During the first days of his fifth term in office, Gov. Phil Scott has emphasized a familiar priority: creating more housing across Vermont. At a Tuesday press conference at the Statehouse, members of his administration outlined how they want lawmakers to do that.

They began by underscoring just how sluggish homebuilding across the state has become, pointing to a new set of legislatively-mandated “housing targets” unveiled by administration officials on Monday alongside a map to track them. If Vermont wants to ease homelessness, grow its workforce, fill its schools and encourage more people to move here, the state will need over 41,000 additional homes by the end of the decade, and over 172,000 by 2050, according to the analysis. 

“Right now, we’re only building about a quarter of what we need to meet our targets,” Scott said. “Which is why it’s important we focus on housing this legislative session — especially in areas like appeals and Act 250 regulation to make it faster, easier and less expensive to build here.”

Administration officials want to make it harder for opponents to block new housing projects, particularly in areas where local and state land-use rules have sought to encourage more housing growth. Reforming the appeals process was a priority for the Republican governor’s administration last legislative session, but few of its recommendations made it to the finish line.

This year, the administration will push to raise the standards for when a neighbor of a proposed housing development can challenge it in court, said Alex Farrell, Scott’s housing commissioner. “Unless you can demonstrate that the project is out of line with the local and state land-use regulations, it’s going to be really hard to bring an appeal, unless, then, you can demonstrate some really undue harm,” Farrell said of the administration’s proposal, which he said is modeled off a law from Washington state.

The Scott administration also wants to make changes to a major housing and land-use reform law passed last year. That law took aim at Act 250, Vermont’s statewide development review program, and made temporary carve-outs for some new housing projects while a yearslong mapping process gets underway to determine Act 250’s reach in the future. 

Those near-term exemptions have already shown signs of success, prompting developers to move forward with projects they said they wouldn’t otherwise have pursued. The carve-outs are mainly tied to state-designated downtowns and villages, Farrell said, and administration officials want to expand them to areas served by water and wastewater infrastructure, to give more housing projects a chance to bypass Act 250.

Scott has long cited the added cost, time, and risk the Act 250 process adds to new housing projects. He said his goal is not to tear down the law, which is heralded by some environmentalists.

“I want to be clear, we’re not asking to get rid of Act 250 and land use regulation altogether, because I think we all agree we don’t want houses to litter our mountainsides or development that replaces our farmland,” Scott said. “What we’re asking for is to make it easier and faster to develop in the places where it makes sense, where there’s existing infrastructure, or the ability to add to what’s already there.”  

Officials also want to create more opportunities for smaller towns to build that infrastructure. They proposed creating a new financing program called “Strategic Projects for Advancing Rural Communities,” which would function like a smaller-scale tax increment financing program. The new program would allow municipalities and developers to borrow funding for infrastructure upgrades needed to build a new housing project against its future value, said Lindsay Kurrle, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. 

The administration’s housing policy priorities largely mirror the platform of Let’s Build Homes, a new coalition that launched last week to lobby for loosening barriers to building housing for people at all income levels.

But legislative support for the proposed package — which officials said will be introduced as a bill in the coming days — is so far unclear.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VtDigger and Vermont Public.