If you look at affordability as defined by the difference in what people make and what they need to afford a one-bedroom rental, the Burlington area (the only small metro area in the state) ranks 6 th most expensive out of 119 small metro areas in the country. I also hope that this explanation proves useful to people in other states as well. I think Vermonters deserve a full explanation of exactly how we as a state got here and what our options are to get out of this mess. For the last year or so, I have been talking to housing advocates, elected officials, and everyday Vermonters about housing, and intermittently tweeting about Vermont’s housing problems. I’m naturally interested in the intersection of regulation and markets so I started investigating this question. And why does Vermont have such a bad housing crisis in the first place? I’m a professor in the Political Science department and the International Politics and Econmics program at Middlebury College and I wrote an academic book on regulatory trade barriers. If we are struggling to find something we can afford, how much worse must it be for them. And we feel terrible for people who make less money than we do. For the last two years or so, we have been looking to buy a house here, to no avail. ![]() My family and I moved here in August 2019 and were initially very excited about it. Vermont’s legislature is currently in session and housing is one of the hottest topics. And yet, housing is the single greatest challenge Vermont faces today. Vermont doesn’t fit either of those descriptions. ![]() We are used to thinking of housing affordability being a problem mainly in urban areas on the coasts. It may surprise people outside of Vermont to hear that the Green Mountain state has a housing crisis.
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