It’s agonizing watching the Mad River Valley Housing Coalition volunteers beg local select boards to engage pro-actively in taking concrete steps to address The Valley’s not insubstantial housing crisis.
Last week, housing coalition members came before the Fayston Select Board and this week they came before the Waitsfield Select Board for a second time. The housing coalition is seeking a percentage of each town’s ARPA funds to pay for an executive director for two years. There is not yet a date for the coalition volunteers to make their request in person to the Warren Select Board.
At the Fayston meeting, select board chair Jared Cadwell said that the lack of housing is a Valley-wide issue that crosses geopolitical borders. Housing coalition board member Charlie Hosford told the Fayston board that this requires political will and that without it, the efforts of the housing coalition will come to naught.
The select boards of Warren, Waitsfield and Fayston typically hold a tri-town meeting in November, which did not happen this year and the Fayston and Waitsfield boards do not want to take any action on the housing coalition’s request until they have met.
That is understandable, but no one except housing coalition members (and those seeking housing or employers unable to find staff because there is no housing and those unable to move to The Valley because there is no housing) seems to feel any sense of urgency around this.
Michelle Liebowitz, the current executive director of the housing coalition, has explained at length that the process of engaging with stakeholders, seeking state and federal funding, incentivizing developers, amending land use regulations, incentivizing landowners is not a quick process. It takes time and it needs to start sooner versus later.
It needs to be a concerted three-town effort and it is going to require one person to be the public face, brain and central clearing house for the work. To get bogged down in the minutia of how each town wants to spend its ARPA fund ignores the fact that the towns have received an unprecedented and game-changing amount of money from the federal government. At a minimum, our elected leaders need to demonstrate the political will and commit legitimacy, funding and support to the work of the housing coalition.
