New regional housing targets help set roadmap for housing shortage

The Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), in collaboration with the Vermont Association of Planning and Development Agencies (VAPDA) and the Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA), has released new regional targets for housing production across the state and a new tool that allows DHCD to track progress towards those regional housing goals in near real time.

The Statewide and Regional Housing Targets report was required as part of the HOME Act of 2023 and ACT 181 of 2024. DHCD and VAPDA coordinated to produce the housing production targets and VHFA was contracted to support the development of the targets.  The report examined the depths of Vermont’s housing shortage and developed a methodology to create regional housing targets for 2030 and 2050 that will enable the state to stabilize housing prices, normalize vacancy rates, help grow its current workforce, and attract new residents.  

The regional areas are based on Vermont’s 11 Regional Planning Commission boundaries and the towns that lay therein.

The new Regional Housing Target assessment finds:

By 2030, for Vermont to address its demographic challenge it needs to add 41,000 new rental and owner-occupied residences. (That’s translates to 8,200 housing units per year for the next five years.)

By 2050, the projected need is 172,000 new homes. That translates to an average of 7,000 new homes annually over the next 25 years.

In 2023, building permits were issued for 2,456 homes statewide. That’s an improvement over the historic low of 1,300 permits set in 2011, but well below the peak of 4,800 in 1988.

The Scott Administration is using this new data to inform its housing policy objectives which Governor Scott outlined during his press conference on Jan. 21.

“Every community in Vermont needs more homes now,” said Governor Scott. “My team will continue to be committed to make structural changes that will help communities, ease regulation, and incentivize housing in all parts of the state, so more Vermonters can find an affordable place to live.”

“We have got to pick up the pace,” said DHCD Commissioner Alex Farrell. “These targets reinforce what we already know: we are not adding new homes fast enough to meet current demand, let alone even modest growth. At DHCD, we are working on innovative ideas to help boost housing production, including building out water and sewer infrastructure to encourage construction. We hope the legislature will support these efforts,” Farrell added.

“As regional planners, we recognize that these statewide and regional numbers may be a lot for some municipalities to absorb,” said Devon Neary, executive director of the Rutland Regional Planning Commission and current VAPDA Chair. “We are committed to work with local cities and towns to help break the numbers down to achievable goals overtime. These targets represent aspirational goals for the state to reverse our housing and demographic trends.”

As a part of ACT 181, DHCD will be required to report to the Legislature on progress being made towards these targets annually. No such tool for measuring housing development in the state existed, so DHCD partnered with the Vermont Center for Geographic Information (VCGI) to create a new data dashboard. The Housing Development Dashboard utilizes data from a variety of sources, including E911 sites across the state to determine where new housing units are being developed. 

“This dashboard is a first of its kind. It’s as close to a real time look at where housing units are being generated in Vermont as we have ever had before,” said John Adams, director of the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. “While we’ve pulled together a variety of data sources to determine where and when housing is being built, the dashboard is a work in progress, and we will continue to work with partners to dial in accuracy going forward,” Adams added.

The first report out of the dashboard and progress towards regional housing targets will be in 2026. 

In the interim, the dashboard has taken the average of homes built annually between 2021 and 2024 and compared that to the targets to give DHCD a current statewide look at housing production progress. 

Currently the state is only building 27% of the homes it needs annually to meet the 2030 targets outlined.

For more information, visit:  Housingdata.org.