But a tight-mouthed, grim-faced ideologue like Representative Amy Sheldon (who apparently lives to control other peoples’ lives) is not going anywhere. She will simply write a new bill with the same intents (appropriation of private property, more state control) and package the aims under new coloration.
Once again, Sheldon (who was the initial drafter of the act) and other Montpelier progressives will try to fob off a new package with warm and fuzzy verbiage: The intent of 181 was merely to “create more housing” you see, Sheldon told us, because Vermont suffers from a housing shortage.
And Vermont does have a housing shortage. But Vermont’s housing shortage does not follow from a lack of government subsidized rental housing (which Act 181 is set up to fast track) but from the hurdles in front of people who are too rich for welfare but too poor for Vermont’s taxes who want to build on and deed land to their children (thereby ameliorating the housing crisis!)
Vermont has been notorious for decades for its surreal maze of building regulations. Ask your local contractor and watch his brain start to smoke. When he can find would-be home owners with deep enough pockets to build here, the act of “compliance”(as bureaucrats like to call it) adds time to the project, which adds to his invoice. But find me a contractor who likes and respects that compliance maze. They hate it, because they are good people. Does 181 recognize any of that part of the problem? Of course not.
Why has Vermont come to imitate one of its neighbors, another place with a housing shortage, the “Moscow on the Hudson” that is New York City? The answer is that for too many decades people of a more Republican temperament (who bend toward smaller government, lower taxes, local control and fewer regulations) have abdicated the public sphere to maniacs like Senator Bernie Sanders.
Senator Sanders is an avowed communist (er…socialist, so that’s ok, right?) and too many of our representatives, his acolytes, legislators like Rep. Rebecca Balint, are on the spectrum. At the core of the communist/socialist creeds is a loathing for private property (whether its money you’ve earned or property you bought or inherited) and a belief that that property must be appropriated by the government, whether by confiscatory taxation or over regulation.
Act 181 oozes hatred of private property from its very pores. I’m not going to break down the details. Surely you’ve read about them elsewhere by now. But Governor Scott had it right when he said that 181 as originally written “would significantly expand the bureaucracy, inevitably resulting in more delays that make it more expensive to build housing now and deepen the disparity between the ‘haves and have-nots’ in our state, especially for rural Vermont, where expanded regulatory requirements will fall on the shoulders of communities with the least capacity.”
In the case of Rutland, the city I know best, the city government has used a Tier 1 designation to conveniently chuck the land use regulations which have been strangling us in order to build, for one example, Maplewood Commons, which Vermont Digger described as, “a nonprofit-developed, permanently affordable rental housing [developed] with a mix of subsidies, including federal low-income housing tax credits and private equity. Six are set aside for people exiting homelessness or at risk (with services from the Homeless Prevention Center).”
I know there are people just looking for a hand up, not a hand out who may thrive in Rutland’s new housing project but why do I have the feeling that the city fathers want to get the walking wounded who now carpet Rutland streets (with the zombie look of the hard-drug addict) into housing pronto because they have succumbed to the romantic (and widely discredited) notion that the “homeless” are homeless just because they lack a nice apartment.
Why do I have the feeling (I would be happy to be proved wrong) that Maplewood Commons will only encourage pathologies like family breakdown, single motherhood, drug addiction and alcoholism? Perhaps because, among other reasons, I did a lengthy piece about single mothers in the shelters of New York City when I was reporter at the New York Post and met young mothers who had become young single mothers precisely because (they told me) New York City had written rich incentives (like your own apartment as soon as you have a baby) into the legal code.
Pretty much everyone else is in Tier 3, which means the clamp downs on building will even become more onerous.
What do they think, that we’re all panting to sell off acreage to ski resort developers?
Is that Rep. Sheldon’s paranoid fantasy? I don’t want to live next to a ski resort either, Rep. Sheldon. Nope, what one reads on Facebook groups covering the Act is that people mainly want to build a little house for grandma so she doesn’t have to go in a nursing home or a starter home for one’s newly married children.
Why do progressives seem to hate peeling off some of one’s land for a family member? Don’t progressives favor keeping families together so, for instance, grandmas can help take care of a new baby? I guess I forgot my Marx 101. Communism hates families because families will set up their own little world where they can be independent of the state and its “programs.”
