Housing Bill
Remains
Controversial
By M. D. Drysdale

As the legislative session approaches its final weeks, squabbling continues over a bill designed to encourage building more homes in Vermont.

Douglas administration officials continued to say that amendments added in the House of Representatives have damaged the bill so badly that now it will actually discourage the building of new homes. The amendments, which stiffen Act 250 requirements for housing in most of the state, should be removed by the Senate, said Gov. Douglas and Kevin Dorn, who heads the Agency of Commerce and Community Development.

Meanwhile, however, the Conservation Law Foundation sent out an email asking supporters to make sure the Senate does not remove the new requirements.

Removing that section of the bill, the CLF said, "would give a free pass to the sprawl development that is polluting our waters and eating up our open space and farmland," CLF charged.

The bill under consideration would make it somewhat easier to obtain permits to build housing within state-designated downtowns or villages, but it adds new restrictions on building them elsewhere.

Homebuilders’ associations, said Gov. Douglas in Randolph Monday, have told him that on balance, the bill would make it much harder to build new homes in Vermont. That’s because there is very little land to build on within designated downtowns and villages, he said.

Dorn charged that the Act 250 restrictions added by the House "amount to a very significant rewriting of Vermont land use law."

Under the changes made by the House and supported by the CLF, permits for a housing subdivision in a rural area will require builders to demonstrate that the project "Will not substantially detract from Vermont’s historic settlement pattern of compact village and urban centers separated by rural countryside, which demonstration shall be accomplished by contributing to overall densities that are appreciably lower than densities planned for existing settlements within the municipality and region…"

The builder must also demonstrate that the subdivision "will promote an efficient use of land, energy, roads, utilities, and other supporting infrastructure through compact site development, clustering, or conservation subdivision design, in order to avoid conflicts with agriculture, forestry, and other natural resourse-based land uses; and will promote the preservation of open space, as well as the protection of headwaters, streams, shorelines, floodways, rare and irreplaceable natural areas, necessary wildlife habitat, wetlands, endangered species, productive forest lands, and primary agricultural soils."

These proposed criteria, Dorn said, are "fraught with subjectivity… a lawyer’s dream" that would make it hard to know what’s permitted and what’s not.

Orange Co. Sen. Mark MacDonald, when asked his opinion of the bill in the Senate, said he expects to support it. Much of the problem of affordable housing in Vermont, he believes, is that wealthy out-of-staters are paying so much for second homes that it is driving up the price and cutting availability for Vermonters.