They’re right. Climate change will bring an influx of people from the NY and MA. It’s already happening.

If only they worried about the rest of our crumbling infrastructure the way they do affordable housing and bike lanes.

And from further south. Vermont is kind of an ideal place as climate change screws up other parts of the country, especially when it comes to fresh water.

And from the West, like California

Lol. The proposals here are a joke. Developers atill can't build. You can't disincentivize supply and expect magic. Sigh.

Allow developers to come in and mandate a certain percentage for low income residents. Problem solved.

[deleted]

Waiting? Lol Climate change has been hitting everyone hard for at least 5 years now.

It’s not just Vermont. I would bet most northern states will see migration in the next decade

Don't preach to me about climate change. I ski, I ice fish and hockey is my favorite sport.

We know that climate change is a threat. What I'm asking is why are Vermont legislators waiting on an inevitable catastrophe to deal with the immediate problem of a housing crisis affecting Vermonters now??

This is insane.

Sadly, your state politicians are no different from mine.

Support child care for pre-K's, before- and after-care for school age, and health care for everyone and then maybe people could get/have/keep/create/offer jobs.

Support/fund full school bus coverage. Subsidize van pickup/dropoff services for larger employers who can employ entry-level blue collar workers who are more likely to have difficulty with transportation.

It's not just the lack of housing stock or how the price keeps going up, it's being able to work for it in the first place.

Hasn't Vermont's population been declining for the past 20 years, until 2021?

Will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Good question. Answer is probably cuz they are mostly rich and/or old who own their homes and plan to stay in them so aren't impacted too much by property values/costs/availability

Build public housing. Ban airbnb.

This isn't just Vermont legislators, it's all legislators. Dealing with climate change means less profits for corporations, can't have that.

There were a couple years it declined year over year but overall the population has grown at a meager 2% or so over the past 20 years

No one is talking about what happened in the Denver Colorado area... It's arguably a bigger threat that will happen here.

Denver area is also supposed to be a small bastion of climate change with upper basin water and climate zones sliding favorably up...

They've had issues with fires and water shortages too, it's one reason why I left. An entire neighborhood block that burned down recently was a few miles away from me and if the winds continued that day my house would've been gone.

Ultimately what's really a threat to Vermonters is a broken property tax system. As property values increase, so do property taxes and just like California and Colorado, eventually the taxes alone will evict the poor from their homes opening it up for rich people to take everything Vermonters worked for.

As the climate change housing market heats up it'll happen here too, with crazy high ballooning prices. Land lots will be insanely priced and some lots will be forced to be subdivided, using imminent domain (also saw this in Colorado). In Colorado, I was paying nearly 11k in property taxes. Due to nearby homes of similar size selling for 150k more, they assessed my property 175k more than the previous review, causing a $300/mo increase in property taxes. It was a crazy burden on me, ultimately I moved to the NEK (this was 2+ years in the planning) to live better within my means and live a simpler life to hopefully prepare for what is to come. Now I fear I'll eventually lose it all to our tax system which persecutes those with less. Mark my words, in the next 30-50 years you'll be unable to afford your taxes and no one is talking about it.

The lack of analysis on pandemic funding is disturbing.

Raising wages would make housing more affordable too.

Vermont barely has winters like it used to, it's up here too.

Nimbys.

That was Covid allowing people to be remote… why would people make such a small migration for climate change?

Too many people write off social housing. It doesn't even need to be a drain on public coffers, either. Just build something decent that appeals to a mix of income levels and charge enough to cover maintenance/upkeep and you get yourself a long way just by cutting out the profit share. Obviously that wouldn't cover the very bottom of the income spectrum, but it could be a pretty cheap way of making housing a lot more affordable for the the middle class and working poor — with huge knock-on effects for the broader economy.

NIMBYs always do whatever they can to prevent that. They don't want """the element""" to move in.

Nearly all infrastructure funding goes to roads & highways lmao

What is the “ NEK “ ?

Northeast Kingdom. Counties of Caledonia, Orleans, and Essex.

If it were made easier to build, who would build? Are their local builders capable of big housing projects? We we just going to end up with big expensive McMansions made by Toll Bros?

