The Deeper Dig is a biweekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom, hosted and produced by Sam Gale Rosen. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
As Covid-19 infections spiked in major cities last year, a wave of people moved to Vermont seeking safety and community. But months into the pandemic, it was unclear whether those people were making permanent moves — and whether the trend might reverse after infections subsided.
It’s still too soon to know what the long-term effects of pandemic-related migration might be. But many families who found their way to Vermont last year say they’re not going anywhere.
Andrew Frost brought his family from Los Angeles to Guilford in July for a visit. “After about three weeks of being out here,” he said, “we just looked at each other and said, ‘Why would we go back?’”
Frost’s family is buying a home in Marlboro. They have no intention of moving back to Los Angeles, he said — he and his wife can work remotely from Vermont, and the pandemic helped them realize the importance of living their daily lives in a peaceful environment.
The challenge for some transplants, though, is that Covid has tightened the housing market. Home sales to out-of-state buyers spiked in 2020, increasing 38% over the previous year. That’s led to volatility and inflation for would-be buyers and made an already-scarce rental market even more difficult to navigate.
Amie Curran is on Craigslist every day to look for housing, she said. Curran, who grew up in Williston and moved to New York City, is now living with her family in a six-month rental in Richmond. They’re hoping to move to the area full time, but finding a home to buy or rent has been nearly impossible.
“Vermont should have been a very easy transition,” she said. “But it’s just been really difficult to settle.”
On this week’s podcast, four families talk about moving to Vermont in the past year and a half — and why they’re working to stay. Below is a partial transcript, edited for length and clarity.
Keith Marks and his family moved to Putney from Jacksonville, Florida, just before the pandemic so Keith could take over as the director of Next Stage Arts.
Keith Marks: I just kind of felt like this was a much increased and improved way to live for my family. And it offered me the opportunity to run an incredible arts organization and start over in a beautiful place. And a sense of community here that we felt during the interview was really strong.
What do you mean by a sense of community? How did that come out?
Keith Marks: People have reached out to us. People have been very open minded. People have been very curious.
I feel like Vermont has — it’s a really good mix of concerns. There are a bit of liberal values, where people appreciate their independence and their privacy, but they also recognize the need for community. That’s one of the things that was really incredible to see in Vermont during the pandemic was, there was a sense of community. What community health really means is that we’re all connected, we’re all living in community and we need to take care of one another. And that was very apparent, even before the pandemic hit. And the pandemic just kind of, in a very catalyzed sort of way, showed its true colors.
If you read the news, you look at Florida, you get a sense that that’s not exactly where Florida’s values and culture is. So Vermont has a stronger sense of community around when times get tough, when you need something.
Keith said despite the welcoming vibe, his family’s first few months in Vermont had their challenges.
Keith Marks: The pandemic shut everything down. And so the next few months were cold, and snow on the ground, and it felt a little lonely. We didn’t have a network here that we were connected to. So the first few weeks into the pandemic were really, really tough.
I remember my son crying that he wanted to go back to Florida. Thankfully, that was only that one night. The rest of the 16 months have been — Vermont’s amazing. I love it here. He has friends. But that was a hard night for us as a family to wrestle with that. I’ve made this decision to move us 1,200 miles from what we’ve known, and — will I have a job in six months? Will my wife be able to find work here? Will the kids continue to be able to thrive here?
When Next Stage was forced to go virtual with its events — and when Keith realized there was a whole wave of newcomers arriving in the state — he set up a program called “Meet Your New Neighbor” to help people connect.
Keith Marks: The format that has evolved organically is that we invite two families on to be highlighted for about 20, 25 minutes. We ask them to bring a couple photos so that there’s a point of departure that we can look at. We give one family that time, and then we flip it to the other family. And then we use the feature of breakout rooms to allow the audience to become more interactive. The breakout rooms are where community members can say, “Oh, you’re looking for a good place to buy your milk? Well, this farm has really great milk.”
It’s an opportunity for people to interact. I didn’t want them to feel like they’re on stage. More of a conversation. That’s essentially what it has turned into.
Keith has now spent months connecting dozens of families with locals and with each other. On the question of whether people are sticking around, he’s optimistic.
