 Hi, I'm Doug Bishop. I'm the senior director of communications here at the YMCA. I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for coming out this evening on a date. It certainly started off with a few surprises with the weather, but so I'm glad I go and made it out. And I also want to thank Kevin, too, for being with us in the remote future. This is an example tonight of what the Y would like to do more of and has plans for in the coming year, sort of seizing upon the opportunity that we think we have to be a center of community and to community people. It's something we'd hope to do sooner in this building, but with the pandemic and other things, we've got a slower start on that, but I look for more things in the coming year from us. And we're excited to have Kevin here with us. One of the things that I appreciate from what I understand of the remote futures project's work is that they've generated some ideas, some data that they want to share, but they do it with an invitation for conversation and for ideas to come back to their projects and the work that they're undertaking. And that will be a goal of ours as we get more events scheduled out in 2024 is to invite people here, center of community, invite ideas and conversation. So Kevin, Kevin Chu from our futures project, he was born here in Burlington, immigrant parents, grew up in Burlington with Burlington schools and onto Middlebury College. He'd like to stay here and grow old here, as he says. That's why he's motivated to figure out what the future looks like. And before coming to the future's project, he was at UVM and sound like many different roles. That's right. From some diversity work, to student recruiting, to strategic planning and more, which probably that diversity has helped set you up well for the type of work you're doing here. So, Kevin, thank you. Welcome. And Kevin will give a presentation and I think he's got questions for us and we'll invite conversation at the end. Thank you. So, town meeting TV decided to join us today so they're recording Kevin's presentation. Thank you very much Doug. Thank you all for being here as well. I know you probably have many options for how you could spend your evening and I really appreciate that you chose to spend it here with me. So, hopefully the time together is fruitful and I will give a presentation but I'm also here to learn from you. We'll take a look at some data together but I've got some questions and I want to hear your ideas and your input. So, the Vermont Futures Project, we have a mission question instead of a mission statement. For me, statements are static. We can make a statement today in 2023. It might not be relevant in two years, five years, definitely not in 10 years. So, we've organized our mission around a question which is how can we use data to support the evolution of Vermont's economy towards a thriving future full of opportunity for all? And the way we're trying to answer that question now is by developing an economic action plan. There's no statewide plan for the economy right now. So, that's the gap we're trying to fill. We're trying to do this in a durable way. We want the plan to be nonpartisan, informed by data and designed for engagement. And what I mean by designed for engagement is there was a state plan in 2014, a comprehensive economic development strategy is the technical term, that emerged from the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. It was a 144 page PDF, which I'm sure every Vermont read. And one of the reasons why I want to design it for engagement is because if all we do is produce a report that sits on a shelf that no one talks about, then we haven't created impact. I had a stint teaching ninth grade earth science after graduating from Middlebury. And some of my favorite students were the farm boys in Addison County. So, in my professional life, I've always thought through the lines of how do I make sure to translate the work that I'm doing in a way that can include ninth grade farm boys in the conversation so they can see themselves reflected in the work. Now, I'll be talking a bit about the economy, but I'll share a bit more about my background. I grew up as a person of color in Vermont. I bring an equity lens to my work. I was an environmental studies major at Middlebury. So, and I know that a thriving future in Vermont includes all of these perspectives. It's a balance between the economy, the environment and equity. And data is a really good way to bring people together from different perspectives to align ourselves towards common goals and values. And we can dispel this zero sum myth. I see this play out sometimes in public discourse and it's really frustrating where I see the economy pitted against the environment or against equity. But I think we can find a balanced path forward and data is a really good starting point. So, the journey to build a statewide plan began with an analysis of what exists already at the regional level. I'm of the mindset that I am not smart enough to write a plan on my own, nor am I stupid enough to try, somewhere in between. So, I want to understand what are some of the goals and priorities that exist at the regional level? Is there any overlap? And if there is, then there's already consensus and agreement and that's a really good starting point to develop a statewide vision. So, in that regional analysis, these are the priorities that emerged. And none of these really come as a surprise. Many of them talk about infrastructure, workforce. It's about capacity and community if we were to distill some of these key concepts. So, again thinking through that lens of how do I take the work and translate it in a way that's designed for engagement that invites people in. We took this list and built a framework that just says Vermont's future depends on people and places. These were the ideas that showed up time and again at the regional level. So, from here, we went back to the data to ask, okay, can we set some goals and put some numbers on this? And we developed these goals that were launched a couple of months ago to grow Vermont's population to 802,000 and the non-seasonal