North East Kingdom

They will come from everywhere, what's going to happen is as the climate continues to break down, southern and midwestern/western states are going to become more uninhabitable due to climate induced events, so people are going to start showing up more and more to our area of the country. Whether they have houses or jobs to come to won't matter, people will show up regardless, and they'll live in their cars, tents, or shacks to do it, just like desperate migrants have for all of human history.

Politicians here, like most places, don't seem to understand this reality, Scott especially is incredibly stupid when it comes to this future, but there's a good chance he'll still be office as people start to show up on his doorstep, maybe then he'll actually do something about housing and climate resiliency.

Because moving to Canada is too much of a hassle and the salaries there are too low, while their cost of living is nearly as high as NYC.

Vermont is the place in the US that will suffer the least from climate change.

Well theyre building new houses in williston. 100 new single family homes on mt view

You’re extremely correct there.

I agree with this. We bought our house in NEK for a little under $80,000 in 2019 and our taxes have gone up almost $1,800 in 2 years and our house value doubled. During covid people came out of state and paid cash for homes around up for $500,000 and more! It was a selling/buying spree! If this pace keeps up we'll be homeless and forced out.

You'll love this: https://pppdata.us/all-data. You may look up any business that received PPP funds! There's also an option to report any business you feel wrongly received those funds. 🤑

And adding roads on top of maintenance to what we have is only one component that needs addressed.

Simple rule, all rentals for vacant houses must be month to month only. No daily rentals for vacant houses. All of a sudden thousands of houses come online.

Why would people move such a small distance to avoid climate change?

Sounds like an expensive mess

Well then why don't you do that?

And moving from Massachusetts to Vermont will make a big difference in climate? This makes little sense.

It’s why I moved back.

Every time the lottery jackpot gets really huge I buy a ticket. And then I fantasize about what I'll do with the money. At this point the plans are fairly elaborate. But the basics of it is that I will create rent-to-own communities with rent commensurate with people's income so that as many people as possible have the opportunity to own their own home.

Zoning is not the only barrier. It’s very expensive to source building materials in Vermont, and labor is scarce/expensive. The only thing that pencils right now for a lot of developers are large multifamily apartment buildings and the rents needed to cover costs are high even for middle incomes.

I live next to Hartland and Sharon - neither town has any zoning and there’s been hardly any new development, despite being pretty close to the Upper Valley core.

Yes, let developers build within reason and mandate affordability to the extent possible. But we also need to increase public subsidies, build social housing, and scale up other public assistance programs.

If you make under a certain amount in Vermont then they forgive a certain percentage of your property tax. I got 30% back last year and ‘my partner and I are both middle income. Easy enough to scale up this program if needed, especially with home values going up so much.

Cause they’re dumb virtue signalers. Any country south of the US will get hit exponentially worse. An American climate refugee is a joke

The climate in Massachusetts is actually very different then the one in Vermont

>Ultimately what's really a threat to Vermonters is a broken property tax system. As property values increase, so do property taxes and just like California and Colorado, eventually the taxes alone will evict the poor from their homes opening it up for rich people to take everything Vermonters worked for.

Already happening.

Too much BANANA NIMBY in Vermont to expect any major success in development, especially when it concerns "affordable" housing. Everyone agrees it's a good idea, but nobody wants it anywhere near their own house.

It's too easy to stymie development in VT. People and "interested groups" will use any excuse available to delay and increase costs in an attempt to prevent new housing. They'll say the impact of new development on local traffic will be detrimental, that the infrastructure can't sustain the predicted traffic volume, and sue in court. They'll say the new development doesn't adequately address drainage concerns and will damage a fragile, nearby bog ecosystem that nobody previously gave a shit about, and sue in court. And then, and then, and then...

Altitude makes a difference.

Most of Massachusetts population is near the coast, less than 100 feet in altitude, and warmed or moderated by water.

Vermont average altitude is 1000 feet.

Even when we assume people in Vermont are in valleys, at 500 feet, that makes a difference. Plus no sea weather moderation.

Zoning can handle this in larger towns.

