2024 TOP 10 BLOG
Balancing the Need for Housing and Conserved Land in Vermont
VJEL Staff Editor: Nathaniel Launer
Co-Author: VT Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale
Throughout the country, rural communities and states are trying to balance the need for housing and conserved land. In June of 2023, two important pieces of legislation passed through the Vermont General Assembly that will determine this balance in Vermont. The Housing Opportunities Made for Everyone (HOME) bill was enacted on June 5, 2023. The HOME Act amends planning and permitting requirements to address the housing crisis—especially the lack of affordable housing—in Vermont. The Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Act (CRBPA) was enacted just six days later on June 12, 2023. The CRBPA establishes the goal of conserving one-third of Vermont’s land by 2030, and half of Vermont’s land by 2050. Balancing housing and these conservation goals will be challenging. The right place to start, perhaps, is with a conservation plan that ensures the benefits and burdens of the conserved land will be shared equitably by all Vermonters.
The CRBPA states that the Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (VTANR) “shall lead the effort in achieving” the act’s land conservation goals. The CRBPA requires the Secretary to work in consultation with the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB) to create a “conservation plan” to achieve these goals. While leading the effort to achieve these goals and create the conservation plan, under Vermont’s environmental justice statute the Secretary of VTANR must consider “access to environmental benefits” and the “cumulative environmental burdens” of conserved land.
Environmental Benefits of Conserved Land
As the CBPRA states, conserved land provides the important environmental benefit of supporting biodiversity with habitat and migration corridors for wildlife. A report prepared by the Trust for Public Land with support from the VHCB states that conserved land also provides the benefit of valuable ecosystem services such as “flood control, and carbon sequestration and storage.” Conserved land also provides economic benefits. According to the report, conserved land helps maintain an “intact working landscape” which supports a farming industry that “produces $786 million in agricultural commodities” such as dairy products and maple syrup, and a forest products industry that “generates $1.48 billion” of annual revenue. The report further states that conserved land supports the state’s tourism industry which provides approximately $2.61 billion in annual tourist spending. Lastly, conserved land also supports the outdoor reaction industry which “generates $505 billion in annual consumer spending,” and “supports 51,000 jobs.” It is because of these benefits that Vermonters have worked hard to conserve the state’s land.
In the state’s early history, pastoral agriculture and heavy timber harvesting resulted in deforestation, damaging wildfires, declines in wildlife populations, and devastating floods. The environmental degradation prompted communities throughout the state to conserve land in its natural state and manage working and residential lands to conserve the environment. In 1924, private land was donated to the state and was conserved as Mt. Philo State Park, the first of the now 55 State Parks in Vermont. Then in 1925, the Vermont legislature approved the purchase of land that established the now approximately 400,000-acre Green Mountain National Forest. In 1957, however, the construction of the interstate highway stressed the land in a different way. The highway opened the state to more people, resulting in the development of land for residential properties, ski resorts, and accommodations for quickly increasing numbers of tourists. To prevent private land from being overdeveloped, municipalities established strict zoning regulations such as minimum lot sizes for residential properties and prohibited mobile homes in certain districts. Then in 1970, the state legislature enacted permitting requirements for large developments through Act 250. In 1987, recognizing the need to balance housing and development with land conservation, the state established the VHCB with the goal of “creating affordable housing for Vermonters, and conserving and protecting Vermont’s agricultural land, forestland, historic properties, important natural areas, and recreational lands.”
The efforts to conserve land and prevent overdevelopment have largely succeeded in preserving an ecologically functional landscape of forested mountains and hills in which small farms, local businesses, and rural communities have flourished. A landscape of scenic beauty that is distinctly, Vermont.
The Housing Crisis
Efforts to conserve land and prevent overdevelopment, however, have contributed to the current housing crisis in Vermont. Strict municipal zoning regulations such as minimum lot sizes prevent homes from being built in rural areas. Moreover, requiring housing developments to be reviewed under both municipal zoning regulations and state Act 250 often prevent affordable and multi-family housing from being built even in designated development areas. Now, according to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, the state “will need 30,000 – 40,000 more year-round homes by 2030.”
