This commentary is by Alden Wicker, a homeowner, journalist and author who lives in Windham.
In 2014, I bought an income-restricted co-op in Brooklyn for $250,000. The market price for that apartment would have been around $650,000, but it was under New York City’s Housing Development Fund Corporation, a low-income housing cooperative with rules to prevent these units from becoming investments instead of homes. If your income is below the neighborhood’s median and it will be your primary home, you qualify. When you sell, you pay 30% of your profits back to the building in a flip tax so it can make capital improvements. You can only rent it out for a few months at a time. That affordable housing, with all its rules and regulations, allowed me to be a journalist who pursued poorly paid but important stories while also putting money away.
When the pandemic hit, my husband and I made a now-cliché decision to purchase a second home in Vermont. Look, I’m not saying buying a big old farmhouse in desperate need of repair ended our marriage, but it certainly didn’t help. The renovation took much longer and cost much more than it needed to because of Vermont’s severe construction labor shortage. My marriage suffered, then ended. But I stayed.
I knew that I was part of the problem. I heard the conversations at the grocery store and the hardware store about the lack of employees and housing for those employees. But I justified it: This house used to be a vacation house anyway! It’s too big for me to live there alone! I donate to the volunteer fire department! I patronize local businesses!
I was kidding myself. It’s been shown everywhere from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Portugal that when people who earn their money elsewhere move in, they push the cost of living and home prices so high that it far outpaces the economic input they provide. They just don’t buy enough lattes or pay enough to the cleaning crews to create meaningful attendant wage increases for locals. It’s just consumption, not a true contribution to what makes Vermont so special.
We need more than just tourism money. We need a high tax on second homes.
The argument that second-home owners don’t use the schools or healthcare is shortsighted. They complain about the lack of good restaurants, the limited business hours, how they can’t find a good handyman, contractor, house cleaner or babysitter, and how the local plumber won’t even call them back. Believe me, I know. I was one of them. But to have a thriving economy with diverse businesses, you need young folks who live here full time. To have young folks, you need good schools, accessible healthcare and affordable housing.
Just as I was struggling to pay for the final round of renovations on the house, I came across a dream job in Vermont. But there was only one problem: I couldn’t be paid a salary in Vermont and keep the Brooklyn apartment. So I had to choose: Vermont full time, or New York City full time.
I had fallen in love with the summer drives, stopping at yard sales and pay-what-you-can cookie stands. It was deeply satisfying to build a fire in the stove after two hours snowshoeing through the silent woods. I found it soothing to listen to Vermont Public and hear how the Republican governor and Democratic Legislature have been respectfully debating how to unravel the Gordian knot of healthcare, housing and education. So one day I drove down to Brooklyn, packed up the rest of my belongings and staged the apartment for sale. I wept as I took one final look at the sunset view, then left. That era was over.
I could have been mad at New York for limiting me. Instead, I respected the system for doing its job: giving middle-class people an opportunity to live and work in the city. It was time for someone else to pursue their dreams with the support of a small one-bedroom they could call their own.
Many city folk who have bought second homes in Vermont don’t make that choice. They finish their renovations and decide that they actually don’t like living here. Or their jobs call them back to the city. In any case, instead of putting that house on the market or renting it to a young couple, they just decide to turn it into a short-term rental.
A higher second-home tax wouldn’t solve all our problems. We also need to reduce the ability for a few strong-willed people to reject apartments and smaller homes, and we need to fund sewage infrastructure updates. Lifting restrictions on building in dense downtowns with Act 181 is also a great step in the right direction.
But financial incentives need to change. I could imagine a tiered system where unwinterized family camps and cabins are left alone, mid-value second homes owned by Vermonters and rented long-term are in the middle, and high-end rentals owned by out-of-state corporations are taxed the highest.
Some second-home owners could absorb the higher costs and thus contribute more to making Vermont a supportive state for families and young people. For some, this would change the economics, and they would put their house on the market or switch to long-term rentals.
As I finished the house renovation, my contractor shared that in his nearby neighborhood, he was one of the only full-time residents left. Just him plowing the snow in front of a half-dozen vacant houses.
So imagine my delight a year later when I pulled up to a house right across the street from him. Some friends and I had come together to help a young couple in their long project to turn a vacation home into a home-home. While the very pregnant wife passed out watermelon and fresh-baked cookies with help from her enthusiastic toddler, our group of friends worked with the husband to put in a fence, tape and mud the drywall, paint the interior window trim and put in plants in the front.
It was one of my favorite days I’ve had so far in Vermont. Being grounded here in community, feeding and helping each other, is what Vermont life is made of. I wish that more people could have the privilege of experiencing a cozy home, good neighbors, pulling together and putting down roots.
But as long as we reward people who treat houses as investments instead of homes, that life will remain out of reach for too many.
