"Stan Sherwood stands in front of his home along Route 7 in Brandon. Sherwood is angry about the number of trees construction crews took down on his property to install a large sand filter for storm water runoff"

Edit source, towards the bottom of the page it goes into detail. https://www.vermontpublic.org/vpr-news/2019-11-13/no-more-cones-and-construction-brandon-open-for-business#stream/0

I’m actually friends with him, I just screenshot this comment and sent it to him asking for a chat 😂

Normally I downvote anyone coming here, normally people are wanting to change things, but if you want to come and are not trying to take our guns, then come on in. Help displace some other out of stater who hates guns. Maybe move to Burlington get a place next to Phil Baruth and open a small backyard firing range up. Fuck the gun grabbers!

If you’re in a big group, airbnb is still definitely the better and cheaper option.

Every single time I drive by it makes me crazy and not for the reason most would think. Damn it it's WHOM not who! I know the reason for the sign but I'm not going to disparage any more than the incorrect usage, of who and whom!

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall they were going to widen the road and the owner was upset that they were taking part of their property to do it.

Edit: this article explains https://www.vermontpublic.org/vpr-news/2019-11-13/no-more-cones-and-construction-brandon-open-for-business#stream/0

Realtors are also directly telling people looking for homes how much profit they can make using a house as a full time vacation rental.

I’m all for people who have a vacation home renting it out when they aren’t using it (basically the original idea of Airbnb), but this “buy a house to use as a private hotel” shit has got to go.

Interesting. That'll be a tough expectation to carry. If you bought a duplex with 2x 2 bedroom apartments in cash (so purchase price doesn't matter), it would cost ~$500/mo/unit to pay the taxes and insurance, much less set aside any extra to repair the roof in the future, maintain the HVAC, etc. Add a mortgage and you're bust. Going to include utilities for your tenant? Where does that get paid?

Also, the state's formal definition of affordable is for all housing expenses not to exceed 30% of the gross income of a household making 80% of the area median family income (MFI). For 2022, Windham County's MFI is $80,400. The maximum allowable rent (including utilities) for a household earning 80% MFI under that regime would be $1,286 for a one-bedroom, $1,544 for a two-bedroom and $1,783 for a three bedroom. The maximum These are the HUD-provided numbers by which all state and federal programs operate.

For your $1200/mo 2-bedroom, the MFI table would put you at 60% MFI (or less.)

I don't mean to argue with what you believe is affordable or reasonable, but these are the economics and demographic data.

edit: typos were confusing

My understanding is that it was just a general protest on the scale and spending for Brandon's "Building a Better Brandon" campaign.

Not gonna lie, I've thought of adding a big m at the end of who to make it grammatically correct.

Your BIL needs to read “Divorce in Vermont” updated edition, by Nicholas Hayden and Cynthia Broadfoot. There are a lot of quirky laws in this state, and this book covers them - but won’t replace a lawyer, if needed. Having to meet his ex’s boyfriend isn’t one of them, however.

There's a reason hotels have to follow laws and regulations we don't have to at home. I feel much safer going to an actual hotel / B&B / etc than the sketchy appartments-turn-hostels you can find on AirBnB. We've just had an horrific fire last week in an historical building in Old Montreal that was illegally converted to AirBnBs. Rooms with no windows, no fire alarms, no exits. 7 people died. The landlord and the tenant are running multiple AirBnB rentals in subdivided appartments that don't follow building code and fire safety regulations.

I know the owner started their signage beef as the construction started a while ago, but was wondering if there was more to it.

Frankly I’m over the cleaning fee scam and the ridiculous list of actions needed before leaving, give me a maid service (typically for a lower price) and Iife is a lot more relaxing

I don’t think they’ve actually been called family housing in a long time. When I lived in those apartments in 2015, they were the “college apartments,” and “married family housing” was a left over old timer title from back in the day.

Not to say I don’t have sympathy for the situation though.

The constitution has the takings clause, which says the government can't take people's stuff without paying them for it. I say we take them and pay them for it, then operate them as social housing at cost to fund the program.

As for the morality, having thousands of empty homes while many are homeless is immoral. Right now, our tax dollars keep those houses empty. if a homeless person tried to stay in an otherwise empty house, armed agents of the state would show up and do any violence necessary to keep those houses empty.

How do you propose we go about constitutionally (or morally..) seizing people’s private homes “tomorrow”?

We had heard rumors that the apartments here would be up for rent to non students, and honestly we would be fine with that. Trying to stay in the area so I can do grad school and my daughter can stay in the school district is almost impossible with the housing in Lamoille county right now, we are quite panicked.

Montana or Idaho sound like a better fit.

I wonder if we had stayed JSC, would we be this close to closing? No offense to Castleton of course, but Johnson has been on the bottom of the priority list since the first restructure.

If you don't mean "whatever they wish" then you shouldn't say "whatever they wish".

20% of housing is second homes and vacation rentals, functionally kept outside the housing pool by rich people, but the real culprit isn't building enough? That doesn't make sense on its face unless we accept that a giant pool of vacation rentals and second homes is desirable or at least acceptable while there's a single homeless person, which I personally don't.

We could have 25% more housing inventory tomorrow if we just take the empty vacation homes and Airbnbs. Plus, if we accept that 20% of our housing will remain functionally outside the pool, and the only way is to build our way out of it, that means we're going to have to build 25% more housing than we need to build otherwise as vacation rentals and second homes continue to get snatched up.

if realtors are saying that, im not sure i want anything changed.

UVM tried to do this five or six years ago, the buildings were costing quite a bit for upkeep and they wanted to sell them off to a private rental agency, mostly to aquire the matching money for a large donation to build a new arena.

Luckily, CHT was able to put an offer in. Existing students weren't just evicted, they were allowed to stay, option was given to purchase their unit, and if they wanted to transfer they were given priority in other CHT housing.

This sounds exactly like what happened there. There's tons of articles. I would contact the journalists who wrote those and get them to help you dig, then see if you can get a similar resolution, because when it comes down to it, they've likely already decided to sell it, best outcome is to get a nonprofit in that expands your options.

I really hope that you guys can close and not take Castleton with you

the only way the VSC system will survive in something that looks like the current form is if we massively increase the state funding, which isn’t on the table. Vermont is among the states with the least funding for public higher education, and the bill has finally come due.