Vermont's population is virtually unchanged from 2020. April 1 2020 population count was 643,085. In July 2022 it was 647,064. From July 2021 to July 2022, it increased by fewer than 100.

edit: Necessary_Cat_4801 blocked me so I am adding an edit here for those of you who are interested in actually solving problems instead of burying your heads in the sand by blaming out of staters for decades of neoliberal policy failure.

>I'm going to believe my eyes and the digger (and every other local media outlet) over people who seem to have a vested interest in pretending that increased demand during and after the pandemic hasn't affected housing prices.

I can't tell if this person thinks the US Census has some weird conflict of interest, or if it's me. Either way, a pretty bizarre thing to say. My own interest is just one of a card-carrying socialist and activist that cares about myself, my friends, and my neighbors. If you're worried I'm like a landlord or something, I think my post history will clear that up pretty quick lol. /u/twombls will vouch for me on that one. But you don't have to believe me, go read the data for yourself: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/VT

Also, to be clear, I'm not saying no out of state people moved here. Some out of state people are moving to Vermont, because people do move here sometimes, but it is not some great migration. There were several thousand people who moved here at the beginning of the pandemic, and you can see that in the census. But like I said, the population of Vermont increased by fewer than 100 people from 2021 to 2022. Even that initial migration is absolutely tiny, though compared to other years it is quite big, relatively, it still amounted to less than 1% of our population. These are absolutely tiny growth numbers.

Also, who said the pandemic hasn't affected housing prices? It absolutely did, but it didn't do it through some fox news style caravan of out of staters coming to take your jobhouse. It's incredible to me how many people on this sub insist on blaming people from places like Massachusetts for decades of policy failure at the state and national level. It is the most small-minded, myopic xenophobia I have ever seen in my life, made even dumber by how trivially disprovable it is with freely available census data. Absolutely fucking pathetic. At least Fox News caravan weirdos have the excuse that Mexico is actually a different country with a pretty different culture whose people speak a different language. Meanwhile, someone here sees a few Texas license plates and starts using the phrase "covid colonists." Give me a fucking break.

Or form a union and bargain for one.

I just want to point out that you could say this same thing about the 5 day week, the 40 hour week, sick days, safety standards, holidays, etc. Each of these concessions was extracted by a labor movement, not given freely by employers, or even the result of market forces. If we want it, we need to take it together. Until we do, we'll keep working longer hours for wages that continue to stagnate. United we bargain; divided we beg.

That's because Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, the sponsor of the senate bill, is based as hell. If we elected more people like her, I think you'd be very happy with Montpelier.

My comment isn't just about "more than a typo." It's about an elected representative who cannot write an essay. That isn't a descent into pedantry. It's a serious criticism of someone who is supposed to write laws for a living. The only pedantry here is invoking a silly adage to point out that I typed "sledge hammer" instead of "sledgehammer," as if somehow a random comment on reddit should be judged on the same standards as the communications of an elected official, or as if that somehow makes my point unclear or deficient. The dude wrote like 800 words of borderline nonsense; that should concern his constituents. No one but you will ever care that I put a space in the word sledgehammer in a reddit comment.

And yeah, obviously I don't know for sure. This isn't a paper I'm submitting to peer review on the psychology of Rep. Scott Beck. It's a reddit comment about Beck's incoherent opinion piece. I know that an elected official made an incoherent argument against something that might negatively affect his own employment. From there, I infer that he doesn't actually have a good argument. That's a perfectly reasonable jump.

>I’d like to agree with you completely (since I found the piece hard to follow as well) but Hartman’s Law means your launch should have been scrubbed. [reason]

Are you saying that I wrote "sledge hammer" instead of "sledgehammer," and therefore, invoking Hartman's Law, I shouldn't have pointed out that there were grammatical errors in the piece? I think you misunderstand the point of the law, and not without some irony.

I made a substantive critique, which is basically the exact opposite of the nit-picking the law pokes fun at. The few grammatical problems I point out are explicitly labeled as minor points (e.g. "Whatever, I make typos all the time"), but they still contribute to the larger point, in which I argue that this is a bad piece. I talked about typos and grammar, sure, but I actually made it pretty clear that was the least of my concerns.

Hartman's Law doesn't mean that grammar doesn't matter. It's a fun way to poke fun at nit-picking. In making the greater point that one of our elected representatives wrote gobbledygook, it is perfectly valid to point out failures of grammar, among other things.

