It’s not losing money if there is a subsidy and regulations for rent control. Maybe not as profitable and I am fine with that, we need to stop treating housing as an investment made to profit developers and investors. There are plenty of models for this type of public housing where standards of living are much higher than ours, and where housing is guaranteed as a human right.

Simply saying it ‘Dissuades people’ doesn’t speak to the motivations of why people would build affordable housing do in the first place, which is profits. As long as there is a profit motive, housing will remain a privilege to those who can afford it and this it not a unique problem to our state and our regulations.

The stock analogy, is what most people subscribe to when it comes to housing, which in my opinion is sinply wrong. The main difference is that housing is an essential human right, stocks are not.

Stowe was brought up in discussion, hence the ‘soloing’ them out. This is a larger systemic issue and many other towns are challenged with the same issue, to that read, we need to fix the larger problem. But it seems your solution is a NIMBY approach, which is telling about where you land in the social economic spectrum or you are merely a hopeful projecting this life. Gotta work today, so back to the salt mine for me, truly insightful conversation though!

A fair few who could afford to live there in the first place, that doesn’t equate to affordable. Its like saying stock holders of a company profited because the saw their stocks rise and sold when the time was right. Well if you can’t afford to buy stock in the first place it’s a moot point in the larger discussion of affordability. Stowe is the closest thing Vermont has to a gated community, its cool if you want to defend this, I’m just not going to.

Sure, but people still gotta live somewhere, especially those who work in those areas. What you are describing is gentrification. Just because the town was built as a resort area doesn’t mean it’s immune to criticism and good housing regulation.

Yes it is, by the real question is why would it be lower if not profitable? Answer: Good regulation. Of course this logic assumes that you agree housing is a human right.

You have to think outside the profit motive to understand why developers would provide affordable housing.

It crosses the line from looking out for your own self interest to malicious when it displaces others who can’t afford to find a home or live there.

Recycling for the most part is a failed program to curb the use of plastics in our society. Instead of finding alternatives to plastic use we spend money on keeping them in the system, but if the problems is the environment disaster plastics create, why not stop production of plastic? Oh wait the big oil lobby and decades of propaganda efforts. Oh, and those ‘recycle’ symbols on the bottom of containers are resin codes, that where intended to mislead people into thinking they are recyclable despite the fact that most all plastics are not recyclable.

Really great video on this:

https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g

Not sure? It won’t ever be, that is the effect of decades of large amounts of out of state money’s influence on a town, they have to protect their investment.

Deregulating does not equal a better housing market, you’re simply conflating bad regulation with good regulation.

Sure is a bad idea if you want to save money!

This is sad to see and also happy that my wife and I got rid of our second car during the pandemic. We have the luxury of working from home, the amount of money we save on a weekly basis is crazy. Living anywhere that requires a car is now an even more expensive endeavor.

Preach! I spend $18,600 a year in childcare alone.

Of course abstinence doesn't work, that is my point. Are you on a parade to provide birth control to people for free? It's comments like your original one that misses the mark. People have kids, it is inevitable, planned or unplanned. You can wish people were smarter, but they are not.

So my question is what do you do with that information? Do we support children and their parents knowing that it helps the majority of people who receive funding or not? I'm guessing you are in the not, camp. You unfortunately cannot legislate laws or credit to those who are smart and those who are not, it doesn't work like that.
edit: You still haven't proved why people who can't afford housing shouldn't have it comment is unrelated, it certainly isn't. At the core of your argument lies the same logic, how would you differ from this position if "someone can't afford something they shouldn't have it" and not contradict yourself?

It’s the logic of your own argument, one cannot afford something therefore… Do you believe abstinence works? People have children, most people who care would rather find solutions for inevitabilities, rather than denying their existence or someones rights.

You can’t entirely place blame on people who are doing this unless you completely ignore the conditions that allow it. Shame on us for not getting regulations together sooner. And this is in no way a substitution for more housing, and will have little impact on the housing market even if those renters decide to get out of the rental game and sell.

People who can’t afford housing shouldn’t have it either! Losers!

I’ve been the outsider you talk about but was fully informed on issues, served on a committee, went to board meetings, etc and still had a mass of local townies want to yell in my face and intimidate me for having a difference of opinion. Funny you mention looking your neighbor in the eye as one casts a vote… One of the proposals that was voted on was an issue that was never brought to the residents on the roads it impacted the most in the new proposal, yet so many, not unlike your comment cried how they were community minded people yet completely failing to see the irony of their efforts.

Unpopular opinion, I honestly think a lot of the solutions and ideas shared in these meetings that are just not good ideas and come from bad intentions. People complain about spending and rather than focus on larger solutions and resort to regressive, tax cutting measures as a first course of action because most of the rural communities are struggling and people who have the time to attend are mostly retired. You also find the handful townie business folks that act in a similar fashion, if it benefits them they’re interested, otherwise the same regressive shoot down ideas attitude. Civics overwhelming have been lost, where people actually care about the well being of the community at large and engage with this top of mind rather than looking out for number one. But I guess, bad discussion is better than none at all.

How is this different than making the argument about online universities in general. Why pay for sports, why have gyms, why have food service, etc. I used the library whenever I did research for papers, and not all documents are available online. I feel like you rather than making a critique about libraries specifically your real argument is about the utility of services a college provides and need for said services. IMO, this argument is a fast track to privatization and gatekeeping what otherwise would be considered a public asset.

I built my last home in central Vermont on land that was on my family property, with existing septic. I calculated that I spent roughly 150k when all was said and done and used the help of a contractor friend for the framing and finish work. On top of all of my freetime dedicated to this house I also spent the majority of my vacation time managing this build. If you are paying ‘retail’ by using a team or well known builder/developer I’m sure that you’ll spend twice this amount. The real question is, would I do it again? My answer is probably not. While it sounds like a good way to beat the system there are just too many variables when trying to do it yourself and I was lucky to know so many contractors and tradespeople to help along the way and even still there were plenty of things that went wrong and I spent 3+ years completing is house.

as you do.

What are the causes of this?

Material conditions like wealth inequality, cost of living, drug addiction, mental health issues, etc. Most likely an anomaly, as seeing that previous years nothing has drastically happened to change the material conditions of residents that I listed above. If anything 2020-21 were also anomalies as well given Covid restrictions and the impact that had on society overall.

I don't think its the dreaming that is small, rather the budget this state has to do anything about it.