Dear Editor,
I mostly agree with a recent letter to VTDigger about second-home owners, but for one statement. The author says Vermont should encourage industry, but I can tell you that industry cannot survive without workers, and workers cannot survive without a place to live, and there are no places to live.
I have lived and worked here for all my 55 years. I currently own and manage five rental properties and work as a robotics specialist at a local factory. My perspective cuts across a few aspects of this discussion.
First, there is very little housing available. I know this as a landlord. My occupancy rate is 100%, plus I have a long list of people waiting to get in. Second, I work in a factory for a business that would love to hire more people so it can expand, or even enough people to meet current demand — but alas, there is no place for these workers to stay. A big cause of this constant problem is the obsolete zoning rules in this and many other states. These rules make it difficult to develop housing for enough workers to support the current workload, let alone an expansion.
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In addition, Vermont’s hilly geography only gives us so many places to live or develop for agriculture. And there is a large swath of the population that has aged out of the workforce, is too old and is uninterested in creating a granny flat for someone else, even if their property is zoned for a huge lot. These poor veterans of the workforce in America are not able to help with the housing crisis, even if they wanted to.
So tell me, where do second-home owners fit into all this nuanced chaos?
Tray DuClos
Randolph, Vt.