Keith Marks: Obviously, I don’t want a global pandemic to occur, and any loss of life is a sad one. But the collateral that is happening is that we have new families, new energy — people moving here from New York, Boston, D.C., Philly. And they’re really excited to roll up their sleeves and get engaged here. And for that, I feel like we really, as a community, should welcome this new energy and these new families, people who are going to take the mantle and make this place even more amazing for the next few decades.
It’s been hard to quantify how many families we’re talking about here. But tax data analyzed by the state showed a 38% jump in home sales to out-of-state buyers in 2020. Those sales skewed toward more expensive properties — the overall real estate value jumped 79% — and the trend was concentrated in ski areas such as Stowe, Ludlow and the Mad River Valley.
That’s led to a squeeze on the housing market that doesn’t seem to be easing up. One couple I talked to said they were only able to land a place because it was such an unusual property: They called me from inside their geodesic dome.
How do you find a geodesic dome?
Alex Lockie: I spent weeks just anxiety, doomscrolling Zillow and looking at every listing. It was super intimidating — houses were just flying off. And I was thinking, like, “This must be a mistake. They took the listing down to fix something with the listing.” But no, things were really flying off Zillow in less than a day.
Then this dome gets posted. And I sent it to Jess and sent a link, and she replied, “You must buy it.” So I went ahead and went up there the next weekend. We saw the house once, and I put an offer on it. I wasn’t looking for domes. I wasn’t particularly aware of, you know, domes as an option for living. But ultimately, I think this place being weird and kind of hard to finance is why I got it in such a red hot market.
This is Alex Lockie. He and his partner Jessica Frisco moved to Dummerston from New York City in January.
Alex Lockie: I had a big kind of about-face during the pandemic. Basically, the value proposition of New York wasn’t there for me anymore. I didn’t have to live in Manhattan. I didn’t have to go to my office in Midtown every day. So I didn’t have to pay that rent. And also, nothing was open. The city that never sleeps was dead asleep. I wasn’t getting what I thought I wanted out of it.
Jessica Frisco: I think the pandemic was a catalyst. I think I always intended to leave the city to do something like this, to buy a house, to settle down elsewhere. It probably would have been a couple more years of living in the city. But like Alex said, the pandemic just made the city not fun anymore. There was not much to do. I was in my apartment all day every day, just feeling really claustrophobic. I was spending a lot of time with my parents in Connecticut, and it just felt like that was the right time to make a move.
Alex got here first. He was crashing in an office conference room in Brattleboro to save money while Jess got ready to move. Alex is from Georgia. He said he was … not totally prepared for the weather.
Alex Lockie: I had been around town for a month or two, but that was a pandemic winter. I was walking around in sneakers in two feet of snow wondering why my feet have been cold for three weeks.
Jessica Frisco: And we didn’t have anything set up here. We don’t have good internet. We didn’t have any cell, landline. There’s no cellphone service. We didn’t have a wood burning stove. We’re going off of the propane that was in the tank when we got here. The driveway wasn’t plowed at all — there was probably 2 feet of snow in the driveway. I have a Honda Accord that can’t really get through the snow very well. So we were definitely in over our heads the first couple of nights.
And then a huge snowstorm hit, and we lost power. We couldn’t call anyone. We didn’t know any plowmen. We didn’t know anyone in town whatsoever. We couldn’t even get onto the Facebook group or onto Yelp to find anyone, so we ended up staying in a hotel the second night that we lived here, just because everything seemed to go wrong, and it was really hard to get connected.
Jessica Frisco: Initially, it was tough getting trades people in here. We needed an electrician. We needed a plumber. We needed to get hooked up with internet and a landline and a plow guy and all that stuff. And it’s not like in the city where you can just look on Yelp, and there’s a million people, and you call them up and they’re responsive. Here, it’s like, word of mouth, like who’s friends with who, who knows someone. A lot of the tradespeople are really overwhelmed with business now and are only taking requests from friends and family. So you have to know someone and throw in a name for them to even show up to your house.
