Ahead of next week's public hearing, Let's Build Homes has weighed in on Montpelier's new comprehensive City Plan through a lens of housing abundance. Long-term comprehensive plans are the guiding documents that push municipalities to acheive their goals, and it's critical that those goals are well represented by the plan. Read our full letter to the Montpelier City Council below, outlining the key ways the plan could go further to meet housing goals.

Montpelier City Council,

Let's Build Homes is an organization dedicated to creating a future of housing abundance in Vermont. In a nutshell, this means eliminating the unnecessary barriers that we've collectively placed in front of building new homes in Vermont.

At the state level, we've seen the beginning of real movement on this change in approach to housing development in the passage of Act 47 enabling more housing where we can support it, and Act 181 paving the way for both temporary and long term changes to environmental review.

Longer-term comprehensive planning—such as the adoption of a forward looking City Plan—plays a critical role in moving our communities toward a model of housing abundance in the future.

This coming Monday, March 24th you are hosting a public hearing, to receive public input on the proposed update to your City Plan. The key highlights from Let's Build Homes' perspective are:

• A vision for more housing: It is positive that Montpelier is laying out a vision for more housing in Montpelier. However, we believe the draft plan falls short. Building 5% additional housing in the next 8 years will not yield the healthy 5% vacancy rate that the plan calls for. That would assume that the new housing is left vacant or that it is filled by others who already live in Montpelier, netting no new residents for the City. We would recommend the City look to increase the housing stock by 600 homes over the next eight year period, with a target of 75 new homes built per year. That pace is informed by Montpelier's share of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency's statewide Housing Needs Assessment, and would also align more closely with the longer term vision of up to 1000 new units over the next 20 years.
• Expanding Montpelier's designated growth center: Achieving the near and long-term vision for housing in Montpelier will be hard without both infill development and significant development on larger parcels. Most of the larger parcels are privately held and development on them can not be assumed. Inclusion of the Country Club road parcel is a positive component of the plan. Expanding Montpelier's growth center to include all of the areas described as “SmartGrowth areas eligible for Growth Center expansion with pedestrian amenities” will be critical to supporting necessary infill development.
• Maintain a mix of housing types, sizes, occupancies, and costs: Recognition by the City that a wide variety of housing options will build the strongest community moving forward is great to see.
• Amend zoning bylaws: Often the most impactful tools that municipalities have to influence the building of new homes is their local zoning regulations. Montpelier's implementation specifically recognizes this but only calls out the question of where to build sidewalks and who should pay for them. We recommend that the city plan explicitly call for a dramatic streamlining of the City's zoning regulations, in order to reduce the regulatory burden and eliminate costs that new housing projects face, and facilitate new opportunities for the 75 homes needed per year to hit the target of 600 new homes in eight years.

Let's Build Homes appreciates that the City of Montpelier is directionally supporting more housing, however, we don't believe the draft plan will get the job done for you. We hope that the City Council will consider the further steps outlined above. We commend the city in its effort to meaningfully adapt towards a future housing abundance.

Sincerely,

Miro Weinberger
Executive Chair