This sounds totally legit. I'm in.

There's a lot of good school districts within ~30 minutes of Barre that are not in the "super-super-expensive" zones of Montpelier or Stowe. MMU and CVU both have great reputations and cover big districts that include some cheaper areas and where you can get to Barre in 35ish minutes. Roxbury's a tiny town - it's not bougie like Montpelier - but they send their kids to Montpelier schools, so you get the good school district without the crazy real estate prices - if you can find anything for sale there (it's really really small). U-32 has a good rep as well and that covers a lot of the general Barre area.

VT public schools are generally really good compared to elsewhere. I totally understand wanting to avoid Barre city schools themselves, but the well-established big union school districts like MMU, CVU, and U32 really do deliver a great quality education.

False Information to a Police Officer (FIPO) is a misdemeanor with a 3 year statute of limitations. I think they're 47 years too late to charge that one.

Also a staffing shortage....which is ironic?

Not ironic at all. We're a wicked fucking old state, so we have tons of houses occupied by non-working retirees who can afford it because they either bought when real estate was cheap or have a good enough retirement (boomer retirement plans) to be able to afford a pricey place.

Meanwhile, there's just not housing available for someone making $20/hr, so places that rely on <= $20 workers can't find workers.

Folinos.

In Chittenden county, it's free as long as you're bringing in some trash anyway.

Our nature is pretty boring - most of it has been logged and developed. The most interesting natural thing we have is freshwater sharks that live only in Lake Champlain and Lake George. Very cool thing to have, but also aggressive and a lot of people won't swim in the lake because of them, but I do. They're endangered and I've only even seen them a couple times.

The best food in Vermont is the potato. If you eat the whole potato, including the skins, it has all the nutrients you need. You can survive off potatoes alone and most Vermonters do. Some people from out-of-state will also eat turnips, but that makes it pretty obvious you're a flatlander.

All the months of the year are great in Vermont, but the best is March because the snow-weasels finally go in for the season and we can go outside again.

Best city to visit is Belvidere. No doubt.

What you said, and everyone downvoted, was that you can "walk into the state and get housed that day." You're "imagining" what the circumstances are, not "knowing" what the circumstances are.

And for what it's worth, you might know more about this program than me, if you mean the technical rules or how it was put together. But if you think you're on the ground finding housing for more people than me on a daily basis, knowing how the program *actually* works and how people *actually* get a warm bed at nightI'm gonna call bullshit because I'd fucking know you if you were.

You said "you absolutely can walk into the state and get housed that day." That is completely untrue. You didn't say "you could be eligible for housing on your first day in VT," which may be true. You just said some untrue shit and now you're claiming you never said it.

Yer just dead fucking wrong about that. You absolutely *cannot* walk into this state and get housed that day. I don't know why you're saying this shit - what's your source?

Most of the expense of a house is not in it's structure, sheathing, or roof. It's in the finish, fixtures, utilities, etc. Barns are just structures with sheathing and a roof. It's actually gonna be more expensive to retrofit a barn to accommodate all the other stuff than to just build something that was meant to have insulation, finished spaces, utilities, etc.

It just doesn't save any money.

If you want a city, Brattleboro is my choice: I like my cities a bit 'rough around the edges', and Bratt is that. It's not a college-party town like Burlington, it's not a white-wine-liberal-boring-ass-old-people town like Montpelier, and it's not in the middle of a goddamn race war disguised as a drug task force operation like Bennington.

Bratt is a place with some authenticity, a cool art scene, some decent restaurants, plenty of "Vermont weirdness" (don't bother moving here if you're not moving here because it's a bit weird - that's the point), good outdoor rec opportunities, and it's more convenient to cities than other places in VT. You're just a 2 hour drive from Boston (I used to go to boston for concerts adn drive back the same night), 45 min from Northampton, 60 min to Springfield, Mass (if you want to gamble or get cheaper heroin than you can get in VT).

Real estate prices in Bratt aren't as ridiculous as in other parts of the state. The schools are great. There's *great* small communities nearby if you want to be *near* Bratt, but not *in* Bratt (check out Putney, Marlboro, West Bratt, Newfane, etc...).

Also, since I'm talking about Bratt, it has to be said - RIP Ray McNeill and McNeill's. It's been a sad fucking few years and that was a fucking kick in the guts. The world is a way worse place because of that loss.

Vermont College of Fine Art is closing (closed?) but they had a really nice event space there. Also check out the event space at Caledonia Spirits - if it's a small enough wedding, that could work.

Don't do space heaters - it's way more expensive. If your woodstove is old, get a newer one - the technology has come a long way in the last few decades. I switched from an old 70's "iron box" stove to a more modern (but not exactly fancy) hearthstone and it's a world of difference. Easy to control the heat, not get overheated, and easy to keep it slow-burning all day.

Also consider heat pumps. I got them this year. Elec bill has gone up a TON, but the oil bill is down by more than enough to make up for it. We used to get a bill for ~200g of oil a month during the peak of winter, now it's like ~80g (we still use the boiler for hotwater and to supplement the heat pumps), but our elec bill is nearly $400.

Interesting fact about the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act - they actually didn't give much of a fuck about golden eagles and wouldn't have gone out of their way to protect them except that immature golden eagles are difficult to distinguish from bald eagles and so they got special protection just because they could be mistaken for a bald eagle. Dropping some bird law knowledge on y'all.

In addition to the state offense it's a violation of the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act which has separate penalties. Don't sleep on bird law.

Yup. In fact, you can paddle up the Champlain Canal all the way from NYC to the St. Lawrence seaway.

Brault's slaughterhouse in Troy.

Some. As in "Some snowing out." "Some raining out."

Better than 5-8 years ago when every new restaurant was a farm-to-table burger pub. At least pizza brings some variety.

This is what I don’t get. If Vermonters like this person are majority progressive, then why aren’t y’all happy with progressive policies that got you to this place?

That's an easy one, Vermonters are decidedly *not* majority progressive. At all. Geriatric lefty conservatism looks different (and is better than) right-wing conservatism, but it's still conservative as fuck. We're an old state with a ton of boomers who want Vermont to remain exactly the way it was.

Dat place is dope. And if you bring in your own dish, they tend to give you an extra large scoop.

I've skied the tailings piles. They're very accessible. It's obvs not recommended because it's dangerous (avalanches!), illegal (no trespassing!), and unhealthy (mesothelioma!). But if you are a reckless person, it's pretty easy to figure out where to go and what to see.

Bolton and Cochorans should be serius considerations for you - both have night skiing that's cheap, so if you want to do groomer/cruisers anyway, ski and night and save $$$. Also look at Smuggs - they have a "morse only" pass that only is good for thier "easy" mountain with all greens and blues. It's cheap. But no night skiing there.

I bought my current house ("in the Waterbury area") last year and sold my old house (closer to the NEK) this year (well, 2022). I would absolutely send postcards and even knock on doors and ask people if they'd consider selling.

I think the normal market is fucked. When we sold our old house, we had four bids over our asking price and we never put it on the market (it never hit the MLS). Instead, we had been getting it ready to sell for a year, so everyone in town knew we were selling, and people just started reaching out. By the time we were done fixing it up, we had offers already, so we skipped the whole realtor/MLS thing.

Same when we bought our current house. A friend/colleague of mine mentioned that she was moving and I asked if we could see her house before she listed it. We made an offer, she accepted, and it never hit the market either.

Lots of places are selling that are never showing up on Zillow/MLS and not even showing up on realtor's radars. If you don't participate in the "off-MLS" real estate scene, you're missing a significant portion of the stuff that's out there.