By Angelo Lynn
Editor’s note: Angelo Lynn is the editor and publisher of the Addison Independent, a sister publication to the Mountain Times.
An important concept in building new housing was recently articulated by Devon Neary, executive director of the Rutland Regional Planning Commission. “Housing,” he said, “doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere. I think what’s most critical is that the city of Rutland is really laying the foundation for significant housing growth.”
Rutland and its county, as most of us know, has been losing population since area marble quarries declined in the 1970s-80s. But even though its population has been in decline, it also needs significant new housing to meet its needs, which were pegged at 7,000 new units for renters and homeowners by 2040, or about 450 new units per year.
To have housing meet such demand requires proactive planning, which Rutland has been doing. A year ago, Rutland Mayor Mike Doenges set a goal of creating 1,000 new housing units by 2028, or about 250 units per year. Step 1 was to recognize bureaucratic roadblocks and get them out of the way, that is to remove costs and zoning barriers that hamper building projects. Step 2 is to partner with affordable housing developers, such as the Housing Trust of Rutland County, as well as with area banks and private developers. The housing trust already has 46 new units in the works in two projects.
“It can’t just be the affordable housing organizations that are doing this,” said Mary Cohen, executive director of the Housing Trust of Rutland County. “It’s a lot of private developers that need to step to the plate as well.”
But because the market won’t support affordable housing without public subsidies, special programs have to be developed. Doenges and the city has worked with the Rutland Heritage Family Credit Union to launch a program called “Roofs over Rutland,” which recently received $8 million to provide low-interest rate loans to developers. That money came from a fund set up by State Treasurer Mike Pieciak, called “10% in Vermont.” Since the rollout of the program last month, about a dozen housing development loan requests have been made.
Other steps to boost housing development in Rutland city include the reduction of “prohibitive” permitting fees and wastewater water allocation permits, which were lowered from $4 per gallon to 25 cents per gallon for residential developments.
The Rutland Regional Planning Commission also recently published a housing guide for developers with the goal of “bringing clarity to the housing production process” to help developers manage the city’s permitting process and better contain costs.
Neary has said the document “has been monumental in removing some of the barriers, especially information barriers for accessing public money and incentives for housing development and really bringing resources directly to those developers’ fingertips.”
None of these action-oriented ideas have met the city’s current demands, but they are steps that don’t cost a lot of money, tap into existing grants and funding to help subsidize affordable housing, and let developers know the community is trying to pave the way for more housing developers to build and sell at a modest profit.
The Vermont Housing Finance Agency is the group that estimates housing needs for each county and major population centers, and its data profiles per town and county provide much needed information about current housing demographics, including projections of about 30 new housing per year in Addison County from 2020-25 — far less than what’s needed. A 2021 report by the Addison County Housing Trust found Addison County needed 230 new housing units at that time to meet demand, and a Vermont Futures Project report suggesting the state reach a population of 802,000 reported Addison County would need to build 358 housing units per year through 2035 to meet that lofty goal.
Those big housing numbers would help fill area schools, staff area businesses and hospitals to near capacity, reduce high labor costs, and create more vitality throughout our communities. The same is true even if the number of new housing units is a more modest 100 per year. The point is to meet existing demand, not continually fall behind.
Of the several recommendations the Vermont Housing Finance Agency suggests for communities interested in tackling the problem, one is to establish a local Housing Committee to examine obstacles the town may be posing to developers, listen to local developers and address their concerns, help connect developers with grants and other funds to subsidize affordable housing units, and identify local parcels (perhaps by changing those parcels’ zoning from industrial to high-density residential, for example) that would be suitable for multi-unit developments.
None of this is to suggest Addison County hasn’t been working on increasing housing density and affordability for the past several years. They have been. But a formalized plan and a goal like what Rutland is pursuing, along with removing obstacles that are costly and subsidizing fees that are restrictive, are good ideas to copy. And because providing more housing is the linchpin to help solve the state’s and county’s other vexing issues — lowering the cost of healthcare and education — the sooner we lay the foundation and set achievable goals, the better off we’ll be.
