by Don Keelan
Leaders of the Administration, Legislature, housing agencies, and the media provide all sorts of reasons why so little housing is being developed in Vermont. The reasons range from high interest rates and construction costs to zoning barriers and a lack of construction trade personnel. They still do not recognize the elephant in the room: the unspoken reason.
The elephant is encapsulated by what is taking place in Westford: residents are “worried it would fuel more development, impacting the rural nature of the small community…they worry it would destroy the town common…(one individual) is worried about undesirable development and congestion in and around the common.”
Some background. The quotes were documented by Auditi Guha, a reporter for VTDigger, in her November 29, 2023 piece on the wastewater bond vote in the small Vermont community of Westford.
Westford is like other Vermont towns and villages. It has about 2,000 residents, a town green, and no municipal wastewater system. The town’s wastewater goes into the ground via traditional septic systems. However, the latter was about to be changed, or that is what the town leaders thought.
After nearly 16 years of planning with engineering accomplished and paid for, Westford held a vote earlier in November, according to Guha. The substance of the vote was a no-brainer. Will the voters of Westford agree to add $400,000 from a bond commitment to the already $4,000,000 in hand from other sources to commence the wastewater project?
The town leaders had to be in disbelief when the vote was tallied: fifty-two percent voted not to incur the $400K bond (the vote was 532 no and 488 yes.) The reason behind the negative votes was even more striking to this writer but not surprising.
The voters spoke. They do not want development to come to their town. It does not matter to them that there is no wastewater treatment that would bring reliable service to the center of the town, serving homes, businesses, and municipal buildings. It would bring growth, and that will bring change. We all know that most Vermont towns and villages do not like change of any type.
If housing costs and interest rates were ½ of what they are today and a labor force was available, multi-family housing (which is what is needed) would never see an ounce of concrete poured in Vermont’s towns and villages.
What is needed throughout Vermont is a change of attitude and perspective. If each village and town were to commit to allowing development within its confines of 25 housing units, Vermont could have over 6,000 housing units.
The units developed could be restricted to first-time home buyers and local senior residents who might want to downsize and continue to reside in their village or town. The housing could also be restricted to families who work for local government and employers. The point is that there is housing available.
In a recent unscientific survey I conducted in southwestern Vermont, I discovered that most, if not all, of organization employees located within Bennington County (a national retailer, a prominent country club, an international manufacturing company) did not live within the town their employer was located; instead, many live across the state line in New York.
Two conclusions as to why: little or no housing available and out-of-reach pricing. Contrast that to what I witnessed forty years ago: many employees lived in the town where they were employed. Is there any wonder why we have and will continue to require a paid rescue, fire, and town government staff? The volunteers don’t live here anymore.
I would love to meet the fine citizens of Westford who are quoted as to why they voted no for the wastewater plant. They need to be made aware that change is coming to Vermont.
The author is a U.S. Marine (retired), CPA, and columnist living in Arlington, VT.
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Categories: Commentary
I was always told it was the permit costs that were cost prohibitive for building in Vermont..?. Well then there’s the extra tax on everything.
As the Zoning Admin for Clarendon, I can tell you that our zoning costs are minimal. In most cases $50.00 + .02/sqft. Now if you’re project triggers Act 250, all bets are off. Our rates won’t change, but complying with Vermont requirements is another story.
It’s funny how we can mandate bike paths, have grant money up the wazoo for those, but when it comes to building homes for average people, suddenly we can’t do it.
Suddenly it can’t be done, a million reasons, but meanwhile nice second homes get built on a regular basis. Affordable housing projects in Chittenden County bloom like dandelions on your lawn, all paid for by the taxpayer, subsidized by the taxpayer and renters subsidized by the taxpayer.
See people can charge 2x the amount to build the building and 2x the amount of market rent……because the taxpayer is footing the bill! It’s a money-making machine beyond description. Then the bonds, the loans are given out at 1-2% interest… and sometimes completely forgiven…and who pays for that? The Tax Payer.
Vermont Affordable housing…..you will own nothing and be happy, soviet housing brought to Burlington ala Bernie Sanders from is soviet visits of Russia are the biggest scam in our state.
If people look under the hood of Montpelier, they’ll find a rather sinister network of grifters extraordinaire, they are the first cousins, half-brothers of communism.
Yes ……. the ever increasing taxes; real estate and other, that price average people out of home ownership eligibility in Vermont.
How does ALL this housing desire fit with the pronouncement of Vermont’s Legislative Majority to conserve 50% of Vermont’s Land by 2050?
In our town we don’t need a single extra house. We have 55% vacancy. These properties are all owned by non residents that come here a few weeks a year. They are taxed at a lower rate than residents. They are responsible for the bulk of the crime in the Township. They use the bulk of fire & emergency services. And most of the properties are not being properly maintained. Tax these jackwagons at the same rate residents pay then maybe they’ll sell and free up the housing for good people who need it!