It really was about getting to know our neighbors and actually becoming friends with them so that they could recommend their tradespeople to come to our driveway, things like that. And it just made us realize really quickly how community focused it is here. It is a small town, and everyone kind of knows each other. And that was so different from living in Brooklyn, where I have 100 neighbors, and I don’t know any of them.
Meeting neighbors helped. The community Facebook page helped, too. Now, Jess and Alex find that people come around just to see how the New Yorkers are doing.
Jessica Frisco: I think there are a lot of people who, once New York City started opening back up, they’re like, “Oh, man, this is the city that I miss and loved before the pandemic.” And people are moving back. Rents are going back up. So I do think there are some people who moved up here kind of in a panic just to escape the pandemic or were like, “Actually, this was nice for now, but I kind of want to go back.”
But I think for people like us, who eventually wanted to move somewhere else and to start a family and to settle down, this is such a spectacular state and community that I think we definitely will stay for the long term. There’s a lot of people who are like us who just pick Vermont just on its own merits, not because they were trying to get out of somewhere else.
I talked to another couple from New York City who said the same: They had zero plans to go back.
Colm Curran: I love it up here. I’m delighted to be here. For example, I went running today, and I ran so far I couldn’t get home. I had to call Amie to come get me. My legs gave in.
Amie Curran: Yeah, some mornings when I run, it just feels like I’m in a tropical place because the mist is on top of the mountains. It feels great. I love my morning runs in Richmond.
This is Colm and Amie Curran. The couple had always talked about leaving the city. But Covid-19 seemed to force their hand.
Colm Curran: I think it hastened up our decision. I think we always knew we were going to leave New York.
Amie Curran: We had a timeframe. We were like, “One more year, and then we’re out.” But we didn’t see the point of staying any longer.
Colm Curran: I was like, “Why don’t we just go there?” We got our rent to go month by month because we’d already started talking about it. And then I was like, “What are we waiting for? Why don’t we just go?”
Amie Curran: We came here last summer for two and a half months during Covid when it was really, really bad in the city. And it was such a breath of fresh air being in Vermont where we could just walk out and be amongst the woods and in the mountains and biking and just being free. Where there aren’t a lot of people around you, where you don’t have to worry about wearing a mask the whole time.
So when we were here last summer and we went back, it was just like, “Yeah, we really have to get out.”
Amie is from the area — she grew up in Williston — so she knew about the winter, the small towns, the racially homogenous population …
Amie Curran: The families here, the people here are very nice, but I’m always looking for the next Black person around.
What she didn’t anticipate was the added pressure of the pandemic housing market.
Amie Curran: I am educated. I have a job. My husband has a job. And so coming back to Vermont should have been a very easy transition. But it’s just been really difficult to settle.
What’s been difficult about it?
Amie Curran: Finding a place to call home. A place of our own.
Amie and Colm moved up in February, and they’re already in their third location. They started out staying with friends, then found a one-month rental in Morrisville, then a six-month stay in Richmond.
Amie Curran: So right now we have no set rental after this one, or no place to go after this one. So we’re just keeping our eyes on the market to rent or to buy.
What do you think is causing that difficulty? Why is it such a challenge to find a place?
Colm Curran: Well, to buy — certainly just as everybody knows, the housing market’s kind of got a little bit crazy. Prices have fluctuated so high. The demand is so high. So even if you’re putting a bid in, you’ve got to bid way over. It already seems that things come onto the market way over their value. So it seems like a difficult time to buy. Maybe we’d rather step back a little bit and just kind of say, “Let’s see if this comes down a little.” We don’t want to have any regret that we maybe rushed into buying a home and overspent. And then we’re living with a challenging mortgage or anything like that.
It’s just difficult at the moment for buying. In terms of renting, it looks like there’s just obviously not a lot of options. Even in Richmond, a much smaller place. But I really like it here. We would love to stay in Richmond. But obviously, knowing that we’re in a smaller populated area, we’ve definitely limited our options in terms of availability of rentals and to purchase a home.
Amie Curran: We keep our eyes on the rental market. Every day, I’m looking through Craigslist.
Colm and Amie have a daughter in the school system, and they’ve already got neighbors helping them keep an eye out for properties.