housing stock to 350,000 by 2035. I'll get to how those numbers were calculated in a sec but I mentioned that there's no state economic plan. However, a quick Google search yielded this list of other state plans that Vermont does have. And I feel like the economy needs a plan too because as I went down the rabbit hole of clicking into these and trying to understand what was in these other state plans, I found that many of them were demand-based. And what I mean by that is they ask for a certain amount of funding. They say they need a certain number of workers in order to accomplish their plan. And we can't do all of these great things. I think these are great aspirations for the state to have but we can't make it all work without an adequate supply of people and places. I mentioned I was an environmental studies major so I'll point to the climate action plan as an example. The Energy Action Network in their annual report last year said that Vermont needs about 6,200 new workers doing weatherization work in order for the state to meet its climate goals. Now, when we take a look at unemployment, it's at 1.9% right now. That means about 6,400 workers across the entire state that are looking for work. There are 19,000 open jobs. So we sent those 6,400 people looking for work into the climate economy, trained them to do weatherization work. We might be able to make that one plan work but we wouldn't have anyone left over to be teachers, nurses, childcare workers, firefighters. We simply don't have enough people. And what this shows here, if numbers don't do it for you, just follow the colors. Top left is January, 2012. Bottom right is December, 2022. And it shows a changing ratio of open jobs to job seekers. A decade ago, for every one open job, there were two people looking for work. Today it's an inverted ratio. It's almost a three to one ratio. So if every person looking for work right now in the state found a Vermont based job, we'd still have over 12,000 open jobs remaining. So that was the foundation for our analysis of calculating a population goal. We took a look at the Vermont Department of Labor estimated retirements per year. They project about 14,800 workforce exits annually through the end of this decade alone. And then we have to take a look at the supply side. How many people potentially are joining the workforce? Our high school and college grads. And this may come as a shock, but the entire state of Vermont last year had 5,312th grade students total. Many of them are here in Chittenden County. But when we have that number, 5,300 and then 14,800 exits per year, those two don't balance out. So through this analysis, we found that annually we need to be trying to add about 13,500 people into the workforce, right? When we talk about workforce, we really mean people. And everyone's probably wondering about this because how did you land exactly on 802? The 13,500 projected out about 12 years got into the 800 to 810,000 range. And I took the personal liberty of picking a goal that Vermonters would remember, talk about, maybe take pride in. And to many Vermonters, 800,000 may sound like a large and scary number, but 802 for some reason seems a little bit more familiar and comfortable. So I want to address the elephant in the room. So this is the age distribution of Vermont's population. We hear the term missing middle a lot in the housing conversation. We also have a missing middle in terms of our age demographics. The vertical red line here is traditional retirement age. So we can anticipate the workforce impacts over the next 10 to 15 years because time only works in one direction. I haven't figured out how to solve that one yet. If anyone knows, let me know. And what that means for our labor forces, this is what it looks like. Here's the distribution. It's very bottom heavy. We have a lot of late career folks in our labor force. And we need to be proactively planning for the transition over the next 10 to 15 years. So I mentioned there were only 5,312th grade students in the entire state when we look at enrollment as a whole. It's dropped almost 20,000 in the past two decades. Vermont has the lowest fertility rate in the country. So we can anticipate that this number will continue to decline. So how are we doing? We'll take a look at population change. I'm sure many of us heard stories or even had neighbors that moved here during the pandemic. We saw that reflected in the population change statistics. Much of that was through domestic in migration, but we've seen net population change go back to normal and not in a good way. Back to normal's losing strategy in this case. Across the entire state of Vermont from 2021 to 2022, the net population change was just 92 people. So that's a balance of in migration, out migration, births and deaths. There are probably more than 92 people in this building right now. So we have to look outward. And as we do, we have to also recognize what's happening in the world around us, that our country is much more diverse than the state of Vermont. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by about 2045, the United States will be a majority minority country. Here's the racial and ethnic distribution of Vermont's population versus the U.S. So Vermont's about 92% white. The 8% non-white represents about 50-ish thousand Vermonters. Now if we were to wave a magic wand and double that number overnight, the number of non-white Vermonters, our overall population would be about 700,000 and we'd still be 85% white. So there's room to grow. And this is the workforce of our future though. By median age, non-white U.S. citizens are on average younger than white Americans. And even here in Vermont, we see higher labor force participation rates among BIPOC Vermonters compared to Vermont on average and compared to the U.S. as well. So just to simplify the math a little bit, 92% Vermonters are white. So about nine in 10 white, that's what I've shown here. And there are only two ways to change that ratio. We can do that through addition or subtraction. And subtraction doesn't help our workforce. I also don't want to be responsible for picking who