> rent-to-own communities

people will take offense to that. urban sprawl, property ownership, those are things a lot of folks deem satanic.

> Allow developers to come in and mandate a certain percentage for low income residents. Problem solved.

That's not what developers are going to want. They want to make high dollar, high profit units.

> labor is scarce/expensive.

best time to get into the trades if you wanna make some real money. None of that smith barney bullshit needed. Just a can do attitude and the willingness to learn on the job.

Probably, but if I've just won a $500 million lottery I can afford to calm a lot of people down. ;)

> states are going to become more uninhabitable due to climate induced events

cant wait to see that play out. the earth shall take back what is rightfully theirs.

indeed mr. pickler

> why are Vermont legislators waiting on an inevitable catastrophe to deal with the immediate problem of a housing crisis affecting Vermonters now?

you're new to politics I guess.. It was the same thing even under democratic governorship. we're boned either way.

> If this pace keeps up we'll be homeless and forced out.

forced out by taxes or flat landers with fat bank?

agreed - but let's not forget the real crux of the issue - the cost of housing is too damn high, wages get higher that will likely affect the cost of goods. it's like we need to cost of housing to come down, and wages to go up. Cost of goods is fucking your wallet just as much as housing.

Right, but lawmakers are easily corrupted when big money decides to find its way here as a refuge from climate change.

I like this.

that would be pretty groovy.

careful though: taxes will eat you alive, not just with property taxes, but on those sick gainz too.

I'm still shocked about how the vermont subreddit views single family homes and all. folks keep advocating for these huge apartment buildings thinking we have the infrastructure to handle a huge people box and yet the buses don't even run on time. Additionally, single family homes open the opportunity for ownership in more than just owning a POS - you have room to do shit and privacy that comes with that. I know if I was living in an apartment building I'd be evicted for making guitars and all other craft projects I do. No one wants to be smelling my lacquer, nor do they want to hear my power tools at 2 am when creativity strikes.

It is not happening at any real scale. Even the pandemic's migration that vt digger 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.

That's not to say it won't happen, but Vermonters talk a lot about the influx of "out-of-staters" moving here anytime housing comes up. 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 investors, not people moving here. It is exceedingly rare for regular families to buy houses in cash sight-unseen.

Investors are buying more than 20% of all SFH on the market. This is an international phenomenon, affecting people from huge cities like London and Vancouver to the towns our delightful little backwater. As wealth inequality reaches increasingly insane levels, 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.

This is a rent trap. Younger generations are being forced to become lifelong renters, creating a generation of lucrative investments for the largest landlords and screwing over everyone else. When we talk about the influx of out-of-staters, it suits them. It diverts the attention from the real problem. Don't let the rich get away with it while we squabble amongst ourselves fighting over scraps.

I hope not, but definitely possible during this decade if things don't slow down:(

We love our little slice of heaven, if not we would have sold it during the covid craze like everyone else did.

The comments below were similar to what I was going to say. Except we are land locked. Didn't see that comment.

That will be 1/2 million starting price...

I think you responded with something cute because you don't actually have an argument against this, but feel some sort of reflexive need to oppose any attempt to use the power of government for good.

Theoretically theyll start on "the annex" at some point on 2a. Just past that weird stovepipe and flag store. Idk that looks like a finny type development with mixed housing types:

Willston developments

Make investment AirBNBs illegal. Tax the ever-loving SHIT out of summer homes. Rent cap.
There. Got 'em started.

We need low income apartments complexes for people that don’t have homes. It’s that simple. Everything here that’s a new build are lux and built for well established individuals.

Newsflash, costs have risen regardless of wage stagnation

No shit

Yeah no shit, that's why saying raising wages will make other costs rise is kind of bullshit!

It will though.

Inputs raise outputs.

Landlords and businesses take notice when the wages are on the upswing. Shit I'm making 80k now and I'm taking home roughly the same amount of groceries for the same proportion of pay when I was making 50k. Well that's partially due to supply chain issues we can't just sit there and say over and over and over again that we're experiencing a crazy supply chain issue because of COVID - we've been knee deep in this shit for nearly 3 years now. Businesses and supply chains should have figured their shit out by now. COVID ain't going away, and now that we're all making more money people are capitalizing on it.