>Also for someone who seems like they should appreciate nuance the responsibility VTDigger has to their pieces labeled OPINION elude you. Put simply they converted their “Letters to the Editor” feature/tradition to rotating/chosen Opinion pieces some years ago. While the legislative connection is front and center and his employer is unstated, it is certainly public knowledge. Unless he is a paid spokesperson it’s not really relevant tho. Or rather I’m comfortable leaving the relevance as an exercise to the reader. There’s not really any “AHA!” moment here. But I’m pretty sure VTDigger employees would be happy to spell it out more, as the times I have reached them for editing errors they have responded to me quickly.

Sure, I'll remove that critique of VTDigger. I'm sure they're underresourced and overworked and doing their best. I didn't mean it was an AHA moment as in I got VTDigger, but it was an AHA moment for me in that suddenly the piece makes sense -- he feels very strongly about it because it's a threat to his livelihood. He didn't fail to make a coherent argument because he failed to communicate it; he probably just doesn't have one. He is using his position to defend his job, not to make some greater point about policy.

It's definitely not you! There is no coherent point made anywhere in that piece.

At least literal arson would support his conclusion that they have too much power.

This is exceptionally poorly written. After reading the whole thing, I'm not even 100% sure what the argument is, honestly. I get that he disagrees with the current proposals, and he has problems with the alliance, but there's really not a consistent line of reasoning.

The first four paragraphs are entirely in the passive voice (e.g. "action has been taken"), but they're also the only coherent part of the commentary, because each paragraph acknowledges and builds on the preceding one. As soon as he moves on from giving background to making his point, he just doesn't ever actually make an argument.

From the structure, after the introductory paragraphs, in which he lays out the background, he starts his argument with this paragraph:

>From my vantage point, the alliance seems to be having a meandering negotiation with themselves that has ignited nearly 100 communities offering public tuition in some or all grades.

Ignited what? Discussion? What is the meandering negotiation? How does a meandering negotiation ignite towns? I genuinely have no clue what that paragraph is supposed to mean, but it's also clearly intended to be a thesis statement. I was hoping he'd explain later, but he does not, because every single paragraph from now on is independent of every other one. He never develops a single argument.

He also asks questions he clearly intends to be rhetorical, but which really aren't. Example:

>Independent schools educate about 4,000 publicly tuitioned students and generally report that they are doing well. Public schools educate 81,000 students and often report that they are struggling to emerge out of the pandemic. Why is a group that represents schools that educate 81,000 students focused on schools they don’t represent that educate 4,000 students?

... because those are private schools refusing public funds, and that's what we're discussing. I think he's trying to point out it's absurd, but it's not at all obvious to me why this would be absurd. Is it supposed to be absurd because of the numbers? Anybody who has ever made rules, or done anything really, knows that edge cases are often the bulk of the work, i.e. the last 10% is 90% of the work.

If you think he'll explain in the next paragraph, you are of course mistaken. The next paragraph, like every other paragraph, just starts a new, also instantly aborted argument:

> On principle, the alliance and its supporters share their perspective as a humble request to follow a few simple rules which independent schools are already following or soon will be, while simultaneously proposing to restrict public tuition to all but four independent schools, if they are designated.

Why? At least link me to something. As written, it's just an unsupported statement. It's maybe the beginning of an argument, but he offers no supporting points, nor does it do anything to support the previous paragraph, which talks about the 81000 students vs the 4000 students. It's totally unrelated. What are the rules? Even the structure doesn't work. He sets up "a humble request to follow a few simple rules" as being in tension with "proposing to restrict public tuition." Those seem like they're not in tension at all to me. It seems perfectly normal that the people who make the rules also get to decide the funding. If they are in tension, explain it!

Here's the conclusion (typo and all):

>To prevent a handful of religious schools in towns that don’t even offer public tuitioning from receiving public tuition, the alliance is pursuing a sledgehammer approach instead of searching for a credible surgical solution. It is concerning that theaAlliance has a considerable amount of power over Vermont schools and students, yet seemingly no capacity or understanding to recommend solutions that help all Vermont students.

Whatever, I make typos all the time. But also, what is the sledge hammer approach? The proposed bills? He also mixes metaphors -- are they pursuing a meandering negotiation, or are they sledge hammering? Those seem pretty different. He never explains why the alliance has too much power, nor does he really develop any arguments about how it doesn't understand the needs of students.

