This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
A ruling by Vermont’s highest court last week has cleared the way for an affordable housing development in Putney to move forward, following a years-long legal battle brought on by a couple of neighbors.
“We’re finally at the end of a long journey to create more housing opportunities in Putney,” said Elizabeth Bridgewater, executive director of the Windham and Windsor Housing Trust, one of the developers of the 25-unit development.
If not for the lengthy appeal process, people might already have been living in the sorely needed apartments, Bridgewater added. “In the middle of a housing crisis, that’s something.”
The housing trust began envisioning plans for apartments on Alice Holway Drive in 2019. The location’s close proximity to Putney’s village center and its connection to municipal water and sewer infrastructure helped make it an ideal place to build housing, Bridgewater said. The trust aimed to preserve some beloved community gardens alongside the new homes and planned to build overflow parking across the street.
It got a zoning permit from the town in March of 2022, but a single neighbor next door, Laura Campbell, appealed the decision — her first appeal of four. Campbell argued, in part, that because the two parcels of land under development were separated by a road, they weren’t “contiguous,” and therefore couldn’t be considered one lot that could host the new apartments. It took nearly a year for the state’s environmental court to resolve the appeal in the developers’ favor. Then Campbell appealed that decision to the Vermont Supreme Court — which affirmed the lower court’s ruling in July 2023.
The appeal saga didn’t end there. Last fall, the housing trust and co-developer Evernorth got a thumbs up from the state that the project wouldn’t need to undergo Act 250 review because of a longstanding carve-out for certain mixed-income housing projects in areas earmarked for growth. Campbell, along with another Putney resident who lives near the project, Deborah Lazar, appealed that decision. This past February, the environmental court again sided with the developers, but the residents appealed that decision to the Vermont Supreme Court.
Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the environmental court’s ruling — allowing the Alice Holway Drive project to proceed. In an opinion released on Friday, Nov. 15, Justice Harold Eaton, Jr., wrote that ascribing a “looser definition” of the word “contiguous” aligns with the legislative intent of Act 250.
“Using the narrowest definition would frustrate the statute’s purpose by disincentivizing the construction of affordable housing, while providing no clear corresponding environmental protection or conservation benefits,” he wrote.
Unhappy neighbors
Legislators and housing officials have eyed policies to rein in when and how neighbors can challenge new housing, though most were left on the cutting room floor during the last legislative session. The affordable housing developer Evernorth has continually highlighted the Putney project as a prime example of how a few neighbors can delay widely-supported new housing projects — and add considerable expense to them.
Campbell, a 77-year old retired opera singer who lives in an apartment complex next door to the Alice Holway Drive property, felt that public engagement by the developers and town officials was lacking as the project plans came together, she said in a Tuesday interview. The housing trust’s website indicates that it presented plans for the project at 10 public meetings between 2020 and 2022.
“I want [Putney] to be a vital, evolving community — not a community burdened with crime and arson,” she said.
When asked, Campbell clarified that she didn’t think the apartments would necessarily bring more crime but suggested they would “further degrade the ecology of the area.” Her ultimate hope has been for the property to become a park.
In an interview on Monday, Lazar, 72, a local artist who is a member of the community garden next to the future apartments, said her chief concern around the affordable housing project was traffic safety. She had wanted the development to undergo Act 250 review to further scrutinize the traffic patterns around it. The intersection already feels unsafe for shoppers leaving the nearby food co-op, Lazar said, and she fears the new housing will be configured in a way that will result in car crashes.
But, Lazar added, she is also concerned that Putney lacks services to support more subsidized housing, pointing specifically to police staffing and mental health care.
“There are so many other places to build housing,” she said.
Lazar is a director of Friends of Putney, Inc., a nonprofit that has helped handle donations to pay for appeals against the apartment project. Lazar said Monday that “most of the money raised for the appeal came from outside of Putney,” though declined to name who had sent funds “because it’s so controversial.” She said she did not know how much she and the other appellant had spent on legal fees, but estimated “several thousand” dollars.
A statement on the Friends’ website says the group’s “primary focus is to preserve and conserve the open space at the entrance to Putney,” along Alice Holway Drive. The statement adds that the group stands for “strategic, community-driven housing and accessibility solutions that consider Putney’s most vulnerable populations and diverse ecosystems, which are intertwined.”
Putney Selectboard Chair Aileen Chute expressed relief on Monday that the project is finally moving forward. While the project has drawn ire, she suspects more Putney residents approve of it than don’t.
“My sense is that the majority of the residents in Putney do support the project, and that there’s a small but loud, vocal minority that really opposes it,” she said.
Like all of Vermont, Putney has felt the impacts of a severe housing shortage, Chute said. A recent housing assessment estimated the town needs at least 80 new units in the next five years.
The town is home to a small college and several boarding schools. “All those places need people to work, and nobody’s been able to find housing, you know, here — which I know has stymied a lot of efforts at those places to retain quality people.”
Campbell indicated on Tuesday, however, that her fight against the apartments may not be over. She is interested in advancing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, she said, on grounds that due process of law was violated.
A costly delay
As the project has made its way through the drawn-out appeals process, construction costs have ticked up 30%, according to Bridgewater. The housing trust previously pegged the project cost at $11.7 million, but Bridgewater declined to give an updated estimate on Monday, citing the need to conduct new cost estimates.
She estimated that the developers spent upwards of $75,000 in legal fees throughout the appeal process.
The 25 units will be broken up between two buildings, and will be a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments designed for a range of income levels. According to the housing trust’s information page on the project, rents will range from $660-$1,250, utilities included. Several apartments will be set aside for people with very low incomes, Bridgewater said, ensuring they pay no more than 30% of their income on rent.
Those units will also come with supportive services, according to the project website. The building will be highly energy efficient, using ground-source heat pumps for heating and cooling.
To address traffic safety concerns, the development plans include installing a sidewalk that runs from the apartments’ driveway to the nearby food co-op, and putting in a crosswalk to the overflow parking lot, Bridgewater said.
The developers hope to break ground in the spring of 2025, she said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: After years of appeals, Vermont Supreme Court ruling clears path for Putney affordable housing project.