Yeah notice how all of that happened without wages keeping up.

Businesses need to stop depending on underpaying labor, with no benefits like paid sick leave, for profit. This model is not sustainable, and nothing can function if most people barely have enough to even cover rent. How is it bad for businesses if more people have more money to spend?

> Yeah notice how all of that happened without wages keeping up.

Right, so me going from 45k - I was downgraded in pay during the pandemic because my business took a nose dive to working at 80k a year is stagnant wages.

Have you seen the sorts of wages that are being advertised even at fast food and gas stations? Those jobs are paying more than what I was making as an enterprise IT pro in the mid 2010's.

I think the thing you're actually trying to argue is more like the bigmac index - if product costs 2.50 and takes a quarter of a min wage working hour to purchase and now is 4.50 but requires the same proportion of your wage to purchase despite making more money - is that more along the lines you're thinking?

I'm arguing that this entire time the minimum wage has not budged, and even if someone at McDs was making 16 and hour, that's still not enough for a 1br anywhere in the country.

I WISH I was making 50-80k with my business. I've never made more than 25k a year, and when that happened half of my income was tips which are not actually a sustainable source of income.

You're just staying a different iteration of "The frycook is making more than the EMT"

To which I say, that's not the frycooks fault and the EMT should be paid more. Worker solidarity & all that jazz.

Because the capitalist system we live in cannot initiate preventive solutions, because that would directly go against the profit motive. If it's not profitable, it doesn't get done. That means that until it is profitable, it won't get done. And at that time, it will be too late to take action

sweet, urban sprawl. badass. this is exactly what I think of when I think of vermont

> To which I say, that's not the frycooks fault and the EMT should be paid more. Worker solidarity & all that jazz.

Hell no, I used to be that fry cook too dude. Just cause I traded my kitchen clothes for a button up shirt doesn't mean I do not understand the struggle.

The economy is "allegedly" a delicate balance between inputs, outputs and the poor bastards in-between caught in the cross fire.

The labor market isn't well, we can both agree that benefits and wages need to rise and certainly it would not hurt one bit if products and housing inventory went down in price- but that likely wont ever happen.

A lot of our GDP is caught up in health care. A staggering 80%. This is why lobbyists are always shut down things like single payer health care and my republican fellows are too retarded to realize that they should adopt a progressive stance on healthcare because every single american would benefit from it. Politics aside, our economy needs to pivot from services / tourism and move into production if we want to see more better paying jobs. It's all too clear that Covid taught us we cannot rely on other nations to produce product things for us - we need to make more products or we are going to have a hard fucking time putting food on the table, or even having food at all. The fact that farms and manufacturing keep getting shut down in the states is absolutely appalling and the incoming generation needs to fix this - we cannot rely on globalism to fill in the gaps of our needs.

Anyone want to talk about artisanal cobalt mining in the congo? bet ya'll don't know what kinda hell those fellers go through so we can have lithium ion batteries.

Lmfao "globalism" 🚩🚩🚩 also using the r word? Really? Are you a grown adult or a child in a CoD lobby?

https://preview.redd.it/1w09abxufp8a1.jpeg?width=1850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd844aaf2eb7d731b06b0eb0e111842c16b97996

Williston is going for the Soviet era building method of just having a single architect design an apartment complex they build 200 times and an office building they build 200 times.

It looks like a newer version of THIS

It was a tight vote. It almost wasnt approved.

Sprawl sucks but houses are needed. Its at a farm field already abutting development and about a mile from wcs/old williston. I dont if you took a look at the annex and seen finny. They are fairly progressive (and contriversial too). That town planner matt is reasonably forward minded.

I lived at finny for about 5 years. Theyre nice apartments in a nice neighborhood. In guesing you probably havnt walked around there because all of the 5 or so developments there have a unique look and feel.

The bigger problem with them is affordability. For the space they are very expensive

Globalism and the "r word" is the only thing you got from that? wow. please read again.

Oh I read that you're a republican too, don't worry. 🚩.

