Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dan Jones, of Montpelier, who is a managing partner of Net Zero Vermont Ventures and former chair of the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee.
[W]e are all aware that there is a critical problem for Vermont’s future. Many of our young people are leaving the state, draining us of the future energy we need to thrive. As a corollary, for a rapidly aging Vermont there is a critical problem in attracting and holding young workers. While the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development is mounting a campaign to attract new businesses to the state, they seem to miss the critical fact that not enough young workers are available to build the businesses already here that want them now. I live in Montpelier and have talked to some of the state’s biggest employers, who say they are having a hard time finding young, entry level folks.
Some have suggested that the state adopt a marketing plan, aimed at the youth, which would stress how great it is to live in our state. But I see relying on this form of promotion as another way of saying that Vermont just wants to rest on its laurels. It misses understanding the very real concerns of the young.
Truth be told, pushing our lifestyle isn’t a message that is going to sell right now. Such suggestions mix up Vermont’s jobs marketing effort with our tourism marketing effort. Sure, the romantic Green Mountain messaging works for attracting the middle aged, but that is so last generation. We have plenty of those folks already. Walk down the street in our small cities and see how many gray hairs you see versus the number of young adults. Most of the current thinking misses the real reasons why young workers are not available to build the businesses in Vermont that want to hire them.
Brought up under the spectre of global warming, young people seek a low-carbon lifestyle that is not dependent on cars. For them, such a lifestyle means denser living, even in tiny-house-sized units, close to town.
The first reason is affordability. A recent Pew study showed that almost a third of millennials are living at home with their parents because they can’t afford to pay for an apartment, a car, and repay their student loans too. The second reason is simply finding any housing. Even if young people do get a good job, they need a place to live. It’s hard to find one. In Montpelier, where I live, there is a 1 percent vacancy rate in rental housing. Affordable workforce housing is not available anywhere in the state.
But the biggest – and perhaps most surprising — reason is that there is almost no place in Vermont where young people really want to live. The bucolic ideal of a home and garden on the rural hillsides, which drove their parents’ generation to settle here, has changed. Brought up under the spectre of global warming, young people seek a low-carbon lifestyle that is not dependent on cars. For them, such a lifestyle means denser living, even in tiny-house-sized units, close to town.
Numerous studies by Neilson, Pew Research and Public Interest Research all show a common pattern of millennial needs and desires. These studies reveal that young people want to live not just in a beautiful place, which Vermont certainly is, but also in denser population centers with plenty of shops, restaurants, theaters and music, as well as very close proximity to work (or failing that, great public transportation) so they don’t have to drive. Burlington is the only place in Vermont that currently fulfills that yearning.
If we really want to build a future for young people here, we need to listen more carefully to them. Our parking-cratered cities need to be redesigned to attract and house those who demand a different lifestyle. To free up those parking craters for building new housing, we need to find other ways of getting the rural-sprawl commuters into town.
Our challenge is complex. Real economic development means that we have to invest in a sustainable future. It doesn’t mean building more homes upon the far-flung hillsides. It means imagining high-density downtowns for our small cities with all the amenities that make urban living so desirable. The Vermont lifestyle is nice for those who can afford it and who don’t mind driving a lot, but unless we address the housing and transportation needs of young people, we are just not attractive enough to them to keep the economy functioning. It’s time to give up on economic development plans that might have worked 30 years ago but that are meaningless to a new generation. These are hard truths, but ones we must address before our population gets much grayer and infirm.
