We know.....capitalism in a tourist state etc etc.

There's things we could do and adapt but when it comes down to it even Vermonters who claim their families have been here for generations and being pushed out are part of the problem. By not supporting anything that could help...

Now when It comes to low income families just wanting food and a place their family can shelter that's a real issue. But even natives only care about the image of their town and not much for the poor families actually suffering.

Something has to be done but I think we're still very divielded on what that should be.

Vermont was gentrified to begin with.

All of these ideas are pretty bat-shit but number 2 is the most ridiculous. This man just discovered the solution to our polarized times: cancel culture!

Tribalism will make things better...

Perhaps you need to look into the definition of Gentrification and ask yourself to which poor, urban areas of Vermont you are seeing the wealthy move.

How about get an education and find a better job

There's always one of you.

I can only recommend what worked for me. Your much more likely to be able to improve your situation by putting the work in on your own life than holding out for some fabulous legislative solution that likely will never happen.

Meanwhile in another post you trash the education system.

College takes money and jobs don't pay.

Your simple troll comment is lacking the reality of the situation completely.

Lol I graduated with over 100k in student loans, no one paid my way. My first job didn’t pay much but I didn’t quit and the second one paid more and the third one more than that, ect. If you’re not willing to invest time and effort into your future you’ll just stay here, arguing with me in the comments :)

A society that only rewards MBAs, software engineers, and investment bankers can’t exist. Your “solution” fails to acknowledge we’re all dependent on the “uneducated” and “bad” jobs you’re implicitly shitting on and expecting everyone to wave a magic wand and free themselves from. Who’s picking up your trash in your myopic utopia?

How old are you? And your unoriginal right wing trolling is tired. Yawwwn.

But seriously how old are you? it will put your experience in context.

So you have a degree paid off your debt and lived the American dream yet you're here on reddit making anti Trans jokes?

Native Vermonters are getting priced out of the state; this is a fact. Native Vermonters are just not on the same playing field as new Vermonters. There are incentives for New Vermonters to move here and work remote, the housing market is priced way out of bounds for nearly any family to live here. The focus of tourism and bringing in outside money has been to the detriment of the local economy and I am glad OP is at least writing about it, and suggesting things even if said things are dog shit.

Perhaps the real solution is to create equity - every remote worker that moves here and receives the benefit should see a tax hike of 1% on their income and property taxes for a min of 5 years. That money should be paid to the Natives or be a benefit to the natives that are having issues of housing security.

Now before anyone calls me racist or xenophobic - my family has real roots here! Not just white anglo roots either. While a good amount of my family is white and culturally french, you cannot ignore the fact that my father's maternal family were descendants of indigenous people. We have just as much rights to here as anyone else, but it would be heart breaking to see yet another descendant of indigenous people being pushed away from their home land wouldn't it? Frankly, that part of my family history is not the reason I champion for the native Vermonter to receive equity - but I ask this because the very culture and heritage of Vermont is at stake. Made in Vermont doesn't mean shit without us, we are Vermont - the good, the bad and even the ugly. Shit our statesman was a redneck who got drunk and rounded up his extended family to publicly whip a judge for invalidating his land grants - that is the very spirit of Vermont in a nutshell.

While most of us have not been welcoming of "flatlanders", we simply need to detox from their money and figure out a better solution for our economy that does NOT involve tourism and affords quality exports made from resources we have here.

Idk. Can chime in on that. Rural Orange County has been heavily gentrified.

I don't have an education. What you making? I am pulling $80k.

The poor, working class urban neighborhoods of rural Orange County?

Have a nice day!!!

You too! And maybe go get some more of that good old schooln!

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Idk I bitch a lot about transplants ruining the Vermont I love. In my mind it’s not a problem on the individual level as it is we are watching a pretty rapid change of the industries and values that used to be what being from Vermont was all about, and it’s easy to blame the voter base change, as well as the amount of not native Vermonters running for office. So I get your sentiment but idk, I think this post is a little bit hyperbole.

