[R]UTLAND — The house at 60 Cleveland Avenue once had the dubious distinction of being among dozens of blighted properties owned by the city of Rutland.
Today, a recently erected dark gray home equipped with solar panels and heat pumps belies the rat-infested structure that until recently stood on the premises. A New York City couple, Lucas Hough and Martin Schreiner, own the house as of this week.
“It hasn’t sunk in really,” Schreiner, a food blogger and part-time opera singer, said during a press conference in front of his new home on Thursday. “I mean, who wins a house?”
Schreiner and Hough, a pathologist’s assistant, were among 165 applicants who entered an essay contest held by Green Mountain Power earlier this year.
“I was impressed with their passion, focus on community and the environment, and commitment to becoming ambassadors for Rutland,” said Mayor Dave Allaire.
The nine other finalists can receive $10,000 if they purchase a home in Rutland before next September, said Mary Powell, CEO of Green Mountain Power.
Hough said the couple became enamored with Vermont after attending a friend’s wedding in Tinmouth last year. In addition to not being able to afford a home in Washington Heights, a gentrifying neighborhood in northern Manhattan, Schreiner said the couple had limited control over the energy they used or their “carbon footprint.”
“Everyone (in New York) is cramming their apartment with house plants to try to reclaim nature,” he said.
Stephen Costello, vice president of GMP, said the idea for the “innovation home” contest stemmed from an Associated Press article he’d written in the 1980s about a Maine island. To combat a declining population of year-round residents, Frenchboro offered low-cost homes to six families willing to relocate to the remote island.
Aware of the city’s possession of liability homes in northwest Rutland, Costello came up with an idea that he hoped would attract people to the neighborhood.
“We’ve been doing small-scale house work here — energy makeovers — but not a whole home,” he said. GMP purchased the Cleveland Avenue property from the city for $1. Brandon-based Naylor and Breen Builders, along with over 70 other partners, built the home using almost entirely donated time and labor, said Costello.
The “fossil fuel-free” home has solar panels, two Tesla powerwalls that store excess energy and provide backup during power outages, an electric car charger, air source heat pumps and a wood pellet stove. Innovative technology and efficiency measures in the home will lower heating costs by around $90,000 over 25 years, according to GMP spokesperson Kristin Kelly.
The Cleveland Avenue home giveaway is the latest development in an ongoing effort by GMP and others to revitalize northwest Rutland. Sharon Davis, longtime area resident and member of the Rutland City Board of Aldermen, said she has seen pockets of northwest Rutland transition from single family homes to multi-family residences with “absentee landlords” who did not carefully select tenants.
One consequence of that shift has been an increase in “residents that you didn’t want in your community who were selling drugs,” she said.
NeighborWorks of Western Rutland, Habitat for Humanity and others have rehabbed homes in the neighborhood — including three drug houses on Park Avenue seized by the federal government — to sell to low-income families.
“Sometimes they’re difficult properties to sell because a regular Joe doesn’t have the expertise to rehab a home,” said Davis.
Other neighborhood improvement efforts have included tree planting, an increased police presence, trash pick-up days and restoration of a park, she said.
“I think this speaks to something that’s so individual about this community,” said Schreiner, standing in front of his new home. “It’s reclaiming its narrative.”
Tanner Romano, vice president of the Naylor and Breen, said his company and the project partners he recruited hoped the project would draw people to the area by highlighting available jobs. “We all need qualified employees.”
Rutland has a 3.3 percent unemployment rate — slightly higher than the state’s rate of 2.8 percent — but less than the country’s 3.9 percent rate. The current U.S. unemployment rate is the lowest since 2000.
Davis said the city and Rutland Economic Development Corporation have been working with local colleges to align courses of study with open jobs in the Rutland area. She added that she has seen local students graduate and not be able to find in-state jobs in their field.
“As the governor has been saying, Vermont as a whole is declining,” she said. “We’re getting older.”
