In January the Vermont Department for Housing and Community Development published statewide and regional targets that provide a pivotal opportunity for Vermont communities to address housing shortages. Derived from the recent statewide housing needs assessment, these targets indicate that Vermont’s housing supply will meet expected demands if it increases by 28,000-41,000 homes by 2030. Despite myriad challenges, Vermont’s communities now have more information and tools available to create housing abundance through national knowledge sharing initiatives and Vermont’s own housingdata.org Housing Resource Toolbox.
According to the state’s new Housing Development Dashboard, Vermont is on track to build 12,500 homes by 2030, half of the homes needed to reach the lower end of the target range. Since continuing this pace would prevent Vermont from rising out of its housing shortage, regions of the state are looking at ways to help their communities bend the curve by unleashing more housing.
To maintain a balanced housing supply in the longer run, Vermont likely needs to create at least 79,000 additional homes between 2025 and 2050. This pace of growth in the housing stock will ensure that the state can meet expected demand, address homelessness, and achieve healthy numbers of homes for sale and rent. However, long-term economic and social vibrancy in the Green Mountain State are highly dependent on a successful increase in the pace of homebuilding in the immediate future. For this reason, the 2030 housing targets are perhaps the state’s greatest beacon on the path to a balanced housing supply.
Regional differences
A balanced housing supply looks different for different parts of the state. To ensure housing targets meet localized housing needs, statewide housing targets are broken down to the regional level, specifically in terms of Vermont’s Regional Planning Commissions. In Chittenden County, the state’s largest region with 26% of the state’s households and 35% of its jobs, the housing supply will likely need to expand by 7,301-10,537 homes in the next 5 years. The smallest region, Mount Ascutney in the Windsor County area, will need 1,207-1,781 homes. Each region is working with its communities to set local housing targets that will promote a more balanced housing market future. This would create an array of community benefits that include moderating increases in home prices and rents, reduced homelessness and increased housing choice.
Resources for Vermont communities
The National Housing Crisis Task Force is a recent effort to share information about local innovations across the country. The task force highlights strategies to transform local housing ecosystems by rapidly expanding production and preservation, without federal systems and programs. According to this task force, “state and local governments have more power than they might realize, more capital than is first apparent, and more capacity than they may have utilized in recent decades.”
As additional local tools become known through the National Housing Crisis Task Force and others, VHFA adds them to the long-standing Vermont Housing Resource Toolbox on housingdata.org. The recently updated toolbox provides resources and best practices to municipal decision-makers and community members to help with planning and developing local housing policy.
Methodology
VHFA researchers developed state and regional housing targets for 2030 and 2050 in conjunction with completing the 2025 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment for the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development. Three of the four state level targets are based on recent rates of household growth, recent estimates of people experiencing homelessness, vacation home rates, and estimates of homes needed to normalize Vermont’s vacancy rates. The fourth target is the lower target for 2050 which is based on a projection of changes to the state’s population between 2025 and 2050. With the exception of Chittenden County, regional housing targets are based on the proportion of households and homes in each region in 2020. Targets for Chittenden County were computed separately because of this region’s unique population demographics, lower vacation home rate and higher incidence of homelessness.
A full description of recent housing development and demographic trends in Vermont is available in the Statewide and Regional Housing Targets appendix to the 2025 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment.