1. Labor strikes. Not going to happen.

2 refusal of services. Go for it if you want to. My transplant customers are great, and I see bringing them onto my farm and engaging in conversations a lot more effective at getting them to understand the culture of Vermont than it would be to refuse them as clients.

3. State electoral college. Eh. No. That’s a little absurd. We get to vote on town and county levels for all sorts of important stuff. Go to town meeting day, get involved, run for something!

4. This is the only one I’ll agree with you on. I would love, love, to see a residency requirement for a certain period of time. I think 10 years is extreme, but I’m not a big fan of the amount of people that move here and immediately run for office.

The end of your post is a little hard to completely understand. You’re not drumming up a revolution, and nobodies trying to have this removed, they’ll just downvote it to hell.

What if, and I'm just spitballing here, the economic disparity that puts Vermonters at a disadvantage isn't the fault of those dreaded outsiders but our own decisions for generations?

Or is it just easier to blame others for your disadvantage?

Out of staters moving here are not displacing native Vermonters. You can trivially debunk this by looking at Vermont's population in the census. From July 2021 to July 2022, Vermont's population increased by less than 100 people. Even the pandemic's migration that VTDigger called an "explosion" (in my opinion, irresponsibly so) was only a .7% population increase. That is absolutely tiny. Before that, we were seeing a net migration out of the state.

Everyone has a story about the house their buddy wanted to buy but some out of stater bought it in all cash sight unseen. Those are investments or vacation homes, not people moving here. It is exceedingly rare for regular families to buy houses in cash sight-unseen. Meanwhile, investors are buying ~25% of all SFH on the market. This is an international phenomenon, affecting people from huge cities like London and Vancouver to our tiny state. As wealth inequality reaches increasingly unsustainable levels, the wealthy, from individual landlords to large investment firms, are looking for more places to deploy their ever-increasing capital, and they are moving more and more of their money into buying property, making housing increasingly unaffordable for regular people.

Rich people, most of which are from out of state, are buying up the entire world's housing, most of which is also out of state. Trying to understand the problem as in-state vs out of state only obscures the reality that we are an inconsequential backwater. Our housing is being devoured by forces way bigger than "flatlanders" with remote jobs.

Checking in from Caledonia and Essex counties where my once isolated hunting camp is now located smack dab in the middle of two major developments. (The 10 acre sub division for mcmansion type of development, not the kind we need)

They'll yell that from the rooftops and then, with no sense of irony at all, complain about not being able to hire any help...

I've been showing this sub data on similar Vermont population topics for a while now and nobody ever believes it. They'd rather run with their narrative.

But gentrification is a change to an existing urban area.

Same. It's so fucking depressing to see the ruling class trick us all by drawing imaginary lines on maps. We fall for it every fucking time. Normal people start squabbling over who was born on which side of what line, and all while the wealthy exercise perfect class solidarity by pooling resources to buy up our shit and charging us rent to use it.

Sure. So rural areas just don't matter? It's the same process but you got us with semantics. Be proud.

> Does your local official from out of town govern without a care for their constitutes?

Better answer: Run against them. And when you have to take a controversial vote, don't bitch when you can't get a load of firewood delivered.

There is a difference between using words correctly and semantics.

Hate to tell ya bud, the entire united states is complaining about the housing market being out if range of all but the wealthy.

Vermont is the only state in the union to maintain the same economy throughout the pandemic. 6.24% combined state and local sales tax isn’t bad either. If you are viewing it through the lens of NH, it seems bad, but it’s among the lowest in the US. Something like only 4 other states are lower. Income tax is smack dab in the middle of all states. VT population change from 2020 to today is…. wait for it… 0%.

You want to strike. Have at it. You’ll be striking against capitalism. Good luck! Likewise have at refusing services to government contracts. VT Law alumni can’t wait.

Electoral College… 1/2 of Vermonters don’t get off their ass to vote, so they’ll probably fully support abdicating blame to others.

By all means, point out which state representatives were anywhere near the two year residency requirement.

Here’s a crazy thought: if you don’t like what some elected official is getting up to, dig into the municipal charter for the appropriate city and find out what it takes to boot them. Then run for the office and do something other than bitch on reddit

I missed your comment on urban. I didn’t realize gentrification only applied to urban communities?

or find a better opinion?

or find a better opinion?

