Build or tax? Vermont’s governor candidates emphasize different elements of housing policy.

Carly Berlin covers housing and infrastructure for Vermont Public, in partnership with VTDigger. 

The high cost of housing is squeezing Vermonters. One in five people have struggled to come up with rent or mortgage payments in the last year, according to recent Vermont Public polling. More than 4,800 people in the state experience homelessness, as of September. Citing the high cost of living, residents are losing faith that Vermont is a good place to build a life.

Both candidates vying for Vermont’s top job want to bring down housing costs and make the state a more affordable place to live. But Republican incumbent Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic/Progressive challenger Amanda Janoo have starkly different ideas about what’s driving the state’s housing problems — and how to fix them.

Scott, who worked in construction when he entered politics over two decades ago, sees the housing issue as one of supply and demand. Vermont’s housing shortage is at the root of many of the state’s woes, in Scott’s view, from declining enrollment in schools to stress on the healthcare system — and that deficit of homes is driving up prices.

“We need more housing, and there’s no governor who has done more for housing than me,” Scott said at Vermont Public’s gubernatorial debate.

Janoo, an economist and political newcomer, speaks less about Vermont’s housing shortage and more about the “financialization” of the state’s housing stock. In her view, more homes in the state are getting bought by “investors, second-home owners, and corporations,” pricing out everyday people. Taxing those kinds of properties at higher rates is a central plank of her campaign.

“For decades, we’ve treated housing as an investment rather than a home,” her campaign website reads.

Scott: Build, build, build

A common refrain of the five-term incumbent is that Vermont doesn’t need more taxes — it needs more taxpayers. Building up the state’s tax base by creating more housing is a key piece of Scott’s governing philosophy. 

He often cites housing initiatives created during his tenure as some of his proudest achievements in office. Those include the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, which doles out small-scale grants to rehab apartment buildings that have fallen into disrepair, and the Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, a financing tool that lets developers borrow money for roads, sidewalks and sewers against the future tax revenue of a housing project. 

Those programs lend government support to for-profit landlords and developers. In VHIP’s case, property owners must rent their units at below-market rates for five to 10 years in exchange for the money. That’s a shift from the dominant approach before Scott, which focused on awarding funds to nonprofits to construct “perpetually affordable” homes — units with requirements that they be rented or sold at subsidized rates forever.

To be sure, Scott has overseen hundreds of millions of dollars flowing toward perpetually affordable housing — most notably with COVID-era federal cash. But he often says that more funding alone cannot meet Vermont’s housing needs.

“That has certainly been a sort of key tenet, as I understand the governor’s philosophy — that we have to work both within the free market system and the government subsidized system to sort of meet the housing continuum,” said Josh Hanford, who worked for the Department of Housing and Community Development under former Govs. Jim Douglas and Peter Shumlin and served as Scott’s housing commissioner until late 2023. 

Scott’s focus on aiding the private sector also drives his push for “regulatory reform” — a catchall term for simplifying the thicket of local and state permits that new housing projects must navigate.

Ire over permitting has animated Scott since he was young. When building a motorcycle shop in Morristown in his early 20s, Scott learned that he needed an Act 250 development permit. The delay and cost ultimately scuttled his plans, his otherwise scant campaign website notes. 

In office, Scott has pushed lawmakers to cut back on regulations governing development, most recently focusing on rules guiding construction near wetlands. He regularly chides the Democrat-led Legislature for being too cautious about his deregulatory efforts to promote more building.

“I understand some worry that if we do too much, we could lose some of the character of our communities, some of that rural charm that makes Vermont special,” Scott told lawmakers during his 2026 budget address in January. “But if we want the next generation of Vermonters to afford to live here, we’ve got to treat housing like the crisis it is and make real change this session.”

Some lawmakers contend that Scott too often chooses the bully pulpit over sitting down to work through difficult policy issues. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said Scott’s administration could do more to streamline and expedite permitting within state government itself. 

“You have to make government work for people. You can’t just sort of slow its gears down and expect that 10 years later, more good things will be happening,” Ram Hinsdale said.

Janoo: Taxing second homes and big companies

In her platform, Janoo also says that Vermont needs to simplify permitting for housing — while still maintaining “strong environmental protections.” She contends that the state needs to invest more in permanently affordable housing.

Her signature policy centers on a dramatic restructuring of Vermont’s property tax system, one that rewards homes that “strengthen Vermont communities” and disincentivizes others. 

“Most of the people I know, my age, the only way they’ve been able to buy a house is if they had help from their family, and that’s just perpetuated these inequalities,” said Janoo, who rents an apartment in Burlington, during Vermont Public’s primary debate in July. “We really need to limit private equity and large corporate ownership of the housing stock. We need to increase taxation on second homes, luxury estates, Airbnbs, et cetera, to actually reduce the property tax burden for residential Vermonters.”

When asked for more details on her tax plan, Janoo has said that Vermont lacks the property-level information to determine exactly what new tax rates should be and how much revenue they would generate. 

Second home taxes have become a popular topic this campaign season, and Vermont Public polling shows most Vermonters support them. Over the course of her campaign, Janoo has refined her talking points on the subject, saying she supports higher taxes on “luxury second homes” and “commercial vacation rentals,” and does not want to raise rates on “modest family camps” or long-term rentals.

When it comes to large corporations and private equity firms buying up homes in the state, most data available suggests the practice is limited. 

State tax data indicates that there were about 7,400 “corporation owned” residential properties in the state in 2025, or about 3% of all residences, including seasonal homes and apartment buildings. That’s a broad category that includes properties owned by an LLC or a nonprofit or government entity.

The Department of Housing and Community Development is currently studying corporate buying practices in the state. In a preliminary analysis of more than 20,000 single family home and duplex property transfers between 2022 and 2025, Commissioner Alex Farrell said the state has seen little evidence of a mass buying spree. 

DHCD found just over 60 transactions in which a buyer had purchased five or more properties in a year, Farrell said. The company that had purchased the most homes is a remodeling outfit in Newport, Farrell said, that renovated homes and sold them back to individuals as primary residences.

“The behaviors that we’re concerned about on the national scale, where folks or entities, or you know, someone like a BlackRock is coming in and buying single family homes or duplexes, but then trying to squeeze the equity out of them and just turn them into rentals and add them to their portfolio, et cetera. … That’s clearly not happening here,” he said.

Vermont did see a spike in “investor” purchases of homes in 2021, mirroring a nationwide trend when interest rates were low, according to reporting by VTDigger.

Janoo says that Vermont should rein in private equity and large corporate ownership of the state’s homes before such companies consolidate them and drive up prices.

Vermont’s general election day is Nov. 3.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Build or tax? Vermont’s governor candidates emphasize different elements of housing policy..

Courtesy of VT Digger