News from Vermont Public
Rutland wants to fix a common housing complaint: Prospective buyers can't afford 'modest' homes
Ahead of November's election, Vermont Public has been traveling across the state to find out what issues you want politicians to prioritize. No surprise, housing has been near the top of the list. It's a huge problem affecting older Vermonters who want to downsize, Vermonters with no housing at all, and a large number of working Vermonters who feel like home ownership has become an impossible dream. We got an earful about this in Rutland, where Vermont Public's Nine a Keck picks up the story. Rutland resident Janelle Ron wants so badly to buy her first home, but after two years, she and her partner Katie Manning are still looking. Like, I didn't think that in Rutland, Vermont, to have a modest three bedroom, two bathroom house was going to be a half a million dollars. I mean, you know, we found one that was, what was it, two bedrooms, one and a half bathroom, ranch, and it had massive mold in the basement, and still we were like, "We'll fix it, you know, it's in our budget, we'll live with it, it's fine." But even on that moldy fixer upper, they got outbid. Ron says, having just turned 40, the situation feels crushing. I went to a good college, I got good grades, I played by the rules, I paid my bills, I have a really good credit score, I'm gainfully employed, I'm a director of a team of seven people, and I can't afford a modest two bedroom, two bathroom house. This is not just a Rutland problem, you can hear stories like this all over Vermont, all over the country, and it's complicated. You know, when we look at what's needed in the community for housing, there's something that I like to describe as the housing log jam. This is Rutland Mayor Michael Dunges, he says Rutland has plenty of single family homes, the problem is older Vermatters are hanging on to them, even though their kids are grown and gone, and he don't want to give up the low interest rates they locked in years ago, and why should they, when there are very few newly built energy efficient smaller homes and apartments to downsize too. That's left retirees and people like Janelle and Katie, first time home buyers, stuck. We have to clear the log jam and any time we're building any kind of housing, whether it's market rate housing, affordable housing, or even new single family homes, it's going to start to clear that log jam up in different ways. One way Rutland is trying to clear it up is to create more affordable housing. The kind older homeowners on a fixed income might want to move too, so they don't have to shovel a driveway or mow a lawn anymore. Like here on Forest Street in southwest Rutland, we can actually walk through the neighborhood a little bit too. The mayor and I are standing on an empty lot where the local housing trust plans to build 30 new, mostly one bedroom affordable apartments next year. Six will be reserved for people coming out of homelessness. With the design that the housing trust has, it's a really good fit for what's in demand right now. In addition to the Forest Street project, the local housing trust plans to renovate nine other affordable apartments in the city and create 22 new units in the next 24 months, chipping away at that log jam. Another piece of the housing puzzle, taking advantage of the many empty houses, duplexes and accessory dwellings that sit unused, seems like a lot of property owners have vacant buildings that they're waiting for, waiting for the opportunity to come around, waiting for funding, waiting for whatever inspires them to begin that project. Aaron Jones says state and federal funding available since the pandemic has provided a crucial nudge to many landlords. Jones works with neighbor works of Western Vermont, a nonprofit housing advocacy group in Rutland. He says qualified landlords willing to rent to vulnerable tenants have been able to access funding to bring 48 affordable units online in Rutland since 2020. 67 more are in the pipeline and Jones says funding doesn't come close to meeting demand. But city officials believe middle and higher income housing is also needed to break up the log jam. New development in that area has been harder to come by because traditionally rents in Rutland have been lower than in other parts of the state. But Michael Dunges says they've gone up. That change really opens us up to being profitable for these developers to be able to come in, build the units, rent them out and know that they're going to make money back for their investors. That's the hope anyway. And to encourage it, Rutland is invited approximately 30 larger developers to come to the city later this month to see available properties and meet the local players. But city officials are also trying to use customer service to encourage smaller first-time developers. It's really hard to make development make sense financially. Claire Purcell is a first-time home developer who moved to Vermont during the pandemic to be closer to her husband's family. She says help from city planning and zoning officials has been invaluable in her effort to create seven upscale apartments downtown. The ecosystem as I discovered getting into it of opportunities for funding and tax rebates and all of this is so complex, but navigating it and understanding, okay, is that applicable to me? Can I change what I'm doing so that it is applicable to me? She says a guide created by the Rutland Regional Planning Commission and a state toolkit for housing developers have saved her hundreds of hours of online research. When I was first starting, I opened it up a lot to look at like, okay, I'm at this point what permits do I need? What do I not know that I don't know? An appeal from a disgruntled tenant who had to give up his office for her apartments is delaying things a bit, push back from neighbors as a problem many developers encounter that can add additional expense to a project. Local leaders admit it can be unavoidable. One time Rutland developer Mark Foley is also trying to develop more high-end downtown living in Rutland. He shows me several upper floor apartments he's creating in a historic downtown office building that offer high ceilings, tall windows and nicely appointed kitchens. Renovating historic buildings like this or sites that need extensive clean up is expensive. Rutland is taking a number of steps to help. The city hopes to create a tax increment financing or TIF District next year. If approved by the state, it would enable the city to funnel increased tax revenue from newly developed properties toward clean up or needed infrastructure upgrades. The city has dropped water and sewer rates for housing projects until 2028. Housing developers can also apply for a municipal program that makes increases in local property taxes easier to swallow. The city reduced its permit costs for housing developments. Mark Foley says the permit change alone will save him about a thousand bucks on each of the 24, 1 and 2 bedroom apartments he's creating. Just add that up and in my view I think that the mayor and others saw that at the end of the day the city is benefiting from all this forever. It's why the mayor, Michael Dungis, says he's putting so much emphasis on housing and calling for a thousand new units in the city by 2028. Because that's where the need is, right? If we focus on the housing, if we bring the people here, economic development is a natural occurrence that will trickle down from the pieces that are put in place with the housing. If we don't focus on housing and the city's future, the mayor says, people like Janelle Ron and Katie Manning, that couple we heard from at the start of this story and many more like them will simply move away and buy a house somewhere else. For Vermont Public, I'm Ninie Keck in Rutland.