The lack of housing is leading to population declines and homelessness across the state. The lack of housing is the main reason why residents are moving away and why young, working-age people are unable stay or move to Vermont. The lack of affordable, safe rental housing in particular, has led to the state having the second highest per capita rate of unhoused residents in the country. These population declines and rates of homelessness are worst in small, rural towns, especially in the Northeast Kingdom. The population decline in these small, rural towns is contributing to the consolidation and closure of local schools that struggle with declining enrollment and hinders economic development. And though it can be less noticeable in small, rural towns, these towns often have the highest rates of unhoused residents. As a result, small, rural towns in the Northeast Kingdom have the highest rates of unemployment, child poverty, and public assistance, and the lowest physical and mental health outcomes in the state.
The HOME Act is the latest effort to address this housing crisis. The Act reforms many of the permitting and regulatory requirements that prevent housing from being built. It reduces the number of required parking spaces per dwelling unit, allows multi-family housing in residential districts, requires the need for low- and moderate-income housing to be addressed in municipal plans, and requires the Natural Resources Board (NRB) to report on the environmental, social, and economic impacts of increasing the threshold for review under Act 250.
Environmental Burdens of Conserved Land
The report prepared by the Trust for Public Land with support from VHCB states that preventing residential development provides the benefit of “fiscal health,” explaining that communities can save money through “avoided costs on expensive infrastructure and other municipal services required by residential property owners, such as schools, police, and fire protection.” But for small, rural towns, struggling with the population decline, reduced economic development, and high rates of homelessness caused by the housing crisis, this is why more conserved land can sometimes feel like a burden. For these small towns, schools and municipal services such as the volunteer fire department, are the heart of the community—not costs to be avoided. Without local schools that serve as the “hub of the community,” Vermonters worry that small towns are going to fall apart. And without municipal services, small towns have a harder time recovering from natural disasters such as the flooding in July, 2023. These small, rural towns need more young families, more students attending local schools, and more working-age adults. These towns need more housing, perhaps more than they need more conserved land.
Balancing
Vermont’s environmental justice policy states that “no segment of the population of the State should, because of its racial, cultural, or economic makeup, bear a disproportionate share of environmental burdens or be denied an equitable share of environmental benefits.” Balancing the need for housing with the state’s land conservation goals will be challenging, but balancing the benefits and burdens of conserved land will be an important place to start. First, the “conservation plan” required by the CRBPA should prioritize conserving land that both supports low-income and at-risk communities and maintains ecological functions. This means the first land to be conserved under CRBPA should be floodplains and mountain forests that provide resilience to natural disasters and the effects of climate change. Prioritizing this land for conservation would reduce the risk of low-income and at-risk communities, such as floodplain mobile home parks, suffering further damage and displacement. It would also encourage towns to plan for the relocation of at-risk communities and prevent future development in high-risk areas. Second, any burdens of conserved land should be distributed equitably throughout the state to support the growth of small, rural towns. This means working to achieve the CRBPA goals at the municipal scale, then perhaps financially reimbursing municipalities for land conserved under the CRBPA in exceedance of its goals. This would prevent the state from achieving the CRBPA’s goals by disproportionately conserving land in a way that limits the ability of small, rural towns to build new housing or otherwise sustain their communities.
Conclusion
Vermonters have long understood the benefits of conserved land. That is why, although 85% of land in the state is privately owned, approximately 78% of the state’s land is forested. While public land conservation, state regulations, and municipal zoning have been an essential part of conserving land, it is the people and communities that have preserved the ecologically functioning landscape and scenic beauty of this state. Farmers and timber harvesters who take pride in their stewardship of the land. Communities of restaurants, art galleries, and general stores that take care to foster local economies. The CRBPA establishes essential goals for protecting biodiversity and maintaining an ecologically functioning landscape in a changing climate. But while achieving these goals, however, sustaining the people and communities who work hard to protect the state’s land is essential.