This is not random policy drift anymore. Vermonters are starting to realize this is an entire governing philosophy built around centralized control of land, housing, taxation, and ultimately, who gets to remain in Vermont long term.
The state already forced towns to reassess property values statewide by 2027.
At the same time:
- Education property taxes jumped roughly 17–19%
- followed by another major increase
- while the state temporarily masks the real impact using surplus money that is rapidly disappearing
People still think towns control their property taxes because they see a local tax line.
But the real burden increasingly comes from centralized statewide formulas and education equalization mechanisms that the towns barely control.
The result is predictable:
A property assessed at $150,000 becomes $300,000.
Taxes go from $4,000 to $10,000 or more.
Rents follow immediately behind.
And everyone wakes up at once.
Property owners wake up when taxes triple.
Renters wake up when rents quadruple.
Then the state tells struggling renters the reason housing costs are high is “lack of inventory.”
But drive across Vermont:
There is land everywhere.
There are old farms everywhere.
There are properties everywhere.
The problem is not a lack of land.
The problem is that ordinary Vermonters cannot economically build on it anymore.
Between permitting, engineering studies, environmental reviews, energy mandates, utility requirements, septic costs, labor inflation, and building code expansion, constructing even a modest house can become financially impossible before a shovel even hits the ground.
Meanwhile, material costs exploded.
Builders are seeing houses that once cost roughly $140,000 total decades ago now costing over $500,000 just in modern construction environments for comparable scale projects.
Then comes the next contradiction.
Vermont spends enormous amounts addressing homelessness and housing instability, yet the system never seems designed to permanently solve either problem.
Because if the goal were truly housing supply, Vermont would be aggressively reducing barriers for:
- small local builders
- multigenerational housing
- farm-family expansion
- accessory dwellings
- owner-built homes
- small community development
Instead, regulation keeps concentrating land and power upward.
Current use increasingly benefits those with large holdings and long financial horizons, while smaller landowners face pressure, penalties, and succession problems.
Families die off.
Children cannot afford the taxes.
Land gets sold below long-term value.
Large operators consolidate entire valleys.
Institutional ownership expands.
And once local ownership disappears, the next phase begins:
luxury development, resort expansion, institutional land control, and outside wealth converting Vermont into a playground economy instead of a functioning multigenerational state.
Look at what continues expanding:
- luxury resort property
- second-home development
- large institutional land ownership
- industrial-scale projects
- centralized infrastructure
Meanwhile, ordinary families struggle to build a second home for their own children on land held for generations.
That is why more Vermonters increasingly believe the issue is not “housing shortage.”
It is overregulation combined with centralized economic control that slowly removes ordinary people from ownership itself.
Once government controls:
- land use
- valuations
- taxation
- permitting
- development rights
- environmental access
- succession economics
Ownership becomes conditional.
And when that happens, eminent domain no longer starts with bulldozers.
It starts with making ordinary ownership economically impossible until the land transfers anyway. Oh yeah, taxes are due #VT4VT