2. Read again. "Local official from out of town." I'm not at all advocating for refusing services to all transplants.

Idk man google rural gentrification and you’ll see a million articles about it. Not saying you aren’t correct by definition, but it seems like a common mistake. Honestly never have been told that gentrification only applies to urban communities.

> Refusal of services.

Businesses as struggling and I can't think of any that's in a place to turn down income from natives, transplants, refugees, transients, or hedge fund managers. Besides cutting off your nose to spite your face, this also has about as much of an impact as those idiots that have tried to get a general gas strike for a day - those turned away will just do their business elsewhere and the business is the only one hurt.

> State Electoral College

Because the national electoral college works so well! We have a bicameral system that's designed to give voice to the biggest population centers as well as equal representation across the state.

> Longer residency limits to run for office

That would be unconstitutional for national congresscritters. But for state reps, I would be in favor of raising residency requirements from 2 to 5. 10 years is unnecessarily long, and there are plenty of good representatives across the state who have lived here for fewer than 10 years. Term limits would be nice too.

You know… It’s an odd person who sees education as something that can only be gained in a college degree. Gotta wonder where the licensed electrician learned their craft. I suppose the carpenters in your area just fumble around till the house stops falling over. Impossible to “learn” a job huh…. Even the fella who empties your trash received an education on how to do it. But sure, MBAs…

Your criticism of my specific comment might reflect on your education as you’re missing the context and thus misinterpreting my statement. Read it again in the context of the thread and maybe reconsider your reactive reply.

Picking a single word from a single definition despite colloquial usage is the definition of semantics.

What context did you mean when you explicitly and clearly said >Your “solution” fails to acknowledge we’re all dependent on the “uneducated” and “bad” jobs you’re implicitly shitting on

What uneducated job are you referring to beyond the garbage collector you mentioned?

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I would say that arguing a seldom used, neologistic definition of a word carries equal weight to the long established original definition fits the definition of semantics far better.

You're still just arguing semantics rather than addressing the actual argument...

You appear to be attacking my comment when it’s in response to the person shitting on those jobs. Maybe I’m in fact misreading you but if you’re implying that I’m considering those jobs uneducated or bad you’re missing something.

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not all families are affluent, mine was certainly not.

You clearly assume education means MBA, software engineering and investment banking. By your own words, education is only derived through college degrees not on the job training. But sure, I missed something. Have a great day!

Vote. Too many locals are losing their way of life because they have given up and don't vote. This is not only a VT issue but for other rural areas as well.

You have an education, you merely lack a formal degree. Very different things.

So to save Vermont, we should become North Korea. Gotcha No disrespect, I get you mad but answering “discrimination” with discrimination is dumb

Except that doesn't happen. There tons of opportunity out there you just have to have the gumption to train for it. Vermont is incredibly generous with in-state tuition aids and access to great educational resources. They're all not limited to a college degree either there are plenty of certification programs.

It certainly isn't waving a magic wand and takes some work and sacrifice, however if you fall into a certain socio-economic bracket you can and most likely will qualify for aid.

Also success isn't limited to artisans like you claim. Instead if you can work as a team and do support work you can find yourself as an integral part of a successful endeavor.

I was under the impression that being a high school graduate was not an education and that to be educated that it would require me to have at least an associates degree.

Wealthy people would be the best thing to happen to the Kingdom IMO. Maybe you’d get some services.

This is happening throughout all of northern new england. People from elsewhere selling their suburban squat in PA/NJ/ FL/MA/... for 600-700K and buying up these parts at prices no regular Vermonter can afford. Welcome to the free market.

What made this place special was the fact that (apart from gold towns) it was quaint but mostly to visit, not to live here. Farm consolidation, McMansion development, .... this pastoral paradise is at risk of vanishing.

Telework and CV19 changed all that forever. Taxes gone up, COL is stupid expensive, services hard to come by....

After 30yrs here in one spot, wife-n-me saw the writing on the wall, sold the homestead and moved to Maine. Same problems there but marginally more affordable.

