Housing Committee Profile: Shelburne Housing Committee

“Focus on the fundamentals and don’t worry about having everything… There’s no substitute for having places in your community where you can have relatively high density residential development.” - Shelburne Housing Committee Chair Pam Brangan

The Shelburne Housing Committee was created in 2016 as a subcommittee of the Shelburne Planning Commission. Its goal is to collect, organize, and analyze data in order to most effectively advise the town’s Planning Commission on the creation of more affordable housing. “The committee was created to be assemblers of information and disseminators of information, and when they were created they had very little interest in making recommendations about policies,” said Committee Chair Pam Brangan. However, the Committee has evolved into a group that makes specific recommendations regarding zoning regulations. For example, the Committee wrote a series of proposed amendments to zoning law that expanded allowances for accessory apartments which went in front of the town Selectboard in Summer 2019.

Chittenden County’s Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) is responsible for the Housing Needs Assessment and the Shelburne Housing Committee began supplementing this regional data with a Shelburne Housing Booklet beginning in 2017. This local resource isolates Shelburne’s data so that the town’s Planning Commission can identify what will most efficiently meet the needs highlighted by CCRPC. 

As with much of Vermont, the amount of affordable housing in Shelburne lags compared to the size of its population. The town does not have a housing trust fund at this time. Although residents might be interested in forming one, Shelburne would need to raise more money from its taxpayers who are already burdened with other local initiatives, including the recently-completed $6.5 million Library & Town Center Project.

The CCRPC continues to facilitate discussions about housing trust funds in constituent towns, which the Committee has found to be helpful. Unlike many towns, Shelburne does not have a building code or permitting fees which allows the municipality more flexibility to create affordable housing. Advocating for increased density is one of the Committee’s biggest tools.

When asked about other resources or ideas that could be helpful, Pam said, “I think that my advice would be focus on the fundamentals and don’t worry about having everything…there’s no substitute for those fundamentals. There’s no substitute for having places in your community where you can have relatively high density residential development.”

- Ryan Murphy & Annie McAneny, CVOEO