When the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, and the Vermont Dept. of Economic Development’s Community Recovery and Revitalization Program pool their resources and commit to spending $536,000 per apartment to build a 25-unit mixed-income development, the last thing they want to experience is an obstacle.
From my perspective, the Wilco Tango Foxtrot moment should have manifested itself in an obstacle years ago when the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust proposed spending more than $13 million in public funds to build the 25-unit Alice Holway Drive Project in Putney.
The cost of the project didn’t raise any eyebrows because the running narrative, driven by the agencies and authorities that fund the for-profit developers that execute the non-profit missions, is that the cost of housing is rising. A single apartment now costs in excess of $500,000 to build.
This narrative is simply not true. The private sector is building apartments for $200 per square foot, but the housing industrial complex machine has created the illusion of truth by repeating the claim that affordable housing is expensive to build—so expensive that an apartment with a yard, a garden, a pool, a garage, an ADU…
The time for an appeal of the Alice Holway Drive Project was three years ago when it was first put in motion. The nature of the appeal should have been the large investment of public funds with such a small return.
But nobody blinked at the price tag; after all, it’s public funds!
Two neighbors filed an appeal of the proposed project, but it was based on land-use issues and meandered through the appeal process for three years before being dismissed. The neighbors argued that the project should have been reviewed under the state’s Act 250 law and that the project’s density would violate local zoning regulations.
Earlier this year, the Vermont Supreme Court upheld the Vermont Environmental Court, clearing the way for the project.
Ka-Ching!
Since then, the land use appeals reform proponents have pointed to the three-year-long appeals process as an example of how “popular and necessary housing construction is derailed, delayed, or diminished by a small number of folks abusing the appeals process who have no direct skin in the game and are reluctant to welcome new neighbors.”
Ouch!
“While appeals are valuable in certain cases, they also drive up costs, affecting every homebuyer, renter, and builder in Vermont. When the project involves public money, appeals also drive up costs for taxpayers.”
Elizabeth Bridgewater of Windham & Windsor Housing Trust reported that the appeals process added $2 million to the project’s cost, or about $80,000 per unit.
There was no mention that the units started at a half million dollars each pre-appeal.
If there is to be any weeping and gnashing of teeth over the cost of this project, it is not due to the appeal but to the “illusion of truth” that is applied to the “that’s how much housing costs” claim made by those that “have no financial skin in the game.” (Callback to the dismissal of the neighbors by the reform proponents)
The fact that public figures can get up in arms over the cost of the appeal and ignore the project’s overall cost is an abdication of fiduciary responsibility.
How can so many agencies and authorities partner with so many non-profits and for-profits and not get a handle on the true construction cost?
Mom-and-pop developers, who provide 80% of Vermont’s affordable housing, somehow manage to buy the same building supplies, hire the same crews, and produce housing at a fraction of the cost. Yet, the wagons circle the Alice Holway Drive Project in Putney to defend the indefensible.
There is no excuse or justification for using public funds to build apartments that cost a half-million each and then cry that the appeals process is driving up costs.
It’s a red herring.
Publicly funded housing costs are high because that’s what leadership is willing to pay.
Vermont State Leadership claims that appeals reform will “add to Vermont’s housing stock more quickly, make affordable housing even more affordable, and give taxpayers a better return on their housing investments.”
I propose that public funds be put in the hands of those producing affordable housing at a rate of 4 to 1 over the housing industrial complex machine and at one-tenth of the cost. This would add to Vermont’s housing stock more quickly, make affordable housing even more affordable, and give taxpayers a better return on their housing investments!
“Meaningful reform” of the appeals process is a red herring, a distraction from the real issue, which is the need for “meaningful reform” of the housing funding process that overspends and underproduces.