If you're young enough, ride it out, the relocates will go stir crazy and move out and the boomers will die off, leaving a more affordable market. Provided those fleeing the christo-fascist, climate-changed deep south don't overrun our border :)

Yes, and has been since prior to the revolution and founding of the United States.

Someone on our towns listserve referred to the new white people displacing the old white people as colonizers, and I had a bit of a chuckle.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gentrification

Note the parentheses. Rural and suburban areas see the same exact thing.

Perhaps it is best to understand the concept of the landed gentry, which is where the term originates. It had little to do with an urban setting.

Your smug condescension is only outdone by your shit reddit karma. Vermonters are by and large poor. Just the stats on 1st gen to go to college should be an eye-opener. Or the need for student assistance, mentoring. Vermonters survive by wearing many hats.

Newcomers over the past 5 decades have not displaced natives to the degree happening now. Your blatant insensitivity calls you out for the butthole you are.

For reference, I am a transplant. In every single state in the country this is happening. Economically speaking from a macro POV, it's not wealthy people moving here that is a death knell. It's short-term rentals owned by longtime property owners. This might shock you but wealthy longtime Vermont landowners are reaping the rewards of this right now. It's not necessarily an out-of-towner issue.

IMHO it's not an instant solution but press legislators to ban Airbnb from the state and watch housing open up again (albeit slightly).

The catch-22 of out of towners moving here is while it will drive the prices of homes up, it will create a wealthier tax bracket and create greater opportunity to fund housing initiatives.

Without economic growth, it's incumbent on Vermont's current tax revenue to create affordable housing, which is a tall task given the current numbers.

It is simply impossible to not service out of towners moving here, or simply ban them from moving here.

Press legislators to subsidize housing with newly acquired tax revenue and ban short term rentals immediately.

Goes for everywhere.

> Vermont was gentrified to begin with.

Only mostly the gold towns. Greenwich North.

Though, back in a day, the stat was that VT had more retired generals and witness relocates than any other State.

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WTF are you talking about? Yes you are definitely missing something and letting your own cognitive blindness cause you to project your oddly derived meaning into my statement. You struggle with reading comprehension it seems.

Or, instead of labor strikes, being mean to outsiders, and complaining on reddit, you could focus on making a lucrative career change.

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I’m a Jersey Shore local (but I come to VT to snowboard for annually for 25 years and come with respect for the land, the locals, and support of small businesses). The last 2 winters in Southern and Central VT, I’ve been saddened, sickened, disgusted to finally realize what already happened to the Jersey Shore year round communities right after Super Storm Sandy in 2012 is happening to these communities in VT. The town I grew up in is not remotely affordable anymore unless you’re a hedge fund manager. Most homes are either second homes only occupied from May to September, or owned by absent owners who live in the Midwest and profit mightily on using the properties as Air BnB money makers. Long time businesses got priced out with rent hikes. The school district enrollment plummeted because middle class families were driven out of town and/or offered 5 times what a house was worth sight unseen (home then demolished and McMansion built is the theme on every block). From what I see with my own eyes this winter, and the stories I hear in VT, it sure reminds me of my home in the last 10 years. Am I wrong? Please let me know if my perception is off.

It's the same thing. Still love the NJ Shore also.

You want change that would help but almost no one would support. Reduce acreage minimums for residential development across the state.

My house is on 3.5 acres in a subdivision from the 90s. We were rezoned to a 5 acre minimum a few years ago. So my current, very spacious lot and those of all my neighbors' wouldn't be allowed today for being too small. Our dozen houses would be 7.

Anything you learn adds to your education, be it a binary search tree in CS 201 or the national electrical code on a job site.

LOL. Gotta love people who cannot clearly express their points and then blame everyone else for not “getting it”. Good night.

I have a certification from ubiquiti for wireless broadband and FIS fiber installer. That's all recent though.

> A society that only rewards MBAs, software engineers, and investment bankers can’t exist.

My man, there’s more to education than formal degrees. Try again.

