In our last post we made the case that ROOT Zones (Residential Opportunity Overlay Towns) could be a comprehensive fix to Vermont’s badly broken permit appeals system. However, ROOT Zones could also help address another major housing challenge that is coming into focus as the state completes the Future Land Use Mapping process currently underway: we are not targeting enough area for future housing growth, especially in rural Vermont.

Vermont's housing shortage touches every corner of the state, but it doesn't affect every community in the same way. In our smaller and more rural towns, the challenge is often existential: aging housing stock, declining populations threatening the viability of our small schools and hospitals, and young families priced out or simply unable to find a home. These communities need room to grow. Fortunately, Act 181, passed in 2024, set Vermont on an ambitious and necessary path toward land use reform, and the work behind it reflects a real commitment to addressing our housing crisis. But as implementation of the law moves forward, there are signs that some of its tools may not fully reach the towns that need them most.

The mapping process underway through Act 181 is producing designated growth areas—largely referred to as “Tier 1”—that are projected to cover roughly two percent of Vermont's land, a concerningly small footprint given the scale of our housing shortage, and well short of the upper bound that Act 181 advocates anticipated when Act 181 was passed in 2024. And this two percent projection is a statewide average: rural parts of the state like the Northeast Kingdom are on track to have well under one percent of the land area designated for growth.

The reason for this is that the growth areas are clustered in and around existing downtowns and village centers, which reflects a sound instinct to focus development where infrastructure and community already exist. But because the process relies heavily on existing conditions, it tends to favor municipalities that already have well-defined centers while overlooking those that don't. Many smaller towns simply haven't had the same starting point. Others face the added challenge of existing centers that sit in flood-prone areas, limiting their eligibility under a framework built to map what's already there.

The risk is that Act 181's growth areas end up reinforcing an uneven playing field, offering more opportunity to places that have already grown while leaving rural communities without a clear way to participate.

ROOT zones are intended to close that gap.

A simple tool for communities to choose where to grow

ROOT zones, a proposal that Let's Build Homes is developing and championing this legislative session, would give any Vermont municipality a straightforward, opt-in mechanism to designate new growth areas. At the heart of the concept is what we're calling the Vermont Model Code: a lightweight, off-the-shelf set of development standards that a town could adopt and apply to the areas it chooses.

We envision a Vermont Model Code that has several "steps" of increasing intensity, so that a community can select the scale of development that fits its character and ambitions. A small town looking to foster a modest village center could start at a lower step, while a community ready for more could choose accordingly. The goal of the model code is to solve the hardest, most resource-intensive part of enabling growth—writing a zoning code from scratch—so that towns don't have to. With an off-the-shelf code, communities could skip the years of technical drafting and jump straight to the most important decision: choosing where to enable opportunity.

To be clear, we recognize that zoning is only one piece of the puzzle. Adopting a model code doesn’t magically solve for infrastructure costs or financing gaps. But it is the necessary prerequisite: until the regulatory door is unlocked, those broader challenges are impossible to address. ROOT Zones clear the path so towns can focus on what comes next.

Smart growth, Vermont-style

One of the strongest values Vermonters share, across every region and political perspective, is a deep appreciation for our landscape and our historic patterns of settlement. Nobody wants strip malls and sprawl consuming our working lands and open spaces, and ROOT zones are being built explicitly around that principle. The Vermont Model Code should ensure that new development results in the kinds of places Vermonters already love: compact, walkable village centers with a mix of housing types, neighborhood-scale main streets, and development that makes thoughtful use of every acre it occupies. These are the patterns that defined Vermont's built landscape for generations. Our aim is for ROOT zones to serve as a smart growth tool purpose-built for Vermont, one that actively enables good development in the right places rather than relying solely on preventing bad development in the wrong ones.

This distinction is important for another timely reason. As flood risks shift and some communities find that their historic centers are no longer safe for concentrated growth, ROOT zones can offer a forward-looking path. A town that needs to establish a new center on higher ground could adopt a ROOT zone and have confidence that the resulting neighborhood would be cohesive, well-designed, and reflective of Vermont's built heritage.

Built for towns with limited capacity

Many of Vermont's smaller communities don't have zoning at all, and often for understandable reasons. Traditional zoning codes tend to grow over decades into complex documents that micromanage what people can build on their own land. Administering them requires staff time and expertise that many towns simply don't have.

The Vermont Model Code aims to take the opposite approach. Our goal is to regulate only what genuinely matters for ensuring that individual buildings contribute to a cohesive neighborhood: a focused set of clear, objective standards that keep the code functionally small and straightforward. We're working toward a system where even a single part-time zoning administrator could review a ROOT zone project against a simple checklist and confirm compliance, with no ambiguity and no drawn-out review processes.

Completing the picture for Act 181

Finally, and critically, we are pushing to ensure that ROOT zones can also serve as a qualifying pathway for Tier 1 designation under Act 181. As things stand, many rural municipalities cannot meet the existing criteria for the state's highest-opportunity growth tier, and there is no straightforward mechanism for them to work toward it. ROOT zones could change that. A town that adopts a ROOT zone and its Vermont Model Code would be making a concrete commitment to responsible growth, and we believe that commitment should be recognized with the full suite of state support and streamlined permitting that Tier 1 status provides. Right now, many rural towns are stuck: they lack the capacity to qualify for state help, but can't build capacity without that help. ROOT Zones offer a way out of that trap.

Act 181 set an important foundation for Vermont's land use landscape. ROOT zones could be the tool that completes the picture, making sure every community has a real path to build toward a vibrant, resilient future.