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by Don Keelan
A number of nonprofit agencies (and a for-profit company) develop a significant amount of affordable housing in the northwest and southwestern parts of Vermont. They are long-established, with outstanding track records for producing housing, but at what cost?
On July 29, 2024, in Burlington, there was a celebration for the opening of a 16-unit housing project. The units are available for families who are presently living in motels or other subsidized shelters. The new units are not meant to be permanent homes but transitional until the families can obtain income and employment stability, allowing them to have a more permanent settlement.
The reporting of WCAX-TV, the Burlington Free Press, and Vermont Biz did not highlight the cost per unit for the Main Street Family Housing multi-family apartments: $525,000.
It was reported that the project was financed with eight sources totaling $8,400,000: a mix of tax credits, State and Federal grant funds, donors to the nonprofit (COTS), a bank loan, and funds from the local electric company.
This is a “high-density project” on a small parcel of land with existing utilities outside its doors. Put another way, the project’s wastewater, potable water, electricity, internet, and storm drainage are all on-site and do not have to be built from far away. So why is there a half-million dollar plus cost per unit?
According to an executive of COTS who told this writer about it, it was a complex site, and even more complex and costly was navigating the approval process and financing.
The extraordinarily high cost per unit is not restricted to northwestern Vermont. In Arlington, as recently reported in the Bennington Banner, the 25 units of senior housing built by the Shires Housing nonprofit some twenty-plus years ago are now requiring renovations and upgrades that will cost $160,000 per unit, funded by a $4 million grant from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.
Farther south, in Bennington, a private developer has taken on the herculean task of converting the circa 1913, long-abandoned Bennington High School into a mix-use project at a cost forecasted to be $49 million.
The Benn-Hi project will contain 39 housing units (17 affordable and 22 at market rates), a senior center, a new home for the County’s Meals of Wheels operation, a daycare, and a gym for kids. If converting this century-old historic building was complicated enough, putting 30 layers of project financing in place must have been even more so.
According to a discussion with an executive of the Benn Hi developer, the housing units are estimated to cost just over $500,000 per unit.
To re-emphasize the complex nature of this site, last fall, the cost was reported on the Town’s website at $29,833,287 and earlier this year at $41,227,071. As of late July, the price is forecasted to be $49 million, partially attributed to environmental issues, asbestos and soil contamination.
Speaking with executives of several of the organizations providing affordable housing, one cannot deny their enthusiastic commitment to helping folks in need. Also noted was a commitment to making a positive statement concerning the neighborhoods where their projects are located.
However, what is missing here is at what cost and whether funds will be available to meet the goal of adding thousands of housing units for those seeking affordable and workforce housing. I sincerely doubt it when, in 2024, it will cost over $500,000 per unit.
All involved need to step back and ask the difficult question: does the course we are on make any sense? To build two units, 1,000 square feet each, of affordable housing over $1 million does not make sense and borders on the unfeasible.
One way to reduce costs would be to avoid building on contaminated sites and remove the cost constraints associated with historic preservation, archeological studies, and regulatory reviews that take not months but years to navigate.
If the State and other government/nonprofit agencies are to spend public funds on housing, they should get a hold of their sanity and look to develop five or six units for $1 million, not two. If they cannot do so, it may be time to reevaluate. Unless, of course, they believe the funding is limitless.
The author is a U.S. Marine (retired), CPA, and columnist living in Arlington, VT.
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Categories: Commentary
there was a time when 250,000.00 dollars would have paid for a half acre of land, all construction costs and a sixty foot long mobile home with three bedrooms//// now we have the taxpayers with public private funds paying the bill and the owner still does not own the land////
I know a colleague who was on the BOD of Shires Housing. He said it is a ponzi scheme.
The org does not cover the costs of the existing apartments that are rented out. The only way they stay in business is from the development fees of the new projects.
Shires Housing singlehandedly DESTROYED Bennington. The tourism died. The businesses all along Main Street closed up & ditched the town. The old old-money residents of beautiful, historic Old Bennington listed their homes & “got out of Dodge”. Shires Housing has a PERMANENT location in Bennington – and builds unending scores of “affordable” (i.e.: low income) housing ALL over Bennington County & its ripple effects have naturally been crime, poverty, & LOTS of drugs.
