Unsafe properties in Hartford qualify for FEMA buyouts

The Hartford selectboard is moving forward with a hazard-mitigation buyout grant for a residential property at 361 South St. in Wilder, Vt. The house will be razed, and the property mitigated for landslide risk, and then the town will own it. (Valley News-Jennifer Hauck) Valley News — Jennifer Hauck
Published: 12-31-2024 3:37 PM |
WILDER — A faded sign in the front yard of a single-family house on South Street in Wilder warns of unsafe conditions, but the trouble isn’t obvious from the street. A glance out back, though, reveals that a steep bank has eroded dramatically, leaving a rear corner of the house hanging precariously some 30 feet over a creek bed.
“The owners were advised to seek alternate living arrangements immediately,” Fire Marshal Thomas Peltier wrote in a memo to the town manager in November 2023.
The South Street house is one of two properties in Hartford that have recently qualified for a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hazard mitigation buyout grant. Both were damaged during summer flooding in 2023.
Under the federal program, all structures on each property will be demolished and removed. The properties will be stabilized to prevent further erosion and damage. The land will then become town property, with restrictions on its use — no permanent structures, for example — in perpetuity.
The hazard mitigation grant program was created in 1993 following unprecedented property damage caused by river flooding in the Midwest. Since then, the program has provided approximately $3.4 billion for the purchase and removal of roughly 62,000 properties nationwide, according to FEMA data.
In Vermont, about 150 properties were acquired and mitigated under the program after flooding caused by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. Nine of those properties were in Hartford, according to the town’s Planning Director Lori Hirshfield.
The purpose of the hazard mitigation program is “first and foremost to make sure that people don’t remain in areas that are potentially deadly,” Two Rivers Ottauquechee Regional Commission Executive Director Peter Gregory said by phone recently.
The second purpose is to prevent further damage to nearby properties.
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If a building is in an unstable condition in a flood plain, “the debris could still be available to hurt people or cause damage downstream,” Gregory said.
Homeowners who participate in the program receive 100% of the value of their home as assessed on the day before the flood.
Often, though, that payout does not cover the costs of finding alternative housing while paying a mortgage and taxes on the property until the buyout is finalized, Haverstock said.
“For the individual family, it’s a human tragedy,” Gregory said. “I can’t imagine going through that.”
The buyout program is voluntary on the part of both the homeowner and the town. A homeowner may apply for and receive approval for a hazard mitigation grant, but the town must agree to participate in the process.
While funding for demolition and mitigation is provided by FEMA and the state’s emergency management office, towns bear the cost of losing some tax revenue, since the participating properties are removed from the town’s Grand List.
The assessed value of the South Street property is $152,500. The Country Lane property is assessed at $218,100. Absent any tax credits for which the homeowners may qualify, the two properties combined created just over $10,000 in taxable revenue for the town.
Additionally, the process can place a burdensome administrative workload on town staff, though Vermont is working to lessen that burden.
“This year, to reduce administrative burden, the state is managing the program so that towns don’t have to,” State Hazard Mitigation Officer Stephanie Smith said by phone recently. The hope is that the assistance “makes it easier for towns to say yes,” to buyout applications, she said.
Though some towns that were especially hard hit this summer, including Barre and Ludlow, have declined to approve all of the buyout applications submitted to them, “a lot of our communities are leaning in and doing the mitigation,” Smith said.
In October, the Hartford selectboard unanimously approved a contract with engineering firm DuBois & King for slope stabilization and erosion prevention work at the South Street site. The $115,400 for that work will be covered by the state portion of the hazard mitigation grant.
The total cost of the South Street mitigation is $568,199. Of that amount, 75% will be covered by FEMA and 25% by the state. “The town will incur no costs on either project (other than lost property taxes)” Hartford Town Manager Haverstock said by email Friday.
Cost estimates are not available for the Country Lane property, which is not as far along in the process as the South Street house, Haverstock said.
Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603 727-3208