Amie Curran: People are always texting us and telling us that a new house is up and that we should check it out. And so they are always so supportive and willing to help. And they’ve been so friendly and have talked to us and everyone because we keep telling people, “Yeah, we’d love to stay here.”
Colm Curran: Everyone’s texts have been, “There’s a home here, or there’s something on Front Porch Forum, you want to check this?” And it’s great. We absolutely appreciate it so much. It’s fantastic. It really makes us feel included for a place we have only been for one month.
Still, they only have a few more months to figure out their next steps. And they know they’re not alone in looking.
Colm Curran: We’re just hoping that within that time, the right thing will come up, and we’ll be able to get it. And that’s the only thing even if it comes up, we know that we’re going to try to get it but like, many other people are going to be in the same boat. So you’re not guaranteed anything, which is difficult.
One family I talked to back in Southern Vermont made it happen — they were just getting ready to close on a house in Marlboro, the same week Vermont dropped its Covid-19 restrictions.
Andrew Frost: It’s funny, because before this all happened, my wife mentioned to me, she said, “We should just do a year in Vermont. And maybe we don’t stay there, but maybe we just take a year in Vermont.” And I was like, “Absolutely not. I’m not ready for that. There’s no way. I need way more social connection than I think I’ll get there. I’m such an extrovert,” like, “I’m just not ready to go live in the woods.”
This is Andrew Frost. He works remotely for a tech company. His wife is a filmmaker. And while Covid-19 didn’t change their work situations all that much, it did get Andrew to reconsider spending some time outside the city. They moved from Los Angeles to Guilford last year.
Andrew Frost: We came to visit family last July. We were going to stay for four to six weeks just to get out of LA, so that we could have a little bit of sanity. And after about three weeks of being out here, we just looked at each other and said, “Why would we go back? It’s really wonderful here. We have nature. We have space, and we have internet.” And I wasn’t able to get more time off. But my wife got on a plane and flew back to Los Angeles and packed up our entire apartment into two storage units and drove our car back across the country.
And we didn’t know if we were going to stay in Vermont, or if we were going to go back to LA or do something else. We just knew we needed a year here. And after spending about six months here, we decided we’re going to stay and started looking for houses.
Wow. When you say, “Why would we go back?” — what are the factors that you’re considering there? What are the major reasons that you felt like, “we don’t need to go back to what we were doing before”?
Andrew Frost: I think there were a few drivers to that. One. I think that Covid, and all being together at home, definitely made us look at: What is our everyday life? You know, what is it? What does it look like when I wake up in the morning? What am I doing when I’m having my lunch? What is it after work? And gave us a real appreciation for how important our environment actually was.
For us, the environment in Southern Vermont is really wonderful. And we both felt just very much at peace and found some joy, and I think just found something really wonderful about being here, having space around us, being able to go walk in the woods.
When we moved to LA, we moved from North Carolina, and my daughter, as soon as we moved out to LA, she’s like, “No. It’s really not for me.” She kind of got into it, spent three years doing it. But when we got out here, she was like, “I love this. This is great.” And watching her slowly get more comfortable spending time outside, to where she was just wandering around by herself for hours in the woods, playing these games in her mind and existing in this world, was just a childhood that she wasn’t able to have there. And so it was definitely also about giving something to her.
Andrew said he’s confident that there’s a solid contingent of families like his that are done with city living and here to stay. And he thinks that has big implications for Vermont’s future.
Andrew Frost: I’m really excited about the potential that these kinds of demographic shifts have. For communities like Vermont, I do also think it puts a certain amount of responsibility on the folks who are moving in, as well as the folks who are living here, to understand what that’s going to mean — how to think about what our what our responsibilities are to this community and to the culture of this area.
I think there’s Covid refugees that are moving here. I also think we have climate refugees that are going to start moving to Vermont. And I think that it’s a good time for all of us, the folks who are new and the folks who are here, to start paying more attention to what this could look like in the future. Because I think that if we pay attention to it, and start making decisions at a community level, at a county level and at a state level, I think we’ll be able to take advantage of a shift that I don’t think is going to change.