(Also read the comic, again; three times to infinity if that's what it takes for you to get the message)

Rino. Former 2000's democrat.

You really paid no attention to the fact that we had supply shortages on things like masks, toilet paper and other products during the beginning of the pandemic.

Being a short term rental landlord should be allowed only for residents of Vermont. You then keep Vermonters who rent out their little cabin or in law suite intact while stopping the gobbling up of home by out of state investors.

I remember trump having a lot more to do with that than the average republican would care to acknowledge. And I never ran out of any of those things in Vermont. Which, let's face it, only did so well because of the low population density, and that we actually made people wear masks at all. Drop the masking and what? We're shocked it's back and causing problems? Sure. Ok /s.

Also, does this mean you voted for Bush?

It's absolutely hilarious that a bunch of very fragile people downvoted this very fair question.

Of course they're right. It's easy to predict something that has been happening for 40 years... or maybe more? I just know every wood-booger in the state has been complaining very loudly of this for my entire life.

The real change here is that people are/will be coming from farther away, not just our neighbors. Climate migration is already happening and VT is forecast to be one of the safest areas as we further destroy the rest of our planet. Buckle up folks, we have a lot of new neighbors on their way in the next decade. Let's welcome them.

> I remember trump having a lot more to do with that than the average republican would care to acknowledge.

Not a trumper - sorry.

> Does this mean you also voted for Bush?

No, I was a democrat through high school until the 2016 election. After watching the DNC collude against Bernie at the top levels with DWS at the helm I realized I wanted nothing to do with democrats. Essentially politically homeless, but caucus with hill billies. Did not vote for trump, but did not vote for Hillary either. (that woman has a lot of skeletons in her closet. did ya hear about the haiti relief fund the Clinton foundation took nearly all the money from?)

While I am a rino, I don't follow the public platform of the GOP, that's what the name RINO implies. Think more like Phil Scott and not your crazy Obama hating uncle. In fact, I think Obama was the last respectable president we had IMHO.

Simply put - liberal with social policy, conservative with fiscal policy, live a rural life, work in tech, make things with my hands for fun.

I'm 41 and "real Vermonters" have been loudly complaining about "flatlanders" and out of staters for as long as I can remember. Meanwhile those people keep coming here and boosting the economy these wood-boogers barely partake in. It's embarrassing at this point. If Fox News was based in VT there would constant coverage of caravans coming from Massachusetts.

Conservative fiscal policy is a driving force behind the social unrest you claim to care to change. Fiscal and social policy are not in separate vacuums lmfao

I don't like Phil Scott either, seeing as he won't raise the state minimum wage and decided to lift mask mandates, which is causing a lot of our labor shortages now.

"Former 2000s democrat" is confusing phrasing you should change by the way.

This is the most hilariously ignorant thing I've read this week. Bravo.

LOL Yeah, sorry I don’t speak acronym.

This is silly.

I used to live in Williston, too, for about 15 years. I'm just not used to that level of development so my opinion is probably more cynical. IMO it's closer to Soviet planning than anything historically present in Vermont. Those brick office buildings being built by 89 in Williston are a great example of what I'm talking about. It's the same drab building and Williston has now built it over 20 times. The apartment complexes surrounding Home2 are the same as well. Give Williston 30 years and those apartments will look like THIS

They are hideous but very practical. It's painfully obvious we've lost control of our housing economy and are desperately trying to keep up with demand. Hard not to draw a parallel to Soviet city planning.

It's silly to focus on needs that everyone has, instead of special interest groups? Explain.

It's depressing how quick we are to blame people on the other side of an imaginary line for our problems, even when those people are virtually indistinguishable from us. It really puts into perspective how easy it must be to do if the line is a militarized border and the people on the other side speak a different language.

I had a cashier at a thrift store berate me a couple of weeks ago. I had made a comment about something I had found and how awesome it was to find such a thing because I was in a Vermont thrift store, and he lost it on me. From my understanding, my job had no in-state applicants. Only out-of-state. Also, last time I checked, it’s a free country, and I can live anywhere I want in it. I’m sorry housing is expensive, but it’s expensive for just about all of us located literally anywhere in the United States.