This is alarming shit from a legislator, whose literal job is to write words enforced by armed agents of the state. Especially when you consider he is writing about education policy, of all things.

edit: Holy shit I just learned he's a legislator and a teacher at St. Johnsbury academy, which will presumably be affected by this. That should be disclosed at the top. That's very important context in evaluating this. But also, this guy teaches kids to write?! I really hope this was an aberration, and not representative of his ability to write and communicate effectively.

Same. It's so fucking depressing to see the ruling class trick us all by drawing imaginary lines on maps. We fall for it every fucking time. Normal people start squabbling over who was born on which side of what line, and all while the wealthy exercise perfect class solidarity by pooling resources to buy up our shit and charging us rent to use it.

Out of staters moving here are not displacing native Vermonters. You can trivially debunk this by looking at Vermont's population in the census. From July 2021 to July 2022, Vermont's population increased by less than 100 people. Even the pandemic's migration that VTDigger called an "explosion" (in my opinion, irresponsibly so) was only a .7% population increase. That is absolutely tiny. Before that, we were seeing a net migration out of the state.

Everyone has a story about the house their buddy wanted to buy but some out of stater bought it in all cash sight unseen. Those are investments or vacation homes, not people moving here. It is exceedingly rare for regular families to buy houses in cash sight-unseen. Meanwhile, investors are buying ~25% of all SFH on the market. This is an international phenomenon, affecting people from huge cities like London and Vancouver to our tiny state. As wealth inequality reaches increasingly unsustainable levels, the wealthy, from individual landlords to large investment firms, are looking for more places to deploy their ever-increasing capital, and they are moving more and more of their money into buying property, making housing increasingly unaffordable for regular people.

Rich people, most of which are from out of state, are buying up the entire world's housing, most of which is also out of state. Trying to understand the problem as in-state vs out of state only obscures the reality that we are an inconsequential backwater. Our housing is being devoured by forces way bigger than "flatlanders" with remote jobs.

I recommend reading this piece by Danielle Carr, a UCLA professor. I was going to post some quotes, but it's really not very long, and provides a very valuable perspective on the ongoing mental health crisis.

Ah I see. Yeah, I was being a little cheeky, but you really only need to squint a little to see it that way.

Many of these hotels are not viable as businesses otherwise. Sometimes they go to places like motel 6 and quality inn, but usually it's places like the Shady Lawn in WRJ, which at this point is functionally a substandard apartment complex for people with state temporary housing vouchers.

Landlord welfare program with more steps.

You're right. The hotel voucher is our own homegrown landlord giveaway, whereas this is a federally mandated landlord giveaway. So many wonderful landlord welfare programs.

> The idea of dumping money into landlord's hands "in exchange for temporarily keeping rents affordable and prioritizing people exiting homelessness" is completely insane. We need permanent affordable housing. This program would pay for repairs for the people who are partially responsible for the problem in the first place. It's completely bonkers.

Could not agree more! Landlords are raising prices so we're going to give them money so that they stop raising prices? This is your brain on neoliberalism, and exactly the kind of color-inside-the-lines thinking I have come to expect from the Scott administration. If you keep going in that paragraph in the article, it's even more frustrating:

>The high number of Vermonters who are unhoused but sheltered is also an indicator of a likely crisis to come. For now, the state is relying on motels and hotels to temporarily house the vast majority of people who are unhoused. But to do this, it has been using the large — but temporary — infusions of federal cash that flowed into the state during the pandemic, and state officials now estimate that these pots of money will run dry March 31.

Vermont had a one-time opportunity with a temporary infusion of federal cash, and we gave it to landlords. Awesome. It's almost like half the legislature are landlords or something.

I fundamentally disagree with you that those people aren't part of our communities. They're living here. To actively reject them from our community for the sole purpose of denying them housing is cruel.

To put it another way, if those same people moved here and didn't need housing, we wouldn't be saying they're not members of our community. I don't want to be part of a state that specifically defines community to exclude people for their poverty. That's gross.

As for your suggestions to work with relevant organizations, that is what I do. I work mostly with human rights nonprofits. My experience there taught me that until we learn to organize our society around the things that actually matter -- camaraderie, friendship, mutual aid, etc -- this problem and those like it will always plague us. If we continue to organize ourselves around money and violence, like we do now, we'll always be able to think of the things that matter as being someone else's job, like a charity's (which everyone knows will never have the resources they need to really fix problems), therefore absolving us of guilt while we callously argue that some of the homeless who are in our community do not deserve shelter because they're not really members of our community.