Family ties influenced my return to Vermont. My brother lives a mile away and my parents had deeded their house to me. After years away Vermont is still very lovely except that I’m getting a fresh look at Rutland (our nearest metropolis) and what I see is deeply disturbing. Rutland seems right on track to become another Portland, Oregon, a Minneapolis, Minnesota, a San Francisco—all beautifully situated cities that have been ravaged by “progressive policies.”
There still time to save cities like Rutland, but not a lot.
Everyone should be celebrating the gains of the 2024 election. According to Vermontpublic.org, the GOP picked up 17 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate — a bigger net gain than by any party in Vermont in at least three decades. Democrats and Progressives will retain a majority in both chambers, but will no longer hold a veto-proof supermajority.”
You may be mad at Republicans right now, you may want to punish, say, President Trump for various reasons (I don’t), but put that aside. The devil is in the details. The stuff that impacts your life is mostly drafted at the city and state level. We would have been in much worse shape if the Dems hadn’t lost that super majority.
Act 181 does nothing significant to ameliorate the housing shortage—and the flight of young families that comes with it. In fact it will just accelerate the mausoleum syndrome in which cities lose the multi-generational aspect that makes them vibrant and appealing.
Your local GOP people get that. Fall is coming and with it many elections. Vote GOP!
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Categories: Commentary
Very nice article with forethought and experience. Hopefully this will get implanted in the minds of voters. People like Representative Amy Shelton are a total disaster with a sick attitude of control and the feeling of power that goes along with it. Don’t need her on this planet to be here along with her ilk. Wonder where she got her anti-human attitude Thanks for the time writing your piece and totally agree.
Oh my a lovely read, spot on. Sadly they live in a fantasy world, the Marxist utopia….
Spot on, and very well written.
Thank you so much, Tom and Neil!
Yup, they live in a parallel universe where boys can get pregnant and windmills can cover base load.
You could check out my substack, Title TK, (which means “title to come”) or find it by searching on “masha184.substack.com.”
I have a substack in there titled “The Dream Palace of the Democrats”
Thank you for reading!
Wonderful Stephanie. As a Vermonter of 72 years I certainly agree.
Fantastic article! Please run for office, or, barring that, become a regular VDC contributor. After checking out your Substack and reading the free post on the Olympics, I had to become a subscriber.
Well, I am the chairman of the Wallingford GOP chapter! and as far as contributing more to VDC, I hope to…
Spot on, thank you! My parents came to VT with myself and my sisters in tow back in 1956 when I was a toddler. We were very poor, but my parents loved the countryside of our adopted state, and did all they could to fit in and be good neighbors. We lived in an old, drafty farmhouse, wandered all over the pastures around us, and developed a strong love of old Vermont. We got our milk from the farm at the bottom of the hill, sugared with the farmer who owned the old house we rented, and learned to love the rhythm of the seasons. Like I said, we were poor, but as kids, we didn’t know it for years. The homes up on the common, and the farms all around us were unmistakably genuine farmhouses, built with what was available, and with as much care as could be given at the time. I loved them even then, and they are treasures. The next best thing are homes built by their owners own hands, or alternative builds such as strawbale or log homes -homes with character. The POSTED signs seemed to be rare, and people mostly respected each others property. People waved when you passed on the road. It didn’t feel fake or forced; smiles were genuine, and community just happened over Town Meetings, church potlucks and Fourth of July parades and BBQs.
Contrast that with today. We’re told by the legislature that we suffer a “housing shortage”, which I find questionable. Our good neighbors next door in NH are being told the same thing. Yet it seems that the housing offered is high-density, crassly ugly, and not affordable, nor conducive to friendly and safe community in any real sense. It’s frankly depressing. The “middle tier affordability” developments going up all over my beloved state have their houses modeled many times on the architects idea of Old VT Farmhouse, but miss the mark so badly as to simultaneously laughable and again, depressingly sterile. There is something about developments that just is off-putting in the extreme to someone used to living where I have. They are just so fake and flat, polished and unreal.
