COLCHESTER — Jacki Murphy, the Colchester Selectboard clerk, looked around a newly finished one-bedroom apartment at 33 Ethan Allen Ave. on Monday afternoon – a far cry from the dorm room she lived in when the row of houses was owned by St. Michael’s College.
Now owned by the Champlain Housing Trust, the apartment is one of 20 affordable rental units ready for occupancy by renters of various income levels, including some who are unhoused, officials said at a press conference Monday.
“I think it’s fabulous and a great use of historical buildings for a need that’s tremendous,” said Murphy.
The trust is also converting two other former dorms nearby into a total of 65 permanently affordable apartments, according to its CEO, Michael Monte.
But while officials touted the project as a success story, they had in fact assembled Monday to call attention to a missed benchmark. Chittenden County has once again failed to hit a housing construction target set by the Building Homes Together campaign, an effort led by the Champlain Housing Trust, the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and nonprofit developer Evernorth.
The campaign set a goal of creating 5,000 new homes in the county by 2025, a quarter of which it aims to make permanently affordable.
It produces an annual scorecard that tallies completed housing units across Chittenden County against the goals of the housing campaign, which launched eight years ago.
The campaign has aimed for 1,000 units per year over a five-year period. Just 720 units were built in 2023, 615 in 2022 and 982 in 2021, according to data presented by Charlie Baker, executive director of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission.
Additionally, out of a goal of 250, only 125 affordable units were added to the mix last year, he said.
“Failing to meet targets means it’ll just take us longer to get to healthier communities and a healthy housing market,” Baker said in a press release.
Despite significant federal pandemic relief funding and the state making major new investments to build more housing, approving the Home Act and enacting temporary reforms to Act 250 – Vermont’s more than 50-year-old land-use law – officials said the data shows continued housing production shortages in Chittenden County and statewide.
“We still are in a situation where we are investing in affordable housing and the market is producing higher-end housing. The missing part is the middle, so I’m really hoping that the regulatory reform will help with that,” Monte said, adding that he is looking forward to statewide housing targets that the Department of Housing and Community Development is expected to announce by the end of February.
Housing leaders on Monday urged the Legislature to invest in infrastructure funding and regulatory reform to combat housing production shortages that have led to vacancy rates hovering around a dismal 1% and waitlists growing for subsidized housing in the region. Champlain Housing Trust’s waitlist, for instance, can take an applicant 15 months from applying to lease signing, according to the press release.
Statewide, the latest Vermont Housing Needs Assessment estimated the state needs to add 24,000 to 36,000 new housing units to meet demand over the next five years.
Underscoring the scale of the statewide need, Nancy Owens, president of Evernorth, urged residents to advocate for more housing by attending zoning meetings, writing letters to editors and talking to their neighbors.
“So I just challenge all of us to act on the knowledge that more housing in our community is better for all of us, and to join in that chorus of ‘yes in my backyard,’” she said.
Corrections: An earlier version of this story misspelled the Champlain Housing Trust and misidentified the person who lived in a dorm room at St. Michael’s College.
