This commentary is by Paula DeMichele, a past member of the South Burlington Affordable Housing Committee.
In mid-2019, I moved to Dorset Street in South Burlington. Because I had already been attending its Affordable Housing Committee meetings for six months as a guest and an affordable housing advocate, the City Council appointed me to the committee.
Over the next year, I watched and listened to the mutually divisive conflicts between committee members and advocates of land conservation.
A recent Vermont Digger article about conflicting positions on land development regulation changes suggested by the South Burlington Planning Commission failed to give an impartial view of the issues in this discussion. The photograph used of “McMansions” described as a “Louisa May Alcott” neighborhood does not represent average home size in the city’s southeast quadrant, and even less current building there.
A model development on Dorset Street called South Village, which takes in both housing and conservation, has been in progress for years. Circling South Village is a green belt of 130 acres of forest lots and green space, conserved permanently as public land. Fronting the main road is a conserved farm. In the South Village build, conservation and mixed-income housing balance each other. With many permanently affordable units already built, S.D. Ireland is completing 22 more such houses and condos required by the Development Review Board.
Yet not only will S.D. Ireland make zero profit from these units, concessions made to neighbors on house design have required a developer subsidy of $30,000 per unit to keep prices in an affordable range. That subsidy amount includes 2020 national inflation costs of 6% for housing materials, but also the required city impact fees for building. In South Burlington, these fees amount to $50,000 per affordable unit.
Burlington forgives all city impact fees on affordable housing units. Is the South Burlington City Council willing to give up the impact fees that pay toward the dog park, SoBu Night Out, Senior Center and other city-supported activities to enable more affordable housing units to be built?
And the total picture for future housing in South Burlington must include not only the southeast quadrant, but the new transit overlay districts created as adjuncts to the inclusionary zoning code. These two districts run down Williston Road and Shelburne Road/Route 7. They are targeted as areas for higher density conglomerate housing builds.
Unlike large areas of the southeast quadrant, where infrastructures for water and sewer lines must be extended, housing construction in commercial areas accesses larger areas of existing infrastructure tied to new builds.
That leads into the one issue that drags on building everywhere in Chittenden County — the inflated price of land. David Mullin, executive director of Green Mountain Habitat for Humanity, said to me in July that the biggest block to building Habitat houses in South Burlington is the cost of land. The same costs weigh on Champlain Housing Trust, S.D. Ireland and other developers.
As an example in South Burlington, a single corner lot on Kennedy Drive and Hinesburg Road, zoned for either commercial or residential development, was listed in 2019 at the market price of $1 million. Without direct intervention by the city council to support affordable housing construction, the land will likely be used for a commercial build, which brings in not just more profit, but higher tax income for the city.
The building backlog of all types of housing in Chittenden County is directly tied to the high cost of land, yet that reality is not mentioned in articles citing the lack of housing. The price of land on Williston Road or Route 7 makes use of the transit overlay districts for housing problematic. Even should an owner want to sell, funding just of land purchase could run into millions.
Another issue is requirement of a percentage of affordable units in most housing builds through municipal and state statutes. Municipalities must vote this requirement into regulations. Outside of Burlington and South Burlington, few places have done this.
The Harvard Joint Center for Affordable Housing just issued a study about affordable housing in the six states of the Northeast. Over all six states, 46% of renter households are cost-burdened — that is, paying more than 30% of income for housing. Some states, notably Massachusetts, have state laws that can compel municipalities to accept developments including affordable units.
Only 0.5% of municipalities in Vermont have inclusionary zoning. Even with such zoning codes and incentive bonuses, there is no magic bullet as long as the cost of land in South Burlington and city impact fees remain this high. And the Vermont Legislature has so far shown no interest in considering a state statute compelling affordable units more comprehensively.
Finally, in the arguments over remaining south Burlington forest lots vs. housing, full weight has to be given to what has just emerged at the World Conference on Global Warming — every country must stop deforestation. The tree canopies are the major natural element cooling the planet and their destruction must stop. Reducing such a complex reality as survival of a livable Planet Earth for everyone to an argument over one part of a city where there are other options for new building is too one-sided.
