Tag Archives: multi-family housing

Where is Vermont’s biggest multi-family housing gap?

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When housing advocates talk about increasing the stock of affordable housing, they’re typically referring to multi-family rental housing. Not that programs to expand home-ownership for lower income people aren’t important — they are. But it’s generally agreed that the most cost-effective way to alleviate the affordable housing shortage is by developing multi-family complexes.

Vermont is a rural state, of course, and multi-family housing tends to be concentrated in urban and semi-urban areas, such as Chittenden County. Nevertheless, it makes sense to think about other parts of the state where there’s a clear but unfilled need for multifamily housing.

Consider these two maps from the 2012 Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice, which the state Department of Housing and Community Development filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The first map shows 14 census tracts identified as areas where low and moderate income persons (LMI) are concentrated:

map5lmi

The second map shows where multi-family housing is located, as a percentage of all housing. This map also outlines the LMI areas:

map7multifam

So, which counties with concentrations of lower- and middle-income people are short on multi-family housing, and which counties could clearly accommodate more multi-family housing than they have?

Grand Isle, Franklin, Orleans and Caledonia.

Side trip to Seattle

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While our “Thriving Communities” campaign focuses on Vermont, we’re not going to wallow in the parochial. An interesting public dialogue on zoning, affordability and housing density is going on in Seattle, and who knows, maybe there’s a takeaway for us.

What does big-city Seattle have in common with small-town Vermont, besides a foliage season?

seattlefoliage

Well, much of Seattle is zoned for single-family residences, as are many Vermont municipalities. The news is that a housing advisory panel is poised to recommend scrapping single-family for zoning that allows duplex, triplexes and so forth. Part of the rationale is that single-family districts are perceived to have had an exclusionary effect, by race and socioeconomic class.

The housing advisory panel  reportedly wants to forestall Seattle’s becoming a haven for the rich, and one approach is to promote more density — not just in single-family neighborhoods, but also in zones where multifamily housing now limited to four stories could be redrawn to allow six.

If there’s a lesson in this for Vermont, it’s certainly not in the particulars. Seattle’s population exceeds Vermont’s, after all, and Vermont’s largest city, Burlington, could be fit into one of Seattle’s neighborhoods. (Below is an overview photo of two storied Seattle neighborhoods — Queen Anne and Magnolia — that are laced with single-family residences.

seattleneedle

No, the Vermont takeway is that people here, too, should be thinking about making their zoning and town planning more accommodating of greater residential density near municipal centers. Not high rises, of course, but affordable multi-family housing on a Vermont scale.