Oh boy, this comment section should be fun

Personally, I’m fine with the total population. The issue is the demographics of that population. Skewed far too old. State needs to find a way to keep younger people around - large part of that is affordable housing and jobs that pay livable wages. Those are only achievable with further development. But the flip side is too much development will take away so many of the things we all love about the state and the things that make vermont vermont. It’s a super fine balance imo and I do not have any idea how to appropriately strike that balance.

The state needs more young people, more children, more families, more people who pay taxes, and more people who can and are willing to work. This is necessary in order to be able to afford the number of elderly, disabled, and low income people who require services, not to mention to be able to make our public education system more affordable again. I don't particularly care whether this is accomplished via proper population growth, attrition, or a combination thereof.

There's many obstacles to achieving better VT population demographics. These include such factors as:

• the lack of available housing across the state
• the lack of housing that people of reasonable means can afford
• the lack of childcare in general so that people can afford to work
• national & global market forces that drive costs of things like building materials, food, and fuel
• regulatory hurdles that VT imposes that make it cost prohibitive to do things like build housing and open a daycare center in this state

A lot of these are real chicken-and-egg issues that will take a huge amount of effort and money up front to address. I know, deep down, that dealing with these (and other) issues that are hurting Vermont and Vermonters will be beneficial in the long run. But, like most people, I don't know how happy or willing I am to pony up my tax dollars to pay for these solutions, especially if I am not going to be a direct beneficiary of the services themselves. Sucks, don't it?

We good.

Morrisville is going gangbusters on development. We’ll see how that works out.

Would like to see Vermont stay rural and uncrowded.

Massachusetts, you can keep the traffic, billboards, strip malls, and subdivisions. Please.

We need more younger people and more diversity.

I think there are way too many people from Mass up in my business

I think there are way

Too many people from Mass

Up in my business

- Effinehright

^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^Learn more about me.

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Too many people, an increasing percentage of which seem to lack the “live and let live” attitude that most Vermonters had when I was growing up. It’s the main reason why I’m planning to move. I just want to be left alone.

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The population is right, but we need different demographics. Vermont has the oldest population on average in the whole country. I'm sure lot of the old folks did their part to make Vermont into what it is today, but we really need young families, young workers, and young perspectives to thrive in the future.

There's smart growth, which aims to concentrate growth in city/town centers and preserve the rural characteristics as much as possible.

And then there's zero growth, where for every baby born or out of state relocations, someone will be executed according to a lottery like in that short story, I think it was called PowerBalls or something like that.

That attitude is going to be hard to find anywhere with our current mega polarized politics across the country.

VT needs to replace an aging workforce. There is little chance it overpopulates here. The severely dark winters are enough to weed out the people who try to relocate here. The population of the state is not too much greater than it was 40 years ago.

I disagree. That hasn’t been my experience in many rural areas across the country.

That hasn't been my experience. Rural America tends to follow on set of hyper partisan politics while urban Erica follows another. Then again, I haven't been everywhere.

These posts are more annoying than anything

As long as people from other states don’t come to live in Vermont and try to tell us how we should do things their way, Vermont will be just fine.

It’s a catch-22. The small population even in our “cities” is what gives Vermont its rural charm. However, we lack the scale to prosper financially. Too few people to find too many programs along with the infrastructure you have in every state. Plus not enough workers which affects everything from health care to restaurants.

Nothing wrong with that! What’s amazing is that VT is actually 30th in population density in the US even though it has the smallest city that’s the largest in the state.

It depends. My concern is that nearly all of the development has been apartments in the $1600-$1800 range. Only 50 of the new apartments are going to be affordable according to an article in the local newspaper. That leaves a lot of the local workers out given that one developer will own most of the apartments when the current estimated 1,000 units are finished. There will not be enough competition to bring lower rentals into the equation.

On the positive side, the new apartments will draw professional people into the area to fill jobs at Copley hospital, Concept 2, the school, etc.

As far as I’m aware no new homes are being built that will be affordable to first time buyers. Most are custom builds at or above $500,000. Meanwhile, village homes that sold for $200,000 before Covid are selling for $350,000 or more while homes outside of the village are being snapped up by cash buyers and many have been turned into airbnbs. Our town planner is quoted in one article as saying that the percentage of airbnbs is increasing by 10 percent each year.

This doesn’t bode well for my children who will be priced out if they want to return after college.

I feel fortunate to have bought 15 years ago when people turned their noses up at morrisville, but I also feel trapped. There’s no place for me to go. My husband and I have always wanted to restore an older home and planned to do that when our mortgage was paid off. Now those fixer uppers cost more than our energy efficient 20-year old home.

Have you been anywhere else besides Boston? And who said they'd put up more billboards if more people were here?

What makes Vermont, Vermont?

