Housing Needs Assessment
Housing Needs Assessment
This dashboard supports the Town of Stowe's development of a Housing Needs Assessment, led by town staff and the Housing Task Force with support from CommunityScale. This dashboard will continue to expand and evolve as the planning process unfolds and results take shape.
The Town of Stowe is convening an in-person only public workshop to discuss and gather feedback on the Housing Needs Assessment. At the workshop, participants will hear a brief presentation by our consultants CommunityScale and then join a series of interactive activities to learn more, ask questions, and share feedback. In particular, we need local input on what strategies to prioritize and how best to apply Town's resources toward creating more year-round housing units and a more sustainable community.
A culminating outcome of the Affordable Housing Task Force’s 12-month tenure, this report includes a detailed analysis of Stowe’s housing challenges and provides an action plan of strategies and solutions by:
To sustain and advance the community’s vision for itself, Stowe needs attainable housing for:
The visitor industry remains critical to the local economy, but it's accommodations should be balanced rather than competitive with local community needs.
Stowe’s household population has been growing over the past decade and is on track to continue doing so for the next 10 years, at least from a demand perspective.
In terms of relative incomes, growth is expected at all levels with the largest absolute increase within the >120% AMI group. This may be in large part due to lower-income households being priced out by Stowe’s high housing costs.
Realizing this growth is not inevitable or assured - it assumes the corresponding housing units are built or otherwise made available to accommodate the new households, including a sustainable share of homesteaders.
Stowe has built more than 500 units over the past decade. Continuing at this pace would provide enough units to keep up with potential growth over the next decade. However, most new units built in Stowe are absorbed as second homes and vacation rentals.
Only about ⅓ of residential properties file homestead exemptions. According to local realtors, as few as 1 in 10 clients are looking for full-time residence in Stowe (the rest are second home buyers).
The map at right illustrates the mix of homestead and non-homestead properties across Stowe. Villages such as Moscow, Lower Village, and Stowe Village have retained higher shares of homestead properties than most other parts of town.
Distribution of homestead and non-homestead residential properties.
This chart compares the median listing price in Stowe with the home value attainable to a household earning the median household income. A wider gap means higher barrier to entry for first-time homebuyers and increased risk that an existing resident might be priced out of the community if they choose or need to move to a different house.
Median income households have been priced out of the local market for more than a decade. This chart also includes a line tracking prices affordable to the typical household interested in moving to Stowe full-time (earning an estimated double the median household income). These more affluent buyers could afford housing in Stowe until the Covid pandemic, at which point Stowe became unaffordable to nearly all potential full-time residents.
Stowe’s median home price is over $900k, a figure even local lawyers and computer science workers would struggle to afford. Workers in lower paying - but still traditionally middle class - jobs have no choice but to live outside of Stowe despite working local jobs that contribute to the economy and community.
About three quarters of the 4,632 people working in Stowe live outside town limits. Commuting long distances to work in Stowe has been relatively typical for years. However, as the local workforce is pushed to live ever further away by rising housing costs, a growing share are leaving their jobs in Stowe for more manageable options closer to home. If this trend continues, local employers could have increasing trouble filling the jobs necessary to run their businesses.
At least 15-20% of Stowe residents work from home. While this does not directly support the labor needs of local restaurants, accommodations, and other employers, it does provide a new source of income to support more households living in town.
This data does not account for many seasonal workers such as J1 Visa holders who often live in employer-sponsored dormitories and thus somewhat outside the competitive housing market.
Rents in Stowe and the surrounding region have risen more slowly than household incomes. As a result, the median household income is now nearly sufficient to afford the average rent. However, rents for units built since 2020 are about $500 more than average units overall. Newly constructed units would likely be priced at or above this mark to cover today’s high development costs.
To keep up with demand for year-round housing, Stowe will need to add new rental units. About a quarter of current housing units are rental today, so even maintaining that mix would require over 100 new rental units. State plans call for a new housing mix of at least half rental. Especially to the extent these added units are new constructed (rather than converted STRs), they are likely to command higher than average rents.