Through it all point, our government is lying to us, and we need to stop believing them every time they open their mouths. If, for example, you hear someone say VT needs “resilience”, or “we need to do _____ “by 2030” (looking at you, candidate for governor Aly Richards), “sustainability”, and such like, they are outing themselves as paid-for communist shills for the hoped-for New World Order of the WEF crowd. This group of people don’t value this land, it’s history, or it’s people. Neither do they value the land itself, yet they talk a good game. And currently, our statehouse has become an incubator for these snakes.
I hope that other Vermonters can either hold onto or catch the vision of what VT has been and still can be in time to throw off this dark period of overreach and control. We need to say NO – strongly, if necessary – to any more laws, mandates and taxes. Vermont is suffocating, and it’s intentional. Again, candidates like Richards who say on the air that we need more housing to keep or bring on more taxpayers need to be put soundly in their place on this point. SHE and her ilk want this, but I certainly do not! It means that they have no interest in dialing back anything, and intend to keep increasing the theft called taxation. Oh HELL NO to all of them!
Excellent piece of writing. There is no question that Vermont is in a death spiral caused by progressive leadership. This is the moment that the real Vermonters need to go to the polls in November and throw them all out. Staying home, too busy, forgetting to vote or just believing it won’t make any difference is not the answer, its the problem. We need to all take responsibility for this problem.
“This is the moment that the real Vermonters need to go to the polls in November and throw them all out. Staying home, too busy, forgetting to vote or just believing it won’t make any difference is not the answer, its the problem. We need to all take responsibility for this problem.”
You said it. And we all have to become nags to our friends and our family about the importance of voting this November.
For instance, I see there may be a referendum on the ballot (whoever even reads that far down the page on their ballot, right?) that would enshrine people with “gender identity” issues (read, trans people) in the Vermont constitution as a “protected category.”
I’m not sure what that means in nuts and bolts terms, but I do know that in other states these specially protective laws become a bonanza for lawyers and another punitive cost-of-doing-business for business owners. Just look at the havoc caused when “trans females” said it was their right to compete in womens’ sports
Hi Stephanie,
I have some familiarity with the Maplewood Commons project and with the demand for housing in Rutland City. I’m puzzled by some of the conclusions you draw here.
I don’t mean to suggest that the issues you identify don’t exist (they do) or that Maplewood Commons alone stands to solve those issues, but can you explain further: what specifically do you believe that project will do to make the problems you identify worse?
I was responding to the language explaining the bill and this idea that more government subsidized housing is a smart or moral way to “respond to Vermont’s housing crisis.”
Piling on more government subsidized housing in Rutland, which is already saturated with government programs, is not moral or smart because the all-too-available programs for indigents are apparently acting as a magnet for people who are not willing or able to work.
I’m not saying that everyone who avails themselves of propped up, below-market-rate housing is trying to live on the dole. Sometimes people do just need a (preferably temporary) “hand up.” But Rutland is now full of drug addicts who were apparently drawn to the city because word must go around that the “living is easy.” Now, the legions of drug addicts and the crime that inevitably accompanies them are driving hard-working taxpayers out of the city. And thus does a city hollow out.
It is not moral to force low income working class and middle income people to support people who are unwilling to work. We have enough problems, thank you very much.
I was also using Maplewood Commons and all this Tier 1 versus Tier 3 business as an illustration of the way Lib/Dem/Socialists in government respond to problems.
They seem to know only one way: Throw money. You have a problem? Simple, you create a new class of bureaucrats administering a new government program. There’s a reason the Dems are called the party of tax and spend.
The tragedy is that when governments get too big, the choice becomes “beat ’em or join ’em.” In other words, join the bureaucrats, get a government job or get taxed out of existence. And thus does that noble American tradition of a thriving private sector driven by individual initiative die a little more.
We Republicans are a **little** more creative than the tax and spenders. Generally, when we see a problem we don’t look for ways to throw more of other peoples’ money at the problem; we look for **disincentives and perverse incentives in the system that prevent, say, new housing from getting built.** That means putting the existing laws up on a lift so we can look for faulty parts.
In Vermont’s case, new housing is not getting built **by the people themselves who need it when they need it** because of the Act 250 clown show, that mass of regulatory roadblocks which make compliance too expensive for low and middle income people to build what they need when they need it.
It’s terrific that People Power has forced some retractions on Act 181. Now Act 250 needs to go into the shop so we can fix it.