In the real world, it’s an affordability crisis caused by excessive demand driving prices beyond the reach of middle- and low-income Vermonters.
After reading the commentary in VTDigger by Secretary of Commerce Lindsay Kurrle and Secretary of Human Resources Jenney Samuelson, I understand better why Vermont’s housing crisis is so bad. It’s because the administration is almost totally divorced from reality.
How else could they call housing that costs $450,000 a unit “affordable?” How else could they think that we can build our way out of this crisis? How else could they imagine that the root of the problem is a shortage of houses?
In the real world, Vermont’s housing crisis is an affordability crisis caused by excessive demand driving prices beyond the reach of middle- and low-income Vermonters. Too many people want to live here. We can’t solve that problem, but we can mitigate it.
Discourage or prohibit the treatment of houses as investment opportunities. Discourage second and seasonal home ownership. Impose strict limits on short term rentals. Encourage new home construction in the lower end of the market, and discourage new home construction for the wealthy. Require educational institutions that attract students from out-of-state to provide housing for all of them.
These are some of the measures that might collectively have an impact, in contrast to the administration’s proposal that we gut the environmental and development regulations that have preserved Vermont until now as a place with the enviable problem of being too attractive for its own good.
Seth Steinzor
South Burlington