> houses are needed

no, housing is needed. not sfh. up not out. etc.

On the flip side, if your supply of housing is so low that out-of-state skilled professionals like Doctors and engineers can’t find or afford housing, then that likely means that building housing probably should come first.

I understand your point but I know of nurses, doctors, social workers, and educators who want to move here or have left because they simply can not find housing here. Housing is the most critical issue for Vt right now as we can’t even get the people who could help with other issues. If we do increase subsidies now, a large chunk will just be going to those professionals’ ever-increasing cost of living with real change being minimal.

If the housing issue had been seriously addressed at all in the last 5 years, I’d definitely agree with you. However, whenever articles like this come out nothing meaningful actually happens and the can is kicked further down the road until housing becomes an even bigger issue.

Yes, so true, agree to all this.

Not surprised the average Amerifat thinks they have it bad

Housing is a need that everyone has. This is hilarious. Affordable housing is somehow serving "special interest groups"? You ok bro? Did the man on tv tell you to be angry about homeless people and now here we are? This is odd.

Amen. I grew up in VT and I've been told I'm not a "real Vermonter" more times than I can count. I think maybe I'm not wearing enough camo or something, idk.

It's also just incredibly insane because I can't imagine where VT would be without people from out of state bringing their money here and spending it. It's just such an ignorant way of thinking.

I grew in VT but spent my 20s and early 30s living all over the country. Anytime I came back to visit with OOS plates I'd get shit from some idiot at least once.

Hell, one time my mom who raised me here came back to visit after moving to CA for work (she lives here again now). She drove across country and the day after she got here we decided to go to lunch at Long Trail. I missed a turn on the way there and turned around in someone's driveway. There was a group of 20 something guys standing out front of the house. I smiled and gave a wave as I turned around, only my front tires breaking the plane of their driveway. One guy sort of waved and started walking towards us. He then came up to the car and said if he saw me and my CA plates use his driveway to turn around again he'd drag me from the car and "beat the ever loving piss out of" me. Dude thought he was being tough to some folks from CA but he was simply threating fellow Vermonters...

Therapy. Highly recommend. I wish you well.

Lawmakers have been saying the same EXACT thing for as long as I can remember....

....and yet here we are

The bar for therapy is pretty low these days! I didn’t even swear

While housing is a need everyone has, Vermont in no way has ever been an easy place to live back to colonial times, expecting others to pay for fresh transplants housing is bullshit. There are plenty of states where you can survive year round outside if you don't want to work for a living. Vermont however isn't one of them, and yes you should suffer the consequences of your actions where if you are a shit person with no marketable skill to survive you do not belong here and if you try the elements will kill you. Try somewhere easy like the Carolinas, Virginias, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, or Florida. Those are all places you can be a vagrant all year long and survive.

No one really believes they want to build more housing, right? We want VT to be "rural" and it must look like a Currier and Ives print. If that means only rich old people/trustafarians can live here, oh well.

Does anyone think affordable housing would even matter? The workforce/demographic problem is so severe that even new housing doesn't seem like it would be enough. How in the world do you convince young people to move to the oldest (2nd oldest?) state in the country, where there is absolutely nothing to do by design?

Yeah, don't forget Jersey. Because rich white people from Jersey are climate "refugees", not the people from places like India and Pakistan where it's 120 degrees.

By the way, you spell it out when speaking, so it isn't technically an acronym like "neck".

Anyone who thinks they can "avoid climate change" is already fooling themselves. And the idea that VT is immune is silly. We had a freaking rainbow and a storm that knocked out power for thousands of people LAST WEEK.

VT has always been a place where a lot of people are here because their parents supplement their income. No way to measure this, but I bet percentage wise, VT has an extremely disproportionate amount of people with allowances.

Better yet, expropriate airbnbs (non-owner-occupied) and out-of-staters' third homes (camps for Vermonters are fine). Make them into public housing.

Is that why they're paying people to move here?