I am asking this because I think it's important, not to be a jerk.

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

It's the second least populated state in the country.

What's live & let live about moving because that's too many people?

I live in Franklin County. The poorest county in the Commonwealth. Much more like VT than Boston.

Mm the winters aren’t too impressive these past few years, I’m not sure VT winters will be bad enough to root out people for much longer with the shifting climate. I’m banking on people forgetting that this state exists to keep in exclusive hah

So what are your thoughts on areas like Stockbridge? That reminds me a little more of VT imo

Total population is not the same thing as population density.

And my neighbors are cows.

So where are you?

Edit: the population of Vermont is 645,570. NYC has 8 million people.

I’m not sure what your point is.

I’m in Franklin County.

i was born and raised in boston and a contiguous municipality. i want vermont to stay the way it is or go more rural

some of my ideas:

no billboards

hundreds of miles of shoreline on the largest non-great lake in the continental united states. the other side of the lake is rural adirondack ny and the lake is notably clean and deep

one of the strongest agricultural reputations in the world. international beer and cheese awards frequently go to vermont artisans. as well as the dairy expertise, a lot of prime grade a farmland.

one of the most citizen-centric political systems in country

K enjoy Vermont turning into Detroit and/or suffering from Detroit syndrome with no young working families to replace the aging workforce and unaffordable housing with that mindset, nimby boomer 👋🏼

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Not enough jobs. Only a few people to pay for everything. It’s $23k a year more for me to live here. I would like more (younger) people to balance it out. This is just a vacation state at this point.

Idaho man. When me and my wife decided to move back home (we’d been out of state for 6 years) we were also contemplating Idaho. Spent a couple weeks in Fairfield with a friend who lives out there and it was like VT was 20 years ago. Although I guess they have their fair share of assholes moving in from California since Covid.

Anyways, we decided to move back home and it’s not the same place we left.

Population doesn’t really change it in my view, as most of the density is going to be in the armpits of the state anyways. But the people moving in are drastically changing what the state used to be.

Too crowded. Stay in whatever crappy state you're in.

That’s actually one of the states I’m strongly considering, though I’m leaning slightly more toward Montana.

Montanas gorgeous, just seems like it’s been more overrun than Idaho from what I’d seen. But than again I was only in the Bozeman area which has to be the most overrun. Haha

Folks have been moving to Vermont for years (especially lately) because of the quality of life and the improvements over the places they moved from. THEN you get the “you know what this place needs” ideas and slowly the state is becoming the places people were trying to escape in the first place. Why move to a place just to change it?

Sure it’s deep, but Lake Champlain is not clean.

How polluted it is is also very overrated. Outside of phosphorus it's actually pretty clean.

agreed and i’m encouraged by the active coordinated efforts to maintain or improve its water quality between quebec, new york, and vermont.

there are concerning outbreaks every summer for swimmers in certain bays and often near a population center like btv.

everything always changes

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The inland sea area is the most concerning. Hopefully Franklin county can get sources cleaned up.

absolutely. i hope so too. i know a lot of people are working hard to put the right resources in the right places. and my sense is that vermont is doing an admiral, certainly with room for improvement, job of navigating its dairy heritage and present day realities with the lake’s needs.

It's not the winters. It's the lack of sunshine from November through March.

I'll be curious how Morrisville turns out. Who will live in those apartments? It's pretty much out of commute range to chittenden county. That's almost Burlington pricing. I suspect developer will be unable to rent and will lower prices. As for air bnb locals need to put in place strong regulations that either cap the number or tax the crap out of it.

Did you read the post?

I think these debates should happen post safety-meeting. For clarity.

There is definitely room for growth, both outwards into some of the space and upwards in terms of density.

Re: "Fine as it is," that exists nowhere. There are plenty of folks who don't want Vermont to change, because they have fond memories of "How it always was."

An increase in population in the state is absolutely inevitable. Instead of fighting it, we should be focusing it so that we can preseve the land we've still got as wild as it is.

I was surprised and happy when the planning commission voted to limit people to one Airbnb recently. You can rent out your home as much as you want but you can’t buy a second home and use it as an Airbnb as well.

Based on the newspaper articles the apartment will attract people who work in chittenden county but want the outdoor activities in lamoille county. I doubt rents will be lowered given the scarcity of housing.

I did. What does being slightly more populated as the second least populated state in the whole country have to do with billboards?

It's not fine the way it is. Preservation is being confused with doing nothing and it's not working

Edit: also I actually live in this state!

Just as important as affordable housing and jobs are schools. If you want young families to come and stay, you need a good school system.

This has been a major problem on the island communities in Maine. They don't have enough young people to keep the schools open, so no young families move in and their homes become vacation rentals. This is how a community dies and once you loose your schools, its very hard to start again from scratch.