East Valley Housing

What’s wrong with this picture?

Randolph’s East Valley presents an uninterrupted swath of excellent farmland, mile upon mile of it, extending north to Brookfield and south into Bethel. Some of that land is still in active agricultural production, but much of it is not, and lies fallow as small farms have found it more difficult to stay in business.

It is safe to say that the farm economy in the East Valley is not constrained by a shortage of good farmland but by farm economics.

What the East Valley does not have, though, is much of an opportunity for people to enjoy the rural scenery by living in it. The housing stock shows the effects of not having been significantly replenished in decades. Facilities like the community hall could benefit from an infusion of the energy that would be provided by a few new young families.

Affordable housing, of course, has also been identified as a pressing priority in Randolph and in Vermont as a whole. Despite the current slump in housing prices, which is bound to be temporary, the provision of good, modern, energy-efficient housing at a reasonable cost is widely recognized as a crying need throughout the state.

So when a modest housing development is proposed on 20 acres adjacent to the current residential section of East Randolph, you would think it would be welcome, especially if the houses can be truly affordable. Yet when Tunbridge builder Richard Dybvig proposed just such a new neighborhood, with prices projected at a low $150,000, both town and state put roadblocks in his way.

Most importantly, the Act 250 process has told Dybvig he must refigure his entire site plan, scrunching it up into one end of the 20-acre parcel in order to minimize the impact on prime agricultural soils. The original plan, in fact, left lots of open land; indeed, the 20-acre parcel could conceivably hold many more than the 24 units proposed by the developer.

The Act 250 Commission, however, demanded more clustering of the houses, apparently on the theory that someday, somehow, some cows or a cornfield could be accommodated on the rest of the field—even though that parcel hasn’t been farmed for decades and isn’t adjacent to another farm.

What is troubling is that the Act 250 process does not allow for any kind of a balancing act. The state Commissioner of Housing took the unusual step of attending the Act 250 hearing to present the state’s view about the need for housing. The Dybvig proposal is exactly what the state needs in new housing, said Commissioner John Hall.

It was the first time he’d ever made such a pitch at an Act 250 hearing, and it didn’t go well. The Commission informed him that it’s not their job to worry about providing affordable housing, while it IS their job to protect agricultural land. The consideration of ag land has always been a part of Act 250, but over the years, it has become increasingly sacrosanct. With no provision for any kind of balancing between the need for ag land (which in the East Valley is not pressing) and the need for housing (which is), the Act 250 mechanism performed badly in this case.

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The Town of Randolph added insult to injury when its Development Review Board ruled that all utility lines in the project must be buried, a cost which the developer said will add up to $15,000 per home. Whether or not that’s required by Randolph’s ordinance is apparently a matter of dispute but the result is unfortunate.

Thanks to Act 250, the potential homeowners will not be able to benefit from the full advantages of the 20-acre stream-side site. And thanks to the town DRB, homeowners will have to pay substantially more to enjoy a benefit they never wanted.

Is it any wonder that in Vermont, affordable housing remains a distant dream?