Gen 1 leafs had a battery pack that needed to be replaced around 100k miles. The newer ones seem to double that. Depending on the miles u drive a Gen 1 seems like 5 years was pretty in line with its lifespan for a typical VT driver doing 20k a year.

Also the Digger article you posted was 7/20-7/22. The headline even says in the 1st year of the pandemic. We don’t know what the last 16 months looks like, but housing prices peaked and stock available reached its low in like June this year, so I’d expect we gained another 5-6k. That would be 10000 people in 2 years.

Have you attempted to do a real estate transaction since Covid? Specifically up to the point the fed starting jacking up rates?

I know countless people who in central and eastern VT have been outbid by cash offers at or over asking price by out of staters who have remote jobs, or have accepted a local job, and are fleeing stuff in other places.

Commodities are impacted by supply and demand plain and simple. If there is 100 gallons of gas available, and there is a demand for 101 gallons of gas ALL 100 gallons go up to the price of the highest offer. The same is true with housing. If you increase demand above supply the whole market rises. Investors are a problem in Burlington, Stowe, killington etc. they are not buying property in Hardwick, or Calais, or Orange, Morrisville, Barton, etc but prices in those places are rising as new people move in And new housing isn’t brought online to offset the demand inbalance.

As for home sales, yes houses trade hands regularly, 1000 houses can be sold, and if 1000 people leave and 1000 people arrive we are ok.. if the net is 0 new residents a system is stable with the same stock being traded among new residents by those leaving. But people are not leaving. So we have 1000 people leaving and 1100 coming in. There is more demand for housing than there is supply. So every house that is a net new resident is a house off the market out of circulation. This is fairly simple stuff.

And I’m not saying the investment shit isn’t the main source of the issue, I’m saying that any pressure on top of that does have a negative impact that people should be aware of. If we solve the investment/2nd home thing then we have capacity, but with that not solved we don’t need new residents and they do make the issue worse, and anyone denying that is just plain not paying attention.

So your saying demand reducing supply doesn’t increase cost? I can tell you if you pull up Zillow and zoom out state level there are not 2000 units available statewide. So adding 2000 households without the same number of new units prices rise. The base issue may be second homes, unoccupied homes, Airbnb etc. but in the immediate term 1 person moving here takes a house from one local person. That one person could stay where they are, not increase costs here, and get active locally to address the problems they have where they are from, which could improve things there.

At some point we can’t be the haven for everyone everywhere. People need to fight the systems where they are to improve things there, otherwise we will become those places.

Yes class solidarity… I expect the same on both sides. To say those 5000 people didn’t increase housing costs is just false. Yes second homes and Air BnB are a big issue, and should be addressed legislatively through taxes so high they force sale. But the people coming here may be “on the same side” but they are exacerbating the issue. So at the end of the day they are hurting people who are here. If we open our arms and welcome everyone our issues get worse. We need to be honest that there are major issues, and that people coming here fleeing higher prices elsewhere make that worse.

I’m a liberal through and through, but I don’t want people who have issues where they are solving them by making our issues worse. If they have structural issues with cost where they are fleeing from, or some other issue (public health policy, woman’s rights, gay rights, racism) fleeing the issue because they have means to do so instead of fighting doesn’t make things better.

Because this post on its surface was very much what we are seeing in the state. We have a ton of Covid refugees who fled shitty places to come to our piece of heaven, and in the process many did little to no research on what life is really like. This guy is apparently from Alaska, so I would expect a whole lot more from someone who has experience in cold weather. But on the whole the Covid influx is a net negative for most 20 and 30 year old natives trying to start families here. So yeah I’m a dick, and I’m fine with that. We have a ton of people moving here driving up costs who have no clue what they are getting into, and as one of those youngish people starting out, it’s frustrating as all hell.

Anyone who watches this page sees this shit, from the posts “my disabled family is moving to vermont to live in section 8 and not work and need advice on housing” (this was a real thread) to the “I’ve only ever visited killington but just bought a home cash in vershire, I don’t drive can anyone give advice on walkability and public transport”

This was happening so much a whole new sub was created… so I’m a dick by pointing out on these sort of posts that a lack of planning leads to negative results. People need common sense.

Might as well clear the ash while you can get benefit from them… in the next dozen years our ash trees will be gone, they are already being wiped out in parts of the state.

