Rep. Tiffany Bluemle focuses on housing funding and policy as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Prior to being elected to the House, she served as director of Change The Story VT and executive director of Vermont Works for Women. Since 2018, Bluemle has represented Burlington’s South End in the House of Representatives.
In a recent op-ed, Scott administration officials pledged to lead on housing in the upcoming legislative session and characterized the legislature as having “nibbled around the edges” of the issue and being fearful of new ideas.
While House Democrats welcome this commitment to addressing Vermont’s housing needs, it is frankly overdue. As January is right around the corner, it is important to clarify what real leadership on housing looks like — and what it does not.
In the late 1980s, during circumstances not unlike those today — when population growth and development were sending property values soaring past the means of average Vermonters — the Legislature instituted the property transfer tax, or PTT, half of which was intended to support affordable housing and land conservation. By statute, housing built through the tax is to remain “permanently affordable” from one owner to the next to preserve the value of the state’s investment. Vermont’s vision and commitment to housing was bold and pioneering. Indeed, it has influenced housing policy nationally and abroad ever since.
The additional magic of the PTT, if fully realized, is that every dollar appropriated from the transfer tax to housing has historically attracted an additional $2 of outside investment, making it the best and highest use of our tax dollars. By not using this money for the purposes stated in statute, we have short-changed low-income Vermonters who have desperately needed housing. This was avoidable.
Yet, every year since he took office, Gov. Phil Scott’s budget has recommended significant reductions to affordable housing and conservation’s share of the PTT – last year by two-thirds. The Legislature doesn’t fear bold policy. Indeed, it has embraced a full range of new housing initiatives in recent years: a program to rehabilitate rentals that are offline or not up to code, development subsidies to create “missing middle” housing, grants for first-generation homebuyers. What the General Assembly has opposed is funding such initiatives at the expense of projects that will produce perpetually affordable housing for low-income residents of our state. Each year, the Legislature has found a way to do both.
Twice we have passed legislation to create a rental registry to develop an accurate picture of the scope of Vermont’s rental housing stock. The governor vetoed the first bill and threatened to veto the second unless the registry was stripped out. The absence of comprehensive housing data — including data related to short-term rentals — compromises our capacity for long-term housing planning and results in a piecemeal approach, with individual towns and cities trying to tackle the issue in a vacuum. It slows our ability to address the needs of landlords and tenants in the event of an emergency like this summer’s flooding.
Finally, the administration has repeatedly failed to develop a long-term plan for Vermont’s unhoused citizens. From the outset of the pandemic the Legislature asked the administration to develop a plan for sheltering Vermonters housed in motels. Year after year, we received no such plan. The Legislature called upon the governor to negotiate lower rates with motels to stretch out federal money. He said he could not. In January, the governor presented a budget that made no provision for sheltering unhoused Vermonters beyond March 2023. Extending vouchers beyond that deadline necessitated legislative action.
The Legislature’s approach to housing is anything but hesitant. The final FY24 budget authorized an historic investment of $158.6 million dollars in housing-related initiatives. We passed a series of permitting and zoning reforms that raise the threshold to trigger an Act 250 review in designated areas and require towns to allow duplexes to be built in areas zoned for single family homes. In anticipation of the coming session, committees have teed up bills to help keep people in their homes by offering assistance in paying off rental arrears, boosting rental subsidies, and reducing the number and impact of evictions through an out-of-court diversion pilot modeled on successful programs in other states.
Since 2019, with the help of federal Covid-19-relief funding, the Legislature has invested nearly $1 billion dollars to build, house and expand supportive services to Vermonters in all 14 counties, including over $170 million in direct payments to property owners and landlords to maintain tenancies. In many cases, we’ve worked hand-in-hand with the Scott administration to advance these policies. Other times, we’ve had to overcome the governor’s opposition — including his June 2023 veto of the FY24 state budget, which included critical, time-sensitive funding for this work.
Like many states across the country, Vermont is facing a housing crisis that’s been decades in the making. There’s no simple solution: Addressing it will require innovative programs and policies, hard conversations about land use and NIMBYism and a sustained, substantial investment. In the Legislature, House Democrats have been — and remain — fully committed to this work. This January, we look forward to working with the administration to invest the time and resources needed to deliver the housing and supportive services that Vermonters deserve.