Like many other parts of the country and the state, Stowe’s senior population is projected to be its fastest growing, especially as more households age into this cohort. However, this trend is particularly pronounced in Stowe, with at least a third of the populating aging above 65 by 2035.
At the same time, the 20-34 age cohort is projected to diminish almost entirely over the next 10 years, likely leading to a steep decline in the number of local school children living in town to replenish enrollments as the current adolescent cohort graduates and potentially moves away.
While Stowe’s school enrollment has been holding steady for some time, declining numbers of young households - especially in the 20-34 age group - could foreshadow fewer new families entering the school system in the future.
Indeed, enrollment among K-2 grades has been dropping significantly over the past several years. This could be a trailing indicator of many fewer new families moving to Stowe since Covid a few years ago, when many of today’s kindergarteners were born. The more direct the correlation between a spike in housing prices and a decline in young student enrollees, the more difficult it may prove to reverse this trend.
Beyond impacting school stability and community sustainability, declining enrollment contributes to higher taxes on homestead households. State school funding is issued on a per-pupil basis, so fewer students means more burden on homestead taxpayers to pick up any slack in the local school budget.
Costs: Construction costs and labor shortages are driving up prices and diverting resources and investment to second home construction.
Competition: Existing and prospective full-time residents cannot compete with second home and short-term rental markets.
Land: Growth Centers where higher density is allowed are limited in scale and don’t include significant development opportunity sites.
Infrastructure: There is sufficient sewer capacity - and water in most places - but access is largely limited to the Mountain Road corridor.
Legal structure: State law and tax rules limit the Town’s ability to raise funds and provide financing incentives.
Funding: Federal and state affordable housing subsidies are scarce and competitive.
Sentiment: The community lacks a clear vision of what it wants, where, and how, delaying or discouraging development.
To keep up with demand, Stowe needs to add about 580 year-round units in the next 10 years. This would also meet the production target issued by recent state legislation.
However, if subject to Stowe’s current rate of 2 non-homestead units for every homestead unit, reaching this target may require building 1,700 total units on the assumption that 1,120 of them are absorbed by the second home and short-term rental markets.
Stowe is approaching several demographic and economic cliffs all at once that all relate to or impact local housing costs and access in different ways:
The community needs to set a goal for year-round housing units that helps reverse these trends toward a more sustainable and durable community moving forward.
The second home market is important to Stowe’s economy, community, and identity. But the town needs a more sustainable balance between homestead and non-homestead to maintain the quality of life that draws people here.
| Proposed goal: | Stowe's housing stock will be 50% year-round units (currently 33%). |
| Two paths: | Development tailored to full-time residents Intervention to convert a share of housing back to year-round units |
Supporting the goal of more year-round units, Stowe needs to focus new production on the housing types that year-round residents need but are in short supply:
Vision: Clarify the Town’s housing vision and define what the community wants where for more predictability.
Zoning: Modify regulations to promote density, infill, and attainable housing where contextually appropriate.
Revenue: Introduce revenue sources to help finance affordable housing.
Housing reserve fund: Establish and contribute to a discretionary reserve fund.
Housing trust: Assign a nonprofit entity to manage the housing reserve fund along with land banking and deed restriction administration.
Workforce: Develop programs to promote more workforce housing.
Manage the STR supply: Control the number allowed, manage allocation of new registrations, and restrict registration transfers.
Public land: Develop town-owned land as affordable or mixed-income housing with conditions.
TIF: Establish Tax Increment Financing opportunities to catalyze mixed-income housing development.
Capacity: Supplement Town staffing and resourcing in line with establishment of new policies and programs.
Advocate: Lobbying the State House to support ongoing statewide housing reform but also to highlight Stowe’s unique circumstances and constraints.
The Housing Task Force is an advisory body charged with collecting data and making recommendations on how to better support year-round residential housing at more affordable price points in the Town of Stowe, VT.
CommunityScale is a pioneering urban planning and spatial data analysis company serving clients across the United States. Follow us on LinkedIn and X.