Carly Berlin

We have skyrocketing rates of homes for purchase and rents and just a really acute shortage of homes.

So many different things, right?

I mean, this is partly due to just how much it costs to build housing here and everywhere.

We have an aging workforce in Vermont.

We're one of the oldest states in the country.

And so people who have made their living in the construction trades are retiring and not enough younger workers are replacing them.

And we have zoning rules and particularly statewide land use rules, environmental regulations that were put in place in the 70s in a moment when Vermont was seeing a lot of development around ski towns, in particular in an era when there weren't a lot of land use rules to kind of look at that development as it was happening.

And so there were these laws put in place that were really meant to

scrutinize and and slow down building in a lot of ways and now that's coming back to bite us and i understand that there are a lot of different things that people are trying to do to alleviate this housing crisis including looking at that land use development law what's changing exactly so this has been a huge topic in the state house over the last couple years that i've been covering closely

And part of the idea of reforming this law called Act 250 is to try to make it easier to build in areas that are already developed in the state.

And then there's a tradeoff in kind of increasing environmental regulations in areas that are deemed kind of important, significant natural resources.

Right.

That's true.

This is a place where people care a lot about the environment.

It's a reason why people move here.

It's a reason why people come to visit to kind of have this sense of a place that...

you know you can spend a lot of time outside so that's a it's a huge draw and oftentimes um seen as this sort of balancing act and this real tension between wanting to conserve land and recognizing that we also need to build housing to really get a healthy market here yeah i can't imagine that with this housing shortage it's got to have a huge impact on the labor force here if people can't afford to live

Yes, huge.

And so part of the workforce problem that I was talking about earlier in terms of building housing hits just all kinds of companies.

I hear stories all the time about employers who are trying to court a new recruit to come move here from out of state and then they can't find housing and they lose that job candidate.