Brett Yates: Students didn’t cause Burlington’s housing crisis

This commentary is by Brett Yates of Burlington. He works as a ski lift operator and journalist.

More than any other institution, the University of Vermont drives the commercial and cultural life of Burlington. Without it, the small city wouldn’t likely boast an art museum, a film festival, countless coffee shops or renowned restaurants.

But as homelessness has risen, locals have grown louder in pointing out that, if not for UVM, Burlington also wouldn’t have sky-high rents. A draft memorandum of understanding between the city and the university administration, which would permit UVM to continue to grow, has met skepticism both inside and outside of City Hall.

Under its terms, the city would amend its zoning ordinance to allow for new residential construction on three UVM-owned sites in exchange for a promise by the university to limit enrollment increases through 2028: 1,500 new beds would bring only 1,000 additional undergrads. But some Burlingtonians have urged City Council to renegotiate the deal to prevent UVM from expanding its headcount at all.

Burlington’s hostility to UVM belongs as much to its political left as to its right. A public, not- for-profit entity, Vermont’s largest university often plays the role, in our social imaginary, of the corporate bully whose greed threatens to supersede the presumably more wholesome interests of “the community.” This David-versus-Goliath story elides the real Goliath in municipal affairs: homeowners whose preference for peace, quiet, and abundant parking has guided land-use policy for decades, taking priority over affordability for renters.

Calls on the city level to attach strict conditions to UVM’s requests for density bonuses accompany pleas to the state legislature to require the university to house the entirety of its four-year undergraduate population on campus: an unheard-of practice at any flagship state university in the country . On his website, Ward 1’s Progressive candidate for the March election advocates for such a law as a means to alleviate pressure on the local rental market.

But whatever political clothing it may wear, the popular understanding of Burlington’s housing crisis as a problem of too many students betrays a fundamentally conservative attitude that cannot improve the situation. A forward-looking city’s housing policy should begin with the principle that all are welcome, and that if we don’t have enough housing for everyone who wants to live here, we should build it.

Efforts to resolve supply shortages by restricting demand — that is, by delegitimizing certain groups’ claims to the city — can, in different contexts, take on an uglier character than they have in Burlington, but our elected officials should recognize “students are stealing our housing” as a blue-state variant of “immigrants are stealing our jobs.” Both falsely present an immutable scarcity.

Our scarcity is self-imposed. Low-density zoning in much of the area surrounding UVM prohibits the construction of apartment buildings that upperclassmen would gladly inhabit if they existed, instead of competing with longtime Burlingtonians for units farther from their classrooms. Mayor Weinberger’s Neighborhood Code plan offers only minor changes.

Few Burlingtonians have demanded a more drastic upzoning — they’d rather see the invasive species fully contained. In their view, underclassmen and upperclassmen should both live on campus, not in neighborhoods, and UVM should therefore build housing for them, but only if such construction doesn’t lead the university to invite even more students to town.

City Council’s power over UVM rests only upon its ability to withhold municipal favors. Burlington’s great hope is for the councilors to find a way to use this tenuous power to compel President Garimella to house a greater proportion of his students without adding new ones. Otherwise, they want legislators in Montpelier to impose crippling restrictions upon an important state institution on its host city’s behalf.

These are unlikely solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist in the first place. Over the past half- century, UVM has upped its undergraduate enrollment only by about 4,000 , and it already accommodates more of its students on campus than most comparable universities .

As a developer, UVM can help Burlington reduce its housing deficit if City Council allows it to (and it should), but college students aren’t inherently difficult to house even when their universities don’t choose to build many dorms.

That’s because, by and large, they are consumers of market-rate units, belonging to the lucky classes whom profit-driven developers can and will serve if given the chance. They don’t require an institutional sponsor to manage their need for shelter any more than someone who shows up here for a job.

In Burlington’s economy, the students function, to a large degree, as conduits for remittances from wealthy Massachusetts households. They buy overpriced lattes and ski equipment and don’t consume much in the way of public services.

Other, more vulnerable populations do. A denser, more populous Burlington — with more UVM students, not fewer — could more easily fund such services, including social housing.

If Burlington doesn’t want them, it’s for the usual illiberal reasons: a dislike of newcomers and young people and of sharing space. Don’t let anti-development advocates tell you they’re actually worried about high rents.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brett Yates: Students didn’t cause Burlington’s housing crisis .