Sorry to hear that. You deserve much better in VT. Here in Jersey, this was inevitable. And the millionaires around our region of our state as well as as some of our own waiting to sell their own friends out were doing cartwheels in the aftermath of Sandy. Many suffered. Some profited. The many are gone. The some have taken over.

google rural gentrification

the boomers thought the good times would never end. signed: a kid whos family owned dozens of acres of land on cape cod that was sold and mostly spent before i was even born. what little is left is going on to subsidize the postwar consumerist lifestyle of the postwar consumerist generation that are all retired now.

Certifications certainly count. Presumably some one taught you your job via on the job training. All that is educational. Perhaps not a formal classroom education, but still. Some colleges and universities even give life experience credits for things learned outside a formal classroom. It’s all education. Point being there are several official english dictionary definitions for “education”, but only one specifically points out schools and even then it uses the modifier “especially” but not “only at”

Good luck with that windmill!

I did after this exchange. Idk what he was getting at, it’s obviously a thing.

Nah, dude creates a scenario with fake quotes he made up and attributed to the other guy. Then tries to turn it around and say you don’t understand. BS. Dude is a choad who trolls.

OP is like Rama from the right, love match? Super trolly, rather than pesky feelgood this one comes in nativist persecution flavor! How many anti-union people can you unionize? Anarchists Unite!

If gentrification were a movie it would be Invisible Hand II: the Bitch-Slappening of America. Weak/unenforced campaign finance laws and other types of unsexy-yet-evil corruption have guaranteed the gamification of the retail market. Answer is more regulation and organization but it’s too late because that’s what only lefties want not righties or liberals. If you want to prove me wrong let’s see Sherman Anti-Trust act get used substantially ever again.

STR make up slightly less than 2.5% of total housing stock in the state. That includes summer camps and rooms in homes. STR is the distraction you are being sold to not get you to look at the real problem which is endemic multigenerational rural poverty and state regulations which make owing a business and employing people in this state more difficult then most places.

Our schools are near that top in spending but educational testing for basic math and reading puts our state at about the middle of the country. VT tax burden puts it at number 47 in the country (1 being the best). The answer is not banning STR the answer is changing the laws and tax structure to not hate the middle class so much.

VT is great if you are poor and great if you are rich. Those of us in the middle are generally fucked.

https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-local-tax-burden-rankings/

Whoa how dare you attack the idea of Vermont exceptionalism!? VTers of all stripes agree we’re one of a kind so no other concepts apply to anything going on here! Definitely also not this ‘climate refugee’ business I keep hearing about!

Obviously you’re not a golfer.

The problem is that every single session our elected officials spend more time on bills that will raise our taxes than on o initiatives to bring more revenue to Vermont. The last big idea was to offer rich out of staters who work remotely$6000 to move here. Phil Scott refused to stop that social experiment despite the havoc it’s caused with our housing market and the fact that it doesn’t provide workers needed to fill jobs here.

I’m a Vermonter, and I agree with you, @jakefrommyspace. Plus, for about as long as I can remember, people have been saying some—though not all—of what OP is saying. Our state is getting old, people. We need young families to settle here. Of course, we also need actual mass transit, but that’s another post.

So for number one if the roads don’t get plowed us blue collar folk didn’t get to work either. I can’t walk 40 miles round-trip to and from work.

Two you’re telling people to ostracize their neighbors and members of their community for engaging in capitalism. That’s fucking crazy. Seriously how fucked in the head are you to blame blue collar people for serving white collar people?

Third we have a state Senate. There’s 30 senators and each one represents at least 20,300 people. It wouldn’t make sense to have more senators in the lowest population areas because that would be tyranny of the minority. Four I don’t take issue with, I came here for years ago and I still don’t vote on the state or local issues because I don’t understand them well enough yet.

You’re saying that anyone who services the people you don’t like should be ostracized and punished for doing so. Jesus Christ kid that’s insane.

This was a big topic of conversation tonight at dinner. My great grandparents owned a ton of land in Maine and my husband's great grandparents owned 70 or so apartments. All sold before we were born and the money squandered. The ones that are still alive cry about how poor they were and how hard life was. Pffffff.

