Letter to the editor: Public lands could be used to help housing crisis

The local housing crisis is complex enough that it will take more than one relief method to fix it.

The Addison County Regional Planning Commission this summer is taking a three-pronged approach to help create more dwelling opportunities in what is currently a super-tight housing market in our area.

A new crop of affordable housing units is taking shape in Bristol. Once completed, the Firehouse Apartments development will provide 20 mixed-income units, with the first tenants set to move in this September. 

In the face of a statewide, ongoing housing crisis, officials in the towns of Lincoln and Monkton are looking at ways to boost housing opportunities in ways that meet current needs and maintain historic growth patterns. 

Two upcoming events will provide Addison County residents with opportunities to witness — and weigh in on — efforts to create more local affordable housing.

Bristol’s planning commission has spent the past several months exploring potential changes to the town’s zoning regulations that would help expand housing opportunities in and around Bristol’s village area.

In my 40-year career in Massachusetts with children and their families, I never knew any family that wanted to remain without a permanent home of their own.

“Can anybody live in Vermont?” asked the two young boys who had been visiting us for a couple of summers in the 1980s.

The Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) on Monday awarded Summit Properties $6,075,405 to help drive down the costs of building 30-40 units of for-sale “workforce” housing.

Local advocates for the homeless continue to battle for resources to assist one of the state’s most vulnerable populations, and they’ve developed another currency — to go along with people power and dollars — to assist in their efforts: Information.

The starting gun has officially been fired on the financing and review of a project that would bring 150-250 units of new mixed-income housing to Middlebury.

Middlebury has earned a Neighborhood Development Area, or NDA, designation from the state for a large swath of property in its core village area.

Three Addison County municipalities are well-positioned to receive a $100,000 grant to plan future housing, bike paths and other facilities that could dovetail with the new passenger rail service in their communities.

Two historic West Main Street properties could at some point add much needed housing stock to the city of Vergennes — one probably sooner than the other, according to the person who owns one and is a member of the partnership that owns the other. 

Addison County’s — and Vermont’s — dearth of affordable housing has been well-chronicled during the past three decades. And 2022 added another sad chapter to a housing dilemma that began to touch all segments of the market.