There was a bill in the legislature to ban airbnbs unless the owner lived in them 60-70% of the year. This would have meant that renting in-law apartments or spare rooms would still be fine, as well as renting out your house for a month while you go somewhere else in the summer, but that speculating on housing just to rent it out short-term wouldn't be allowed.

It got killed very quickly. Our legislators work for wealthy people and tourists, not us.

> > > Ultimately what's really a threat to Vermonters is a broken property tax system. As property values increase, so do property taxes and just like California and Colorado, eventually the taxes alone will evict the poor from their homes opening it up for rich people to take everything Vermonters worked for.

This is already happening. You're right it's bad for Vermonters, but the state government - majority non-Vermonter - wants working class Vermonters out and wealthy transplants in.

I think they're paying people to move here because they can see that in 10/20 years half their tax base will be dead.

If the wages were better, and if housing was more accessible, that wouldn't be a problem.

We tried that in Bratt. Devs wouldn't do it without an expiry date on the rent-controlled units. Now they're expired and downtown is riddled with empty luxury apartments holding out for $2k/mo.

Sorry if I can't find sympathy for the greedy bastards while shelters are full and people are freezing.

> It got killed very quickly. Our legislators work for wealthy people and tourists, not us.

Our legislative compensation makes sure of this.

In order to be a legislator in Vermont, you either need to be independently wealthy, or otherwise self-funded, which tends to result in a lot of business-owner legislators.

I'm not just referring to the money needed in order to run for office--once they're in office, they need to have a source of wealth, because they are paid ~$750/week (plus a per diem) but only for the 18 weeks that the legislature is in session. The result is not enough to live on for a year.

This means that unless you happen to work in a field where you can just disappear for four months in a row every spring, you have to be independently wealthy or retired. If you or I ran for office and won, we'd probably be financially ruined.

It's a controversial opinion, but I think we need to pay our state legislators more. The current system means that regular Vermonters literally could not afford to hold office even if they won it. You'd be elected to office, have to quit your job, and then survive on the $14k/yr legislative salary plus whatever seasonal minimum wage jobs you could find. (Except a good legislator has work to do year-round, making seasonal employment even more difficult.)

Why? Vermont is the safest place in the US when it comes to climate change

https://www.vtcng.com/news_and_citizen/news/local_news/heat-is-on-lamoille-county-deemed-safest-from-climate-change/article_4c95630e-b685-11ec-9b75-cf15693066db.html

I think you'll find that a lot of people here think that if wages were better and housing were accessible, Vermont wouldn't be Vermont.

Vermont means Green Mountain not Change Nothing.

Nimbys don't represent this state, they make it worse.

I think this is one of those times when we're all right, you, me, every reply on this thread.

Building owners need help with renovations that would let them come up to code, people w/ extra space but no landlord skills need help getting them, towns need help setting up policies that encourage local affordable full-time residencies.

"I've got that extra room downstairs that could be a small apartment, but I heard of one friend who did that and...[insert horror story about bad tenant, theft, losing food/heating assistance, taxes doubling etc here]" is something I've heard from more than one local.

People are afraid to create housing in their existing homes, there's way too many ways it can go south if you don't have the legal/handyman chops. Owning housing is a business/skill like any other, it's a job, and not everyone's cut out to do it -- and if you screw up, you can really get hosed.

>nothing meaningful ever happens

With you there. :/

what a garbage take

Right?!

They're saying this all as if there aren't people who live here year round, who need to be able to live near where they work!

Edit: are we really saying a shortage of dentists is what makes Vermont, Vermont too? Really?

i mean that is the catch 22 isn't it. No one wants to build anything besides luxary homes because building anything else is either too difficult due to zoning or doesn't yeild enough profit. That leads to too few workers, so you can't really build too many large scale industries, which means there isn't much attraction to the state.

My solution is the same as always, build massive amounts of public housing.

yeah that is dope, i like shit like that

I think policy-wise, the emphasis now is on mixed income developments. Concentrated public housing frequently turns into "ghetto" housing projects.

I'm not saying that there isn't a need for new housing. I'm saying you'll find that VT is populated, in large part, by wealthy old people who will fight development tooth and nail.