Those non residents do indeed pay full freight on their taxes they do not get a homestead rate. That is one of the reasons we sold our single family rentals. The other reason, in order to make a reasonable return on the investment you need to rent the house at 1% of it’s assessment. With that said a modest 250,000 house would require a 2500.00 a month rent. There’s a third reasons we gave up renting, piss poor renters.
YOu aren’t connected to the grifters train. In Burlington, the rent would be subsidized by the taxpayers, charge whatever you want, renter doesn’t pay the tab….
inorder to pay $2500 per month comfortably, one would need to earn 7500 per month or $90,000 per year. The average income in vermont is 35k each so perhaps $70k per family or $1950 for rent.
If the property didn’t have a 2% tax bill you’d be better off. $5,000 a year in taxes doesn’t leave much for profits.
…”piss poor renters”, and state and local governments that do nothing to help you with that situation, such as allowing for timely eviction for cause. If you have a multi-unit property, a problem tenant is also a problem to their decent and honest neighbors.
Your comment makes NO sense. How can someone who only comes to their vacation house “a few weeks a year” be responsible for the “bulk of the crime” and use the “bulk of fire and emergency services”? The way I see it, second homeowners pay full freight and use VERY little of what they’re paying for. They don’t have kids in the schools. And they get NO homestead exemption!!
Yes ……. and how about the multitude of Vermont “Non-Profits” who own many properties, manage them poorly, survive off of grants, pay lower taxes and occupy their buildings with those who are dependent on rent subsidies?
The problem with socialistic systems is you eventually run out the working people’s tax monies and the fake printed Monopoly Money from D.C.
Mr. Keelan and others have still not figured out that the “critical” housing “shortage” bandied about in Vermont is yet another leftist, Communist ruse to force the construction of high-density housing or “balanced housing” as per the Obama/Biden regimes wherein high-density, affordable housing (i.e.: low income) is to be integrated into all the formerly rural and suburban locales of this state to force “diversity” & end “racist” housing.
Not unlike virtually all progressive & socialist politician’s plans slated for VT, this particular program is being camouflaged as a nicety to help young Vermonters purchase an entry-level home in order to make it sound palatable to the general population. Instead, zoning changes in many of Vermont’s small towns are RIGHT NOW in the process of being altered in order to accommodate multi-story, high-density, low-income or mixed-income dwellings.
Amidst this imagined and highly publicized housing “crisis” that VT has been promoting, the state legislators are somehow nonetheless focusing much of their efforts not in fighting our rising crime levels or in ending the lucrative & deadly drug trade, but in securing the emigration of over 500 more “migrants” (for the year 2024 alone) from countries such as Afghanistan, Africa, Syria, etc. – in order to combat the endless “racism” that continues to plague the state.
Again, there are currently starter homes in VT listed right on Realtor.com in the $100,000 to $200,000 price range. Teach your offspring to learn to pick up a hammer, learn a trade or stay in school, and stay off drugs and they TOO can become homeowners just as did the generations before them. There is no “housing crisis” exclusive to Vermont! Like every other state in the Union, you must buy where you can currently afford and begin to build “wealth”, such as it is.
This present push for housing & easing your town’s zoning restrictions is being crafted to house the increasing out-of-state homeless populations, unemployed & addicted individuals, and the migrants & illegal immigrants your state is welcoming with open arms.
You are being hoodwinked, courtesy of your VT elected officers.
As usual, Kathleen is spot on in her analysis. I couldn’t agree more.
As usual one can count on VDC commenters who would see a conspiracy theory in their cereal bowl to jump in braying that it’s all a plot by the communists/Obama/fill in the blank to stick you in a high rise building in town and take you off your land. No, the lack of housing in VT has many causes. There’s a great number of homes only occupied seasonally; hundreds of those in my neighborhood alone. There’s more and more short term rentals to tourists, travel nurses etc. The NIMBY syndrome is alive and well in VT; I’ve got mine but you can’t have it too. So people fight apartments, cluster housing, senior housing, multi family housing; really anything but sticking another large single family house on 10 plus acres of land. And that’s only affordable by the wealthy who move here from elsewhere for the most part. So the fault is collectively ours.
This is a FREE country. If you own a home and are compliant with your State/Town building codes, zoning bylaws, and health ordinances and those are ENFORCED by said State & Towns (which they are often NOT – Pownal, VT case-in-point) – homeowners should be able to rent or use their homes, in compliance with law, as they wish. Government overreach, intervention, and the constant meddling in every single facet of life is what is the problem in ALL lovely blue-hued states.