If it is the case that people are moving here to use our hotel program, it would make me genuinely proud to be a Vermonter. Times are tough and I'd appreciate a lower tax bill, but I seriously can't think of anything I'm more happy to pay taxes for than housing people who need it, regardless of where they're from. I hope I don't ever personally need that help, but many (most?) people are just an accident or diagnosis away from homelessness.

Your other comments:

>I don’t agree with giving free hotel rooms on our dime to people who came here for that.

I do, and I urge you to reconsider. It's just the right thing to do. Is it fair to us? No. Do I care? Yes, but not enough to deny shelter to people as I type this from my wood stove while the temperature plummets to -20 outside.

Vermont currently pays about as much in all public assistance as it does for prisons. The homeless vouchers are an absolutely tiny part of our budget. Instead of cutting the budget by refusing housing to the desperate, let's look at the parts of our budget that keeps poor people in jail just because they can't afford bail and cut it there. This part of our budget is doing good things.

>And actually to get your license/residency in VT I think you do need a bill now for your proof of residency, but I could be wrong.

If you were to implement a residency requirement for these vouchers, you're going to end up refusing housing to the homeless from Vermont. It is a well documented problem that they lack the necessary paperwork to interact with government bureaucracy. Many of them don't have licenses or bills or other proof of residency because they do not have residences.

Do you have actual evidence to back this suspicion, or are you speculating?

Also, I get what you're saying, but if you're a homeless person, you go anywhere you can to get of the cold. That seems like a needlessly accusatory way to think about what literally anyone would and should do facing that situation.

edit: Upon further reflection, I actually don't get what you're saying. What does it even mean for someone without a home to not be a Vermonter? If a homeless person moves to Vermont, they're Vermonters now. That's how being American works; there's no immigration policy at state borders. It's not taking advantage of anything to move to another state where you might not die of exposure - it's literally each of our birthright as Americans to move freely between states.

So what would the census accomplish? How would you even do it? What does it mean for a person with no home to be an out of stater, when all their earthly belongings are here? Are you going to ask them for a bill to prove their residency in Vermont or something?

It's interesting that in recognizing the very real resource constraints, the first place you think to look to tighten the belt is how many of the homeless are from another state.

These sketchy motels are just privatizing public housing. They provide unstable, incredibly low quality housing, and they're really expensive. Why do we allow for-profit motels that are otherwise nonviable businesses to survive by siphoning money from state coffers intended to house those in need? It's so wildly inefficient, and yet for some reason we accept it as - I don't even know what to put here - the best we can do? The "proper" role of government?

Let's have proper public housing. Instead of leaving our neighbors down on their luck in gross motels on and off without kitchens or reliable sources of transportation, let's give them a real chance to get back on their feet, and save money while doing it.

Build public housing. Ban Airbnbs.

Americans 150 years ago: We are destined by god to expand our dominion throughout the entire continent.

Americans today: building a modest rail network in Vermont could not happen in a million years.

Note: Manifest Destiny was genocidal and bad. I'm just poking fun at how small our collective vision for what is possible has become.

I meant what I said without exaggerating - my wood stove changed my life. Before my T6, I had a VC Vigilant from the 80s, and it was a lot worse. I went through 4 cords in the winter, and I still relied heavily on the backup hydronic system. With a fresh load, the T6 puts out enough BTU to heat the entire house for at least 6 hours on all but the coldest days, and there are still coals 24+ hours after loading it. It's currently 11:20, and there are still flames from when I loaded it this morning around 7; the upstairs room farthest from the stove, which is downstairs in the living room, is a comfortable 67 degrees.

If you have questions, check out /r/woodstoving. One of the mods there, /u/deepwoodsdanger, is a Vermonter, and it's worth subbing just to see the gorgeous stoves they restore.

Have you considered upgrading to a modern wood stove? I have an Alderlea T6, and it is an absolute beast of a heater and the single most important item for my quality of life. My house is a 3000 sqft 200 year old farmhouse. I refill the stove 2-3 times a day unless it's very, very cold. There's never any smoke, and even though I do 90+% of my heating with wood, I only go through 4 cord in a winter. Modern wood stoves are incredibly efficient!