Editor’s Note: Rutland is setting an example for how to grow local housing.

ANGELO LYNN

An important concept for new housing development was recently articulated by Nevon Neary, executive director of the Rutland Regional Planning Commission. “Housing,” he said, “doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. I think the most important thing is that the city of Rutland is really laying the groundwork for significant housing growth.”

Rutland and its county, as most of us know, have been losing population since the local marble quarries declined in the 1970s and 80s. But even as the country’s population declines, it also needs significant new housing to meet its needs, which were projected at 7,000 new apartments for renters and homeowners by 2040, or about 450 new apartments a year.

In order for housing to meet this demand, active planning is required, which is what Rutland is doing. A year ago, Rutland Mayor Mike Doenges set a goal of building 1,000 new housing units by 2028, or about 250 units per year. The first step was to recognize and remove bureaucratic obstacles—that is, eliminating the costs and zoning barriers that hamper construction projects. The second step is to partner with affordable housing developers such as the Rutland County Housing Trust, as well as local banks and private developers. The housing stock is already building 46 new apartments in two projects.

“It can’t just be done by affordable housing organizations,” said Marri Cohen, executive director of the Rutland County Housing Trust. “Many private developers also need to take action.”

But because the market will not support affordable housing without government subsidies, special programs must be developed. According to the VTDigger article, Donges 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 loans to developers. The money came from a fund created by state Treasurer Mike Pechak called 10% in Vermont. There have been about a dozen home loan requests since the program launched last month.

Other steps to encourage housing development in the City of Rutland include reducing “prohibitive” permitting and wastewater distribution permit fees, which have been reduced from $4 per gallon to 25 cents per gallon for apartment complexes. The Rutland Regional Planning Commission also recently published housing guidelines for developers to “bring clarity to the housing development process” to help developers manage the city’s permitting process and better contain costs.

Neary told VTDigger that the document “has been monumental in removing some of the barriers, particularly the information barriers to accessing government money and incentives for housing, and actually providing resources directly to these developers.”

None of these action-oriented ideas met the city’s current needs, but they are steps that don’t cost a lot of money, leverage existing grants and funding to subsidize affordable housing, and let developers know that the community is trying to pave the way for more developers to build and sell housing with a modest profit.

The Vermont Housing Finance Agency is a group that assesses housing needs for every county and major population center, and its city and county data profiles provide much-needed information on current housing demographics, including projections for about 30 new homes in year to date in Addison County. 2020-25 – much less than needed. The Addison County Housing Trust’s 2021 report said Addison County needed 230 new housing units at the time to meet demand, and a report from the Vermont Futures Project, projecting the state’s population to reach 802,000, said Addison County would need to build 358 housing units per year. until 2035 to achieve this noble goal.

This large amount of housing will help staff local schools, businesses and hospitals close to capacity, reduce high labor costs and increase the vitality of our communities. The same is true even if the number of new housing units is a more modest 100 per year. The goal is to meet existing demand rather than continually fall behind.

Of the several recommendations that the Vermont Housing Finance Agency is offering to communities interested in solving this problem, one is to create a local housing committee to study the obstacles the city may pose to developers, listen to local developers and address their concerns. help developers connect with grants and other funds to subsidize affordable housing, and identify local sites (perhaps by rezoning those sites from industrial to high-density residential, for example) that would be suitable for multifamily developments.

None of this is to say that Addison County hasn’t been working to increase housing density and affordability over the past several years. They were. But the formalized plan and goal that Rutland is pursuing, along with removing costly barriers and subsidizing restrictive fees, are good ideas to copy. And since providing more housing is at the core of solving other vexing state and county problems—lowering the cost of health care and education—the sooner we lay the groundwork and set achievable goals, the better off we will be.

Angelo Lynn