Alarms raised over Senate housing bill

South Burlington officials are raising alarms over S.100, the state senate’s omnibus bill that would tackle the growing housing crisis and would reverse land development regulations approved by the city last year by requiring denser housing allowances in certain areas.

In a letter sent to legislators — the second one written by South Burlington brass this year — officials aired concerns over what they view as a curbing of their planning jurisdiction. The bill directly threatens land development regulations that the city approved in February last year, after years of vigorous debate, which effectively removed about 1,000 acres in the southeast quadrant from housing and other development.

The overall intention of S.100, city council chair Helen Riehle said, is supported by the city, “but some of the language would put at risk a lot of the work that this city and the planning commission and this council has done … to really promote additional compact housing, and at the same time, make sure that we maintain appropriate open space and natural resources for our future and our children’s future.”

S.100 specifically conflicts with the city’s zoning regulations by requiring building and density allowances for multi-unit housing in any district served by municipal sewer and water infrastructure.

“Even a narrow reading of that scope would significantly undermine the critical natural resource protections” the city has codified “and undermine the careful zoning decisions that South Burlington has made to balance competing interests,” reads the letter written by Riehle.

The land, about 10 percent of total land in South Burlington, is the wealthiest census tract in the city, and contains open space and natural ecosystems near the borders of Williston and Shelburne that the city has worked for years to preserve.

“What’s at risk is having to build five units per acre across all those forests and the adjoining shrub-lands that are protected as natural resource protection,” newly elected councilor Andrew Chalnick said.

Councilor Meaghan Emery has said that forcing higher density housing would add more financial pressure on the city’s ability to provide services for residents, and added it was important to keep a diversified housing stock — with a mix of multi-family housing in the downtown area, and single family housing in more rural areas — to create “heterogeneous housing throughout the city, providing many more options for people.”

The city’s approval of the land use regulations in February 2022 was a controversial move by the city at the time, and just barely passed, with former councilors Matt Cota and Thomas Chittenden voting against the new regulations, noting the chilling effect it could have on housing growth that is necessary to draw in and retain jobs for the region.

Chittenden currently serves as a state senator.

Groups such as the affordable housing committee and the city’s economic development committee were also opposed at the time.

Chris Trombly, who currently serves as the chair the city’s affordable housing committee and serves with the Vermont State Housing Authority, said that, with S.100 enacted, denser housing could be built in the area “without bulldozing over forests.”

“There’s nothing in S.100 that indicates that that’s what would happen,” he said. “It comes across as fear mongering, and it’s counterproductive.”

“New housing isn’t being built under the new rules. It’s actually been a barrier,” he added. “A nonprofit can’t build a duplex or a triplex that they’re doing in other towns because of it.”

Supporters of the city’s regulations point to the conserved land as necessary to protect residents from flooding and heat islands, and to combat climate change. Increasing building density in this area would hinder the state’s chances to reduce greenhouse gases and would impact the land’s ability to absorb and retain carbon emissions.

“To put housing everywhere where you could put housing would destroy those natural resources, which will end up hurting all of us in the long run,” Rosanne Greco, a board member on the South Burlington Land Trust, said. “If we build over natural resources, they’re gone, and to sacrifice nature and our ecological services for housing is just insane.”

Vermont Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, the lead sponsor of the legislation, pushed back on complaints aired by city officials when reached by The Other Paper, noting that South Burlington officials “received more time in our committee to discuss their concerns than any other community in the state” and that “we received more positive comments and written remarks from South Burlington residents and organizations” on the housing bill “than we did from anywhere else.”

“At the end of the day, low density residential zoning in our major employment corridor is exclusionary and bad for the environment. This pushes people further out of the areas they work and causes more greenhouse gas emissions and lower quality of life in terms of commuting hours,” she said. “No one is saying South Burlington isn’t doing its part, but simply that residents and property owners should have the right to build multi-family housing and not just single-family housing. If that’s where we disagree, I’m OK with that, especially in the midst of our largest housing crisis in contemporary history.”

The bill passed the Senate on March 31 and now heads to the House.

“We desperately need to make it easier to build homes in our state in the places that need it most,” Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said at a press conference last week. “Many of the decades-old regulations we have in Vermont, at both the state and municipal level, were literally designed to have the opposite effect — they were written at a time when Vermont was growing too fast, and the goal was to stop building. Well, they were successful, given a majority of Vermont’s housing stock was built before 1960. But now it’s 2023.”

City officials say they are already doing their part to address the housing crisis and have pointed to affordable and market rate multi-family housing built in the city’s downtown area.

There are more than 1,300 permanently affordable homes in South Burlington, Riehle said. The city’s inclusionary zoning policy, meanwhile, mandates that any development with 12 or more dwelling units must have 10 or 15 percent permanently affordable units, depending on whether the property is ownership or rental, respectively, and include a variety of incentives to meet those goals, including density bonuses.

“We’re growing the number of units and the density in the area where it should be growing, and we’ve made a big effort to not grow it where it shouldn’t be grown,” city councilor Tim Barritt said. “It really just irks me that S.100 wants to override the local control that we’ve worked so hard to craft over the last few years.”

“I have little hope that anyone in Montpelier will hear this at all and will pay any attention because it seems like they’re behind a huge steamroller and they’re willing to press over whatever it is,” he said. “But we have to do something.”

Not everyone on the council, however, agreed. Newly elected councilor Tyler Barnes was the only sitting member to vote no on the resolution, citing the state’s need for affordable housing, particularly in the major metropolitan area the city is situated in.

“If we are going to meet our affordable housing needs by more apartment-style dwellings, I don’t think that that serves (residents) well if we restrict development to portions of the city — where that’s really, realistically, the only feasible way we can achieve our density aims,” he said.

“At the state level, we need more housing, and candidly — as hard as it is to say — I would much rather see that housing developed and built in areas that are closer to our major metropolitan areas,” he said. “I would like to see that development happen here within reason. I feel as though that we have an obligation and a responsibility to do our part.”

Riehle and Paul Connor, the city’s planning and zoning director, both testified in Montpelier last month, and, in their letter, asked legislators “to focus on the few areas where we think an improvement is needed and really important to this community.”

“What circumstances specific to localities have compelled you to take the drastic step of legislating in the place of local planning bodies?” the letter read. “Because of the complexities of local planning, we ask you to tread very carefully before taking such extraordinary steps.”

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Updated Sunday, April 2, 2023, to reflect that the bill passed the Senate.