Since you paid cash you have equity. Do a HELOC, and get yourself a wood system installed. It will cost less than oil for the season especially if you have wood already cut which your other posts say you do. Be aware that heating with softwood here is frowned on, I know in Canada and Alaska it’s common as that’s what grows. But in general in for a penny in for a pound, pull off the bandaid and just put in the wood system now, it will be much cheaper in the end, and enable you to pay over time for the system.

I was merely basing it on ur post history of coming from Florida. If ur from Alaska then honestly you should know better…

It’s happening!! The Covid transplants are starting to see why Such a beautiful place isn’t full of people. OP sorry you are finding this difficult, but this is the sort of research people should do before they purchase a home. Understand the heating system, know what’s available locally, go into winter with a full tank, not scrambling in winter to figure it all out. Vermont can be brutal, and as we saw, can go from a week of 70deg to full blown winter in a couple days with no shoulder season.

Word to the wise, it’s ALWAYS gonna get cold this time of year, even if it’s 80 in October, you should be prepping for winter in august and September. Historically heating oil prices hit their annual low the mid of September. If you haven’t filled by then it’s only going up.

Stop paying rent, refuse to leave. It’s almost impossible to evict in the winter in Vermont (my mother rented our childhood home when we moved when we were younger and the tenants didn’t pay, it took 10 months and multiple court visits to get them out, and in the end they never paid the back rent)

If the ruling class wants compliance, it should be met with the opposite.

As a fellow Copley 1980’s baby, I agree with your general outlook. While I don’t know that we want the opposite end of the spectrum (MAGA Garbage) we also need to have our politicians in Montpelier taking action against these issues. We can’t have the state catering to the wealthy. Air BnB and short term rentals should be outlawed, landlords should be limited on the number of units they have, and landlords who don’t act in the interest of the states residents (looking at the Boves) should have their properties taken under eminent domain and repurposed to public housing (not income based, but rent controlled)

Found the guy who bought site unseen from out of state in Jeffersonville to work for Vail without doing enough research and is now butthurt that his 25 minute commute became 1.5hrs 6 months a year.

Welcome to VT!

Yup… this is the answer. Pick the hobby you enjoy (something that’s not watching Netflix alone) find a forum/social media group about it. Post the rando doing xyz on x day if anyone is interested post… vet anyone who replies by looking at their post history to make sure they are not a Nazi or conspiracy theory nut. Meet up and do the activity. Repeat the steps till you have a small group of people with similar interests.

There are tons of groups online… going into winter people coop up which is not great, find something outside that’s interesting and then get into that community, whether it’s lake ice skating, xc skiing, snowmobiling, ice fishing, etc.

Most of the people I spend time with regularly are people i either met through common interest forums, or reconnected with in those forum, or are friends of people from those forums.

This is not like it was 40 years ago. It use to be a common open secret that the husband and wife would get a tag, the husband would use the wife’s tag and no one cared. That’s changed. The law hasn’t but the enforcement has.

It’s the same as in 1980 you get drunk and go off the road the cop would drive you home, and tell you to sober up, today they bring you to jail. Everything is stricter now

Odds are they weren’t hunters, and odds are they won’t follow the posted signs. Posting takes access from those who follow the rules. If you have people tossing beer cans, my guess is you have some Sort of trail, and there are redneck kids going out partying. The posted signs won’t stop that they will just pull the signs down and burn them.

I am left of Bernie on most issues. But our party is out of touch with the middle of the road. The result is that when we talk about safe injection sites (good science and would save lives generally a good idea) we lose people. The same goes for trans rights (the science says that people have better outcomes when they are treated early and given options) but again society isn’t there yet, so it can’t be a major campaign issue, it has to be an evolve in office issue like gay marriage for Obama. Gun control is another one that we lose on with the middle in Vermont. So while her policies are not terribly radical, people want to see checks and balances on Montpelier and we send the most liberal people to legislate, we elect a governor who is slightly less liberal to hold them accountable. It’s worked for us for years. So I just don’t think anyone beats Scott but Scott…

She may be, but her resume is that she lost to the person Scott destroyed in 2018, and lost in the primary in 2020 for LT gov. She’s got street cred as an activist but she’s a bit extreme (not her policy, but her actions) which is effective for an activist trying to draw attention, but I don’t want to see the governor of Vermont driving to DC to sleep on the White House lawn until xyz happens.

Also Scott is far too strong now, the chance was 2018 when he had strong opposition inside his own party for the gun control stuff.