Boomers can eat my whole ass!

Nice projection. I wasn't gonna butt in but you clearly missed the point and couldn't even catch it when it hit you in the chest.

I missed the point that Jax went off on quotes he made up. Yeah… Must have.

Another dumb dumb ^

VT was exceptional, outside the developed parts; a state of mind.

Sadly, the new normal is changing all that.

Lol guy wants a revolution!

Someone just discovered Marx and thinks all of this is novel.

What county level votes exist in VT?

every time a white Vermonter talks about how their family has been here for x generations somewhere an Abenaki person laughs to themselves

RIP I had to stop going to certain family gatherings because I was tired of getting lectures about it that don't take reality into account

We need to pass statewide zoning regulation overrides for the construction of permanent primary residential housing.

Who do they think out of staters are buying these houses from? All that money that people are paying when they buy houses at these inflated rates is going to...Vermonters.

“The ruling class sees us as serfs and the only political power we have left is our labor”

How to lose 70% of your audience right off the bat spewing communist hyperboles.

To allow multiunit buildings? Smaller minimum lot sizes? What particularly do you want to change?

This! If you want cheaper single family housing, look at the last housing boom: Post WWII. They built 3/4BR ranches on 0.25acre lots. Single family isn't the most effective use of space but 5acre or even 3.5 acre minimum is a recipe for expensive housing

"State Electoral College"

Fuck off.

He ain't wrong though.

"...communist hyperboles..."

What a great subservient serf/wage slave response. You might get a Pizza Party for that one!

Hey man I’m pulling for you! Keep posting on Reddit about your enslavement - the revolution is coming! 🤡

To a communist

Our state senate is essentially divided up by county. Not exactly, but close enough that I would call that county level.

To anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed into fear and reaction by certain words they associate with the most evil buzzword of all - “communism”

It’s literally communist terminology…if you Google “ruling class” the first sentence is “in Marxist philosophy…”

I know people on Reddit throw it around like candy but don’t fault me for calling it what it is, and explaining it will be an instant turn-off for the majority of people.

I’m faulting you for saying something that is objectively correct is only correct for “a communist.” The truth is the truth, whether you’re too reactionary to refer to the economic class that rules the “ruling class” or not.

Well it might make you feel warm and fuzzy to use your politically charged terms, might get you upvotes in a Reddit echo chamber - just saying…hit someone up in the real world with that verbiage and you’re gonna get an eyeroll, comrade.

Shhhh don't tell them that.

But for real it's easy to sell a house.

My house is worth double right now. If I was to sell I'd have a lot of cash but it would be impossible to buy another one with the rates and people with even more cash and most likely I would be denied a loan. Maybe I would get lucky but I doubt it. I don't think I even have it in me to to try. Not that I want to anyway.

So what’s a better word for “ruling class”? “Globalists”?

It's not very close at all, but sure I guess

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Replying to bonanzapineapple...

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Idk I think of it as pretty accurate. Look up the latest maps vs our county maps. If anything they include more rural voters in otherwise denser areas (including parts of Orange County in Washington county for example) yeah, it’s not exact but I do think our state senate is pretty well drawn up to represent our population.

You know what, I moved here because a job needed to be filled. I pay my taxes and volunteer for the community. I fight for more housing and jobs. And I'm sick of people who happened to be born here thinking I shouldn't have a say.

Being born somewhere contributes nothing to society. Hopefully, the people complaining look introspectively and ensure they are a contributing member of society before complaining about others. Contribution is not solely monetary.

Welcome to America, bro

Gentrification isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It brings a lot of good but if not properly thought through can lead to some bad.

Smart post. From VT, living now in NH. Vermont is curiously easy on the passively rich—Current Use and all that. And services for the poor are decent for a rural state. But Vermont crushes folks with any sort of higher earned income (even if you have little actual wealth). That’s why we took our careers east of the Connecticut River.

I still own a small home in Vermont where my elderly mother lives rent free. She raised me and put me through college and I owe her a dignified old age. Should I get a crushing property tax assessment for this ‘vacation home’ she lives in? Not all property situations fit the current narrative.