There is nothing “oh so different” about this generation than any of the generations that went before who managed to buy homes & raise families except that these highly entitled young people have bought into the premise, as have others here, that the government “owes” them a home, a specific wage, a free college education, & a locale to use their “illegal” drugs “safely”, amongst other things. Try instead: responsibility & accountability for a change. Maybe your beloved Bernie had much to do with that.
1.) And NO “conspiracy” theory needed: The Obama AND Biden administrations BOTH adopted: Federal Housing Mandates to: Desgregate neighborhoods and force both racial and economic Diversity! It uses HUD to force towns to alter Zoning Bylaws in order to accommodate these MANDATES. Look it up before you term it “conspiracy”.
2.) The VT State Legislature is, in 2024, emigrating over FIVE HUNDRED MORE “migrants” into the state to create yet more “diversity” necessitating the “dire need” for yet MORE “affordable” or “workforce” housing. Fact. Look that reality up as well or contact Montpelier.
Yeah, the problem is, of course, not enough government overreach & a bunch of fellow Americans from Connecticut or Massachusetts who invest in the State & add to its tourist revenue, largely obey the laws, and who pay, actually, a HIGHER property/school tax rare minus the Homestead declaration.
Broken records. Enjoy your new arrivals as they assimilate into New England & be prepared to PAY their WAY as you currently do as we write.
500 migrants, funny you don’t see that on any headlines. Meanwhile we have a housing crisis for Vermonters. These people will get a free ride while the rest of live in tents and our Subaru station wagons.
It’s just not right.
What happened in 2008? Prior to that disaster, I witnessed people borrowing way over their means to purchase new houses or borrowing all the equity in their homes to purchase RV’s, new vehicles, or put their children through college. Then, the rug got pulled out. What happened next? People, again, went right back to borrowing over their means, started the whole game over only to find themselves, yet again, having the rug pulled out.
Is real estate a real asset when you actually have mandatory costs attached to it such as taxes, utilities, insurance, mortgages, equity loans, etc.? Renters pay rent which is attached to property taxes, plus utilities, insurance, etc.. Who makes wages high enough to not be beholden to the government or a bank? Who can own a piece of land without taxes attached to it?
It’s all an illusion and 90% of it, for an individual, is blatantly unconstitutional. We live under the rules of a corporation which is now insolvent. Brace for impact.
if you look at Vermont zoning and land use regulations, you’ll find they don’t originate from Vermont or locally. A dirt bag named George Bush senior signed and agreement in the 1990’s down in Rio opening up our world to Agenda 21. Our zoning is controlled by unelected lobbyists, disguised as non-profits. They are known as VNRC and VPIRG. They have a revolving door between the administration and their lobbyists.
These sewer systems are part of their grand plan. They make a ton of money from keeping people poor in subsidized housing, these towns have to have a sewer system to build their big projects, where everything along with the renter is subsidized by the taxpayer. This is part of the you will own nothing and be happy plan, Build Back Better, that is part of the new world order, again signed in the 1990’s by a dirt bag sell out, which I’m remiss to say I voted for. Build Back Better is not a united states plan, nor a democratic slogan, you will find it in all countries across the globe.
Now why would all countries across the globe use the “democratic slogan” why would they use Joe Biden’s campaign promises?
Because they aren’t Joe Bidens…..they are Karl Scwhab’s ….. we’re all pimpin for the New World Order and we don’t even know it.
Our housing issues could be resolved in 6 months, easy, it’s all manmade problem. We could have all the homes build in 6 months…..you bring them in on sections, modular housing is solid construction.
There is plenty of local on site water and septic capacity, anyone knows it’s cheaper and better than city water and sewer any day of the week.
why kill the goose who layed the golden egg
get off your …….///buy some land and build your own house///second homes are taxed at a higher rate than homestead houses and you do not need ten acres
At a time in this country when voting has become so corrupt, that the will of the people is the last thing to expect from an election outcome, I wouldn’t be complaining that townsfolk in Vermont don’t want a metropolis for their community now or anytime down the road….I know, I moved from one to have some peace and tranquility in mine and my wife’s life here in the NEK…My next door neighbor is a good quater of a mile away and that’s a bit close…The people voted and their vote presumably got counted correctly…Don’t bite the hand that’s fed this nation well for so long and is so lacking in most of the rest of the nation today unfortunately.
No one in VT wants a metropolis here (save for those in Burlington) as it is precisely one of the draws for why they took up homestead here. The same holds true for those in ME, Montana, Colorado, etc. The point is that it is the Obama and Biden regimes, and their accompanying leftist bureaucrats who are busy enforcing these policies within all of the 50 states which they specifically created.
Martha’s Vineyard, oddly, doesn’t appear to have any such mandates being enforced. Must be pure coincidence.
it is a shame those searsburg selectboard members did not get to martha,s vineyard for a retirement///any questions///
I don’t need any more new neighbors thankyouverymuch.