Dems put up garbage candidates every election against him. The only election where he was vulnerable the Dems ran a transgender person which was a non-starter for many in the state. (Not saying trans people are bad, just that the population wasn’t ready for it) now he got the Covid response bump, and he is seen as a check on the state house. We want liberal policies, but we want some disenting voices to ensure it’s not a circus.

The someone somewhere paying for everything in the US is Janet Yellen. As long as the money printer is on creating money from nothing and people allow her to assign it a value and trade it for goods and service everything is free if we want it to be. Janet could just print and extra 500b into the system. That’s how everything else works… bank bailouts, auto industry bailouts, Covid relief, foreign aid, military budge. It’s all just Janet YOLOing that printer till China calls and ends the party.

So to be clear people who oppose:

Woman’s rights Civil rights Gender equality Economic equality Voting rights Gay rights Public education Healthcare as a right Keeping school kids safe Reigning in police brutality And support: Tax cuts for the rich War for economic gain Gerrymandering and disenfranchisement Religious freedom only if you are Christian Etc

Are good people?

I’m not saying that my way of thinking is the only right way, I’m saying that there is a baseline of decency, and currently one party isn’t meeting thst threshold. We can disagree on whether healthcare for all should be fully socialized or just a public option… but there isn’t an argument that stands for fully private.

We can disagree on what steps we take to reduce abortion levels whether it be family planning, or better sex education, but there is no argument that holds that a woman should die because a fetus is miscarrying and she can’t get medical help as a doctor cannot legally end the pregnancy safely.

We can disagree on election security whether it’s a free ID sent to every registered voter automatically, or vote by mail based code or whatever, but there is no argument to be made that we should limit who can vote, or that we should put up any barriers reduce polling places drop offs mail in etc that disadvantages certain voters.

We can disagree on whether the tax rate for Elon musk should be 90% or 70%, but there is no argument to be made that his tax rate should be lower than mine.

It seems the more expensive the car the worse they blind you. I hate Acura’s with there damn so white it’s almost blue headlights.

What do you drive? Modern lights are brighter than 10 years ago, most new SUVs and trucks set on low beam project as far as a high beam was a few years back, and some high beams are now downright blinding. My gut says you drive something lower to the ground, and drive slower than average leading to having people behind you on a regular basis. Most probably don’t have high beams on. But some may especially if your driving really slow. I sometimes forget to lower mine if I’m doing 60 and roll up on someone doing 35, my frustration about the slow driver fogs my mind and I forget to lower them (usually remember after a minute or so and then feel bad)

We are already all paying for the shitty system that provides profits at every level. It should be 100% government. You get cost in-line by stopping the pay per service shit. I’m in favor of totally socialized medicine, that would be Dr’s being government employees or contractors, medical facilities being government owned etc.

But in my eyes free is not costing more than today. If we could go socialized for what we pay today that would be a win. And really we could do it for much less. Between myself and my employer my healthcare costs $12,000 a year. On top of that I have a 3k deductible. So my baseline is 15000 a year in cost for healthcare. Everyone bitches “well taxes will go up” but they fail to realize that currently wages are just held down in equal proportion.

Now so far this year I’ve not been to the Dr, in 2021 I went to the Dr a total of 0 times, in 2020 1 time in 2019 3 times. I see a nurse when I go and have never met the dr who is my PCP.

Most studies say that a 6% flat income tax split between payroll tax and the worker would be enough to fund full socialized medicine. That would be a 70% reduction from what is currently being paid for my health insurance. If you ask me that’s free…

Sure that means that Elon and Bill are getting a higher bill for their insurance, but I assume that my corporate gig scenerio is pretty common cost wise today, and if you do the math, we are looking at 250k annual income as the spot where 6% would become more than the 15k in current cost. So this would be a tax cut/expense cut for 90% of households.

I’m taking school board, I’m talking mayor, I’m talking county, state, federal, if it’s an elected office you can choose someone who supports basic human rights or you can choose someone who doesn’t. Most politicians start small, and if the Republican playbook has taught anything it’s that winning small insignificant local elections allow you to redraw maps in larger more significant elections.

Honestly it amazes me that there is even a discussion. The platforms are just so different… I dont understand how any good person can support a platform that opposes healthcare, that opposes woman’s equality, that opposes gay rights, that opposes education, that opposes public institutions, that opposes economic justice, the list of their opposition goes on, and it seems the only things they support are keeping white men (I’m one so I benefit from this) propped up and in power.

No free healthcare until we vote out those that block it. Get yourself active. Vote blue.