City council backs workforce housing with loan & letters

The Vergennes City Council recently took two actions intended to help developer Peter Kahn build workforce housing in the city.

Efforts to protect pollinators, grow affordable housing and pass healthcare reform were among the hot topics of the final legislative breakfast of 2024, held Monday at the Weybridge Congregational Church.

With a great majority of Addison County residents agreeing that we are in a housing crisis, there’s broad support for creating new dwellings through zoning changes. People here also favor authorizing more accessory apartments and offering other incentives … (read more)

Mr. Payne’s March 28 letter to the editor got me thinking about a recent article I read in Seven Days concerning aging in Vermont (Getting On: An Aging Population Is Transforming Vermont’s Schools, Workplaces and Communities).

About five dozen Vergennes residents and officials who came in person or by Zoom to the Vergennes Opera House to attend Monday’s citywide Housing Conversation agreed on a basic premise: Their community needs more housing.

The legislative breakfast held at Shoreham Congregational Church with only one Addison County Legislator, Senator Chris Bray present. Shame on the rest!

If you have spent any amount of time in the “affordable housing” rabbit hole, you are aware that research over the last 50 years has shown that nonprofit housing organizations are consistently better at keeping people housed than for-profit housing develo … (read more)

In the spirit of the Living Together series, we cannot live together unless there are homes for people to live in.

Change happens. It happens in spite of us. Change can be random and with unexpected consequences, or it can be carefully planned for and achieve more predictable results.

The Middlebury Development Review Board has unanimously OK’d a mixed-use building on South Pleasant Street that will host offices for Marble Trail Financial and a penthouse residence for that business’s owners.

A lack of available housing created a lot of problems in 2023, not only for folks trying to settle in Addison County, but for various businesses and institutions trying to fill vacancies on their workforce rosters.

The Vergennes City Council last week as expected approved a change in the city’s municipal plan that should pave the way for a substantial number of new housing units in the city’s northeastern quadrant — possibly more than 130.

After hearing from a Main Street property owner and a former city planning commission member, the Vergennes City Council has altered a proposed amendment to the Vergennes city plan to make it less restrictive and allow more new housing than the amendment … (read more)

The owner of two Vergennes condominium and apartment buildings under construction overlooking Otter Creek has been denied a final attempt to avoid an Act 250 permit requirement. 

With affordable and workplace housing a critical need for Addison County and Vermont as a whole, some advocates are working on a plan to expand housing in town centers in a way they say is “gentle.”