Agree. Big times. And that’s why VT citizens need to be careful of what they wish for. “Workforce” Housing. Yeah. Right.
Well Kathleen, when you don’t have enough people to plow or maintain the roads, work at the grocery store, cart away your trash, respond to fires, answer your 911 calls, milk the cows or anything else because you disdain “workforce housing “, just be so glad you worship at the free market altar. Perhaps some of the increasing numbers of wealthy vacation home owners here will take a turn manning the plow truck or milking the cows! Or maybe not.
Want housing ??, curl back Vermont’s current Draconian permitting regulations, that the liberals passed to save the state, too bad they are killing it with all the other nonsense, pushing people to leave the state…………….. fools in charge.
My new neighbors overpaid by $200k for their new residence, they just had to have it
I guess, they both work from home, so I never see them…………. outstanding !!
The Free Market in a Capitalist Society governs Real Estate Property Values.
NOT Government.
over payment// this will create a higher value on your house so you can pay higher property taxes///do you feel rich/// this is called free market capitalist society/// when the town ups the value of your house and you have done no improvement///where did new value come from//ops must be my neighbors buying habits
It’s not 1968 or ’75 anymore.
It never will be again. Oil, Stamps, Food, Clothing, Autos ALL increase in price.
Real Estate has generally traditionally increased in value.
This occurs in VT. It occurs in NY. It occurs in ME. It occurs in Wyoming.
Nothing has occurred here that is peculiar to: Vermont. Nada.
It is nobody’s “fault” & nobody’s “demographic” that determines it over the decades.
Appreciation has to do with basic economics, not your town’s “opinion” or “buying habits”.
If you genuinely want to depress the price of your home though, place it on the market for what it would have sold for in 1975 or so.
I see lots of complaining about the “high value” of one’s most important investment, but I see no one doing ANYTHING about it.
Throw your home on the open market for the price you THINK it ought to be worth.
Sold! Congrats! You’ll sell it at a FRACTION of what it is actually worth.
It’s bizarre that some wish their homes were worth “less”. Truly bizarre.
But not to worry: The current Commie lawbreakers will soon have your dreams coming true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well put, Kathleen. I’m old enough to remember when the housing market was in the toilet, and the state was PAYING people to move here.
You nailed it, Kathleen. Even the Community suddenly embrace free market theory when it comes time to sell their own home!!
you might want to check and find out the names of the people whom are buying federal state tax free bonds//large amount of money is laundered thru these money markets///bonding////bonding///bonding///
ops i forgot low income housing units require a lot of bonding backed by the taxpayer///the person that owns the structure gets all the tax injected value///
Well, VTIndependent – there are vacation homes and rentals in all 50 states. The concept of such are not peculiar to Vermont whatsoever. And since this state has, presumably, been having roads cleared, fire fighters responding to fires, and emergency calls being attended to by police since the state’s inception, why should these services be in danger of discontinuation at this point?
In downstate NY, firefighters in most (very densely populated, btw) L.I. towns are still volunteers, and police, medics, EMT’s routinely travel from their homes in N.J., CT, L.I. and even upstate NY to their jobs in NYC for decades. My own husband travelled for years to Nassau County, L.I. from Greene County, NY (take a gander at a map) for his job as a photojournalist for a major metro newspaper.
In VT, we’re supposed to buy into the notion that people who work in Manchester, VT cannot POSSIBLY manage to commute from Arlington or Shaftsbury because they can’t “afford” to live in the precise town in which they are employed??
Waa……please…..nope. Not buying it – and not even renting it.
You shall be sorry when you see what this high-density, “affordable housing nets you. Enjoy.
k. j. g. you say you support///free market capitalist society///you also support government state town building codes zoning bylaws health ordinances///that are compliance with the law///is not the government taking your property rights/// we cannot have a dual conflict of the mind/// many towns have no zoning and have fewer government employees and lower taxes
Good for the people of Westford! They want their town to stay their town. Be very skeptical of all these politicians saying we need more affordable housing. Housing prices in Vermont are lower than in most northeastern states. So there may be other motivations involved.
A quick check of listing for lots in Vermont showed over 600 lots on the market today. The majority of them are suitable for subdivision. What is needed is first of all, the state to ease the regulations that make it so difficult to develop property here. Unfortunately, our progressive legislature seems unwilling to consider such measures. Second, developers willing to make the investment are needed. Until the first item is dealt with good luck with that. (As a zoning officer, I have been working with a business wanting to move their facilities into our town. We signed off on everything at least six months ago, but they are still waiting for Vermont to sign off.) Last but certainly not least, we need to develop our skilled labor workforce. I am fortunate, as a lifetime of working in the trades has given me the knowledge and experience to tackle most jobs. But I talk to people almost daily seeking and not able to find plumbers, carpenters, electricians etc.