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State lawmakers on Thursday passed the second of two major bills aimed at making housing in Vermont more affordable and available. The bill now heads to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk. 

The bill, S.226, has followed “a lot of twists and turns,” its chief sponsor, Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, told colleagues on the Senate floor. 

The latest twist: House lawmakers stripped the bill of several key initiatives and put them in another bill, S.234, concerning Act 250, Vermont’s landmark land use law. Scott said Tuesday that he planned to veto that bill.

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The House maneuver left the chair of the Senate Economic Development Committee, Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, frustrated.

“For four years, we’ve tied promoting housing to expansion of Act 250, which has not gotten us anywhere,” Sirotkin told the committee Wednesday. “I’m tired of it.”

Sirotkin proposed to put all the provisions that the House had taken out of the housing bill back in. On Thursday afternoon, the Senate agreed, unanimously approving the changes in a roll call vote. 

"Vermonters across the state struggle with housing costs, access, and stability,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, in a statement. “Businesses can’t recruit employees, workers can’t fill jobs, and individuals and families suffer. On the final day of the legislative session, I am proud to come together with my colleagues to assure we are doing everything in our power to address this crisis."

The House passed the bill in a voice vote shortly after the Senate and sent it to the governor.

The reintroduced provisions include a series of land use reforms that would encourage more building in densely populated areas. In its final version, S.226 eliminates the need for developers to get water and sewer permits from both a municipality and the state. It raises the cap of allowed units in projects in densely populated areas from 25 to 50. And it forbids municipalities from imposing parking requirements on accessory dwelling units of more than one  parking space per bedroom. 

The bill also contains several provisions that the House and Senate had already agreed on, including $15 million in subsidies for contractors who build homes that cost more to construct than they will appraise for. 

If money is left over from that fund after grants are awarded to contractors, middle-income home buyers would get subsidies.

The bill provides $1 million to assist first-generation home buyers in making down payments. It also includes $4 million in grants to mobile-home and mobile-home park owners to fix homes and foundations.  

“We rely on mobile homes and mobile home parks for a good amount of our affordable housing,” the chair of the House Committee on General, Housing and Military Affairs, Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, told VTDigger. “Many of the parks have infrastructure problems that have to be addressed. This is really important to individual homeowners within the parks themselves.”

Another provision is aimed at helping homeowners facing foreclosure for unpaid taxes. The bill would prohibit such foreclosures until homeowners are told about housing assistance programs.

The bill also would establish a statewide registry of home improvement contractors. Scott has previously vetoed a similar measure, but legislators have scaled back the program in the hopes of winning the governor’s approval. In the final version, contractors must register only if proposed work on a home exceeds $10,000. 

S.226 is mainly aimed at helping more people buy and keep their homes. Another housing bill, S. 210, seeks to make more affordable rental housing available throughout the state. That bill passed both chambers on Wednesday and is also headed to the governor’s desk.

“Once we receive it, it will still have to go through our formal review process, but we are pleased with how it appears to have turned out, and appreciate the Legislature funding many of the Governor’s key housing proposals,” wrote Jason Maulucci, Scott’s press secretary, of S.210 in an email to VTDigger.

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Fred Thys covers business and the economy for VTDigger. He is originally from Bethesda, Maryland, and graduated from Williams College with a degree in political science. He is the recipient of the Radio, Television, and Digital News Association's Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting and for Enterprise Reporting. Fred has worked at The Journal of Commerce, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News, and WBUR, and has written for Le Matin, The Dallas Morning News, and The American Homefront Project.

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