Shires Housing NOW has its sights set on ruining Manchester in the North Shire – and of course many there are far too fearful to fight their phony P.C. bologna!
Sorry, but the present-day crazy-azz LGBTQWHATEVER parades replete with mostly naked men grandstanding like psycho demonic clowns along the main drag (so to speak), painting “BLM” across public roadways, police being forced to use battering rams to run down drug dealers on a routine basis & the stupid select board members of the BLM-era refusing to recite The Pledge of Allegiance before public meetings because it “offended” certain people doesn’t create a hometown feel, but it sure destroys one.
Look at the cost of any of the subsidized housing projects state wide. They all are several hundreds of thousands per unit. There is nothing affordable or sustainable about this approach . True affordable housing is something a 1st time home buyer could afford to purchase.
We could have home ownership from $150k to $250k across our state, it won’t happen because there is a major grifting scheme of “affordable housing” solutions in Vermont where the state rents one-bedroom hotels for $60k per year, where they build one-bedroom studios for $350,k and affordable housing at $524 per square foot when luxury slope side condos were done at $434 per square foot.
We are being robbed blind and kept poor.
Now do you understand?
You will own nothing and be happy.
It’s their words, this is what it means on the ground. NO HOME FOR YOU!
Rent from us you peasant.
Absolutely one of the best critiques of this “affordable” housing boondoggle. “Affordable housing” has come to mean government housing. It began in the Bronx in the ‘50s; they called them “projects.” Architecturally, we’re doing better; economically and socially, there’s been little progress. Don Keelan suggests a number of “fixes” that would bring down the cost of new home construction. Those add suggestions need to be seriously considered before another nickel of taxpayer money gets wasted on needless regulations.
Simple solution. Have VT succeed from the US and print their own money and hand out as much to individuals as needed. Liberals could man the money machines, never a better way to make a Liberal happy in their own little world.
No need for succession – just follow the current law.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 1:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Once again…..the emergent requirement for “affordable” or “workforce housing i.e.: LOW-income housing — has ALL to do with housing for illegal immigrants, & “migrants” that this state keeps ordering-up from 3rd world nations, & for the perpetual homeless/drug abusers —— and has NOTHING to do with providing a hand up to long-term or born n’ raised Vermonters. NOTHING.
Further, this housing has NOTHING to do with helping hard-working and middle-income residents and EVERYTHING to do with the Obama/Biden/Harris Communist policy of “Equity” housing & Biden’s “Executive Order” 14091 H.U.D. that forces racial & socio-economic “diversity” through programs and policies which mandates zoning changes in many small towns across America & effectively destroys America’s cultural heritage forever – as all “outcomes” must conclude “equitably”.
Good luck Bennington in mixing populations of elderly senior citizens and low-income residents in your mixed-use project along Main Street! And keep us all posted on how this same type of project is going once they’re built on Martha’s Vineyard and in Chappaqua, NY! Oh wait…….they never will be, so scratch that.
One would hope that affordable housing programs might be mercifully exempt from the fraud & embezzlement that plagues other government projects — but in many cases it’s actually worse, regardless of whether the program is municipal, state or federal.
It is much worse, because it’s “Free Money”…….they treat it as free money, no accountability. We are having big city problems, big city corruption, big city crime, big city drug problems, big city school problems, big city medical problems, ……
Because we’ve adopted big city policies…..
We are throwing away billions in Vermont, it’s the key to the unaffordability problem, too many people are skimming money off of the tax payer, so we are essentially building $500 toilet seats and $200 hammers and wondering why we aren’t getting anything or getting ahead….it’s because of the grift and theft going on in this state.
When a government steals their way to prosperity it’s doom for the governed, at least when the mob ran things you got two great things from the arrangement, you got protection, and they understood business needed to make money.
Marxism is like a mob run by idiots. They don’t understand crime doesn’t prosper and they don’t understand you can’t have good employment without good companies.
The whole US has had a shortage of affordable housing in decent areas for 20+ years.
The cost of housing, owned or rented is tightly subject to the basic laws of supply and demand. There are thousands of military veterans sleeping on the streets and meanwhile the Biden/Obama/Harris administration has welcomed 14 million indigent migrants into our country who all need affordable places to live. Brilliant.