Displaced by another round of flooding, Vermont renters have few options

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

The house Allison Doe rented in Plainfield hadn’t been a perfect home. Doe, 64, moved to the Brook Road residence five years ago from Williston because she was excited to live “in the country,” she said. A former animal hospital employee, she loved being in the company of chipmunks and chickadees. The rent was cheaper, too, but the home, which Doe described as more like a camp, was bitter cold in the winter. She became desperate to move, but struggled to find the help she needed to relocate.

This month, devastating flooding forced Doe’s hand. First responders rescued her from the house late the night of July 10 as it was swept into the water. Two weeks later, she remained in a state of shock. She had been put up in a dorm room on the eerily quiet campus of Goddard College, but struggled to remember how she’d gotten there, and didn’t know how long she could stay. She was wracked by the loss of her cat, Captain, who she hadn’t been able to save during the rescue. And she was trying to figure out how to find a new place to rent.

Doe has struggled with housing insecurity before. She has been homeless in the past, she said, and spent around eight years on the waiting list for housing at Cathedral Square, which provides affordable housing to seniors and people with disabilities. A brain injury makes it difficult to keep up with paperwork and applications, she said, and chronic pain and fibromyalgia can make it hard to move around. Doe hopes to move back to Chittenden County, closer to her doctor, but worries she won’t be able to find something she can afford on her disability income – even with a housing voucher in hand. Right now, she said, she needs someone to help her navigate Vermont’s extraordinarily tight housing market.

“I can’t get anybody to help me find a place to live,” she said. “I can’t do it myself.”

Renters like Doe face an uphill battle as they seek somewhere new to call home. Low rental vacancy rates can make decent apartments hard to find even for those with greater means, and rising rents continue to squeeze Vermonters with less purchasing power. And repeat floods over the last year have hammered some of the state’s relatively affordable housing stock .

Officials have received 111 self-reports of damage at rental properties stemming from the most recent flood through the 211 system, according to data provided to Vermont Public by Vermont Emergency Management on Thursday. Much of the damage to rentals is concentrated in a few places: 23 renter households reported damage in Lyndon, 19 in Barre City, and 17 in Plainfield. (The data reflect all levels of damage reported, meaning these numbers could include homes that are still habitable and others that are destroyed.)

Before the flood, online forums in the Northeast Kingdom were already filled with people searching for a place to rent, said Megan Matthers, a volunteer coordinator with the long-term recovery group Kingdom United Resilience and Recovery Effort. Now, nearly 30 renter households in the rural region have reported flood damage.

“The housing crisis is one of the biggest talking points of this area, and to have something like this happen just really adds to the pressure,” Matthers said.

Some renters who lost their homes to flooding last July are still trying to land stable housing. And homeowners who can’t live in their houses because of flood damage are also seeking places to rent in the short term , further driving up demand.

One year ago, the home Tina Pecor shared with her three kids in Graniteville flooded, rendering the family homeless. She’s been looking for another rental ever since. Pecor couchsurfed with relatives, at times having to separate from her kids, she said. But a few months ago, she was able to get into transitional housing for families in Barre’s North End through Capstone Community Action, the anti-poverty agency where she works in the Head Start program.

Exactly one year later, she watched floodwaters rise around the transitional house – which had also flooded last year. This time the water only went into the basement, Pecor said. But as she struggles to figure out a long-term solution for her family, the latest flooding underscored that she wants to be far away from water.

“I’m just looking for a three bedroom, but it’s like – it’s really hard finding one,” Pecor said, from the porch of the transitional house. “I don’t want to go to a place that, it’s like, going to flood,” she said.

Renters dealing with flood damage should tell their landlords, in writing, the extent of the damage and what types of repairs are needed, said Daniel Schmidt, a staff attorney at
Vermont Legal Aid. It’s a landlord’s responsibility to bring a rental into compliance with health and safety standards, like having an adequate water supply and access to heat. If a landlord doesn’t make repairs to meet habitability standards in a timely manner, Schmidt said, a tenant can withhold part of the rent – but they should let the landlord know, in writing, before they do so.

The Vermont State Housing Authority is encouraging Vermonters displaced by flooding to apply for rental assistance through the Section 8 program; applicants will need to meet income requirements. More rental assistance could be available if the federal government approves a disaster declaration for the state, unlocking aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Displaced by another round of flooding, Vermont renters have few options .