Well they are just selfish then. That's not an issue of "if that happened, Vermont wouldn't be Vermont". I don't care if they're afraid of change.

We should make sure to plant seeds for trees that we wont be able to enjoy the shade under in our lifetime, and they won't be remembered fondly for doing the opposite.

it only turns into "ghettos" cause they end up under or defunded, leading to disrepair and poor quality housing. so the only people that end up living there are the ones despirate enough to live in poor conditions.

keep the funding up and more diverse people will live there

also "mixed income" is a misnomer cause you are only gonna get a mix of the economic bottom half or so. You won't get anyone rich living public housing and we should stop pretending like that will happen. The rich always find a way to segregate themselves away from poorer people.

A local developer in Lamoille County is building a 100+ unit apartment complex. After he got the permit and started construction he agreed to sell 25 apartments to the local affordable housing partnership for around $250,000 each. I would imagine this means that the rent will have to be affordable forever. While the cost per apartment seems high, maybe other housing partnerships could work with private developers to create more housing.

It worked when I was growing up because it wasn't free housing. It was housing for working people (most of them working very hard) and rents could cover maintenance. Based on articles I've read in BFP and Vt Digger, at least some non-working able-bodied people are living in subsidized housing. This doesn't help promote anything but laziness. Build homes specifically for working middle and low income Vermonters.

The notion that someone would uproot their life, become a climate refugee and move 171 miles away seems far fetched.

Maybe it's a thing in Vermont. Here in Lamoille County it seems the same architect who gets his inspiration from low-budget 1990s motels is designing a lot of the new rental properties. I would imagine it's more affordable to building non-descript box-like buildings than ones with interesting architectural details.

I think the other comments already made the case on how climate drastically changes based on geographically features. Just because the coast isn’t too far away, it doesn’t mean that the weather isn’t drastically different.

Moving 171 miles away in the same country, isn’t exactly uprooting your life either

When whole streets become vacant due to unregulated short term rentals it creates an enormous cultural impact to the town/area. My street since Covid has become fifty percent STR/AirBNB/VRBO.

Whenever a house comes up for sale I wonder what rate the new owners will charge a night for the place.

At a certain point I'd think that especially in smaller VT towns the number of STR will eventually outnumber the full time residents of the area. When this occurs what really would bring someone to visit here except for a romanticized ideal of Vermont?

Funny, my house value almost doubled and my taxes haven't increased at all.

Very odd, unless it's not town assessed value and you're referring to sale value such as on zillow. Our town assessed value keeps increasing and taxes are up $1200 more last year.

Oh yes, my town assessment didn't budge.

That said, appraisal isn't allowed to change the total tax revenue of the town anyway. The only exception I've seen to that is places like Burlington where commercial properties dropped in value like a rock because no one wants to buy a hotel or restaurant during COVID. This forced them to use residential rates to make up the difference.

Wow. Aweful at a time people are most vulnerable.

We should have appealed our town assessment. They raised the town value of our house $30,000 2 months after we bought it,, which was almost $40,000 more than we just paid for it. Then this past year it went up another $46,000 with the town assessment. We will come up with the difference but one day it will be just too much if it keeps up at this pace.

forced out

except you've turned $80k into nearly $200k simply by purchasing at the right time. I suspect you won't be homeless with your six figure windfall. $1,800/year in increased taxes on an $80k+ profit seems like...not very much?

I know it's theoretical value until you sell, except you have that value in equity.

Sounds like reforming the property tax system to more heavily take land value into account over improvement value is a good step towards solving the issue, but I doubt this will be popular with Vermonters, since it heavily incentivizes development of the land, and makes losers of people who have owned recently valuable land for a long time but are too poor to develop it.

I agree with you but perfect is the enemy of good.

Equity means nothing if you love the place you live, don't plan on ever selling and want to spend the rest of your years there. I understand what you're saying. People shouldn't be forced out due to the burden of taxes. Our house is not worth that much BTW not unless we have another covid buying frenzy and people's heads aren't right due to fear.

in this case, "good" is worse than nothing

and I say that as someone in the housing market without somewhere to live, not as someone sitting in my nice single family home that I own.