Norwich
Commissioners presented a plan that would mandate that 25 percent of units in a development along the corridor be affordable to people making 70 percent of the Windsor County median family income — or about $45,549, as adjusted for household size.
The proposal also calls for an increasing proportion of development units to be available to rent or own at the county median income as building projects grow in size.
The district would cover both sides of Route 5 South and a piece of land between River Road and the point where Interstate 91 passes over Route 5 North, according to a map shown on Thursday.
Members of the Planning Commission and its Affordable Housing Subcommittee on Thursday described their idea as a solution to regional housing problems that Norwich, with a central location and a comparatively small population, is in a unique position to address.
The commissioners also said that bringing in more affordable housing units could combat the drain on municipal resources from rural sprawl, as well as the increasingly high costs associated with living in town.
“The bottom line for our area is that affordable housing is scarce,” Planning Commission Chairman Jeff Goodrich said in his introduction. “Affordable workforce housing, at all levels of housing, is scarce.”
Goodrich in his presentation said that the Lebanon area needs about 5,000 units of housing. Norwich, for its part, declined in population by about 5 percent between 2000 and 2015, commissioners said, while the region’s population increased.
In Norwich, the cost of living is increasing as the income composition of residents shifts toward high earners. School costs are rising too — a phenomenon that the board members said could be counteracted by creating housing for young and lower-income families.
“When you have more kids,” said commissioner Jeff Lubell, “you have a better opportunity to bring down that per pupil spending and therefore really bring down your taxes.”
Lubell said that many people, despite working in the Upper Valley, were unable to afford to live here. That leads to many people commuting for more than an hour to reach their jobs in the core towns, creating more expense, more traffic and more carbon emissions, he said.
“Anyone who works in this business can tell you rental units are extremely hard to find,” he said. “Vacancy rates are extremely low.”
Norwich, he noted, is located near to all three of the Upper Valley’s major job centers: Hanover, White River Junction and Lebanon.
The Planning Commission’s proposal would allow a maximum density of 8 units per acre for new housing in the proposed district, with the permissible density decreasing as size increases.
On that scale, a 20-acre development, for example, could fit as many as 130 units.
The plan also calls for the height limit in the high-density district to be increased to three stories from two.
During their presentation, planners on the commission acknowledged that the proposal had faced vigorous opposition from some concerned residents during the planning process.
“We’ve heard a lot of you saying, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ ” commissioner Susan Brink said as she presented a map of the potential district. “…I’d like you to just keep an open mind as you go forward.”
Anticipating criticisms of the plan, the commissioners said they had imposed strong restrictions to attract only those developers who are committed to upholding the town’s values. A development of the maximum allowable size is unlikely to happen, they said, given such other regulatory hurdles as Act 250, Vermont’s development law, and the town’s site plan review.
Irv Thomae, a 25-year Norwich resident, was the first to comment.
“I want to compliment the commission for focusing first on sustainability,” he said. “… If we are losing people in the middle income range because they can no longer afford the taxes in this town, this is diminishing all of us. I don’t want to live in a museum where all I can see is beautiful houses.”
Dean Seibert, a 50-year resident, said he supported the idea of adding affordable housing, but not necessarily this plan.
“I suspect that everybody in this room recognizes that we need it,” Seibert said. “I think the question is what is the best way that we can get it.”
Seibert predicted that the proposal would increase taxes, not lower them; that it would “suck the vitality from a very important business area”; and that it would “compromise the wellbeing of those who do live in the affected zones.”
He also called the commissioners’ predictions of lower taxes “alternative facts,” echoing a phrase that President Donald Trump’s administration last month used to explain false claims it had made about the size of his inauguration crowd.
Colin Calloway, a professor of history at Dartmouth College who lives off Hopson Road, also spoke against the proposal, comparing it to the land grabs that the U.S. government made from Native Americans.
“A common tactic to get land is to persuade people who don’t live on that land to acquiesce to the taking of that land,” he said, adding later of the zoning proposal, “That seems very much in that vein.”
Neil Odell, a Norwich School Board member who also serves as chairman of the Dresden School Board, supported earlier assertions from Thomae and the commissioners that bringing more children into the school district likely would bring down school-related property taxes under Vermont’s per-pupil education finance calculations.
“If everything else were to remain equal, the school portion of the property tax rate would go down,” he said.
Later in the evening, former state Rep. Ann Seibert, who is married to Dean Seibert, stood up to offer criticism for the proposal, saying that Vermont is committed as a state to “trying to make certain that the interstate exits are not developed in a way that sucks the energy out of our towns.”
“There’s possibility to having some affordable housing without changing our zoning laws,” she said. “I think that should be explored. I think to change the zoning to mixed-use does not seem reasonable to me and many others.”
Linda Gray, speaking as chairwoman of the Norwich Energy Committee, said she saw “a lot of positives” about the proposal’s potential effect on the environment. She cited the potential to shorten commutes, build sustainable buildings and increase the town’s density in order to fight rural sprawl.
“Personally, I’m very attracted to the idea that these policies might bring more diversity,” she added.
Commissioners said Thursday night’s meeting was a listening session that would allow them to gauge residents’ views.
When the Planning Commission has a final zoning amendment to propose, it may send it on to the Selectboard, which has final say on changes to code.
Residents, however, do have a short period to petition for a Town Meeting vote on any new zoning amendment passed by the Selectboard.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.