gets kicked out. So I vote addition. And that's part of our thinking in this 802,000 by 2035 goal. Vermont needs more people. But the other part of the story that we don't tell often enough is more people need Vermont. One of the ways we can think about that is through the lens of the environment and climate change. So I mentioned the Climate Action Plan earlier and there's language that really stands out to me which is Vermont who will need to prioritize helping the people who will be most affected by climate change. Certainly within the state there will be differential impacts. We saw that with the flooding over the summer and the subsequent recovery efforts but the people who will be most affected, many of them don't live in Vermont yet. And if we want to be true to these words we should be thinking about how to proactively create conditions to be able to welcome folks across the socioeconomic spectrum regardless of where they come from because we know that climate change will lead to more migration around the world. And Vermont can be a place for people to arrive and call home. And when we think about that we have to talk about housing, right? That's the limiting factor. Turns out housing can actually help us meet some of our stated goals in the Climate Action Plan too. So the two largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont are thermal, that's the orange there, so heating and cooling, and transportation emissions, which is the green. So we have a state with things that are really spread out. Transportation emissions are gonna be high in that case. And then thermal, well, 25% of our homes were built before 1940 and they're not very thermally efficient. So new construction, new housing can help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions so we can build in a smart way, denser, more walkable downtown areas, create capacity for population growth. We can make progress on the economy and the environment and do it in an equitable way too. When we don't create new housing stock, I'm gonna go back on the slide. You can see in the recent decades we really haven't built enough homes. And the reason why I say housing shortage is because we've made decisions over the decades that have led us to the situation we're in now. I hear the phrase housing crisis quite often and to me, a crisis is what's happening in Ukraine or the Middle East, right? This is the result of decades of decisions. It wasn't something that happened overnight. But I feel like we also can make decisions to alleviate the housing shortage if we choose to. However, if we want to call it a crisis, how do you respond to a crisis? You act with urgency. When the pandemic hit, we saw increased demand for Vermont from outside of the state. So this shows sales to buyers reporting out of state addresses and the vertical red line, there's the pandemic. So when COVID hit, there was a lot of external demand. And when demand went up with low supply, predictably prices also went up. But we need to dispel the myth that COVID caused this, because if we look at the data even prior to COVID, there was a 50% decrease in active listings between 2016 to 2020. And then COVID accelerated a trend that was already at play. It didn't cause it. The 350,000 non-seasonal units by 2035, housing's a human right, it should be right to build housing. So when we talk about these numbers, just the big statewide numbers, it can seem daunting, it can seem scary, right, 155,000 more people. And I've taken a first stab at trying to just split it up a little bit. This is in no way meant to be prescriptive. This is just a starting point for conversation, just like everything I'm presenting tonight. I took a look at the current distribution of the population and split up the 802,000, keeping those same ratios, just to get an idea for if we hold those ratio steady, what would that population distribution look like? And here's what it is by county. And then in terms of housing, this is what it looks like. But you can see if everyone around the state buys into a collective goal on a local level, it's really not that much. It's an achievable number. We can do it if there's broad-based buy-in. So is there? Well, let's take a look at sentiment. So I put this question in the Vermont poll last year. It's a poll run out of the University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies. And I asked, are you supportive of growing Vermont's population size to strengthen its workforce? And there are more people that say yes than no. 13% are unsure. They're, what I think of as the undecided voters, maybe they're just waiting for better information to make an informed decision. Maybe they should be here tonight listening to this presentation. If you know some of those folks, send them my way. So I was really surprised when I took a look at the data by age, I went in with my own bias and I thought younger respondents would be more open to new people, new ideas, and I was wrong. And I'm happy to say that when I encounter data that challenges my thinking, I was wrong. The youngest respondents were most likely to say no, and the likelihood of saying yes went up with age. The youngest respondents were also very certain about their answers. That didn't surprise me because I work with teenagers and they think they're always right. So glad to see that reflected in data. And when I thought about this, a couple things come to mind. I think the youngest respondents probably feel the pressure in the housing market most. So population growth may represent competition for limited housing that pushes prices up. Maybe competition for limited job opportunities, whereas older respondents are more likely to own a home. They may be insulated from those market dynamics. They're towards the later end of their career and may already have a job that they like, that they're not trying to work their way up in a career. So that, to me, I just found fascinating. And then to compare that with, this is Vermont Public put out a poll asking young, or asking how we would advise 18 year olds in Vermont to build a career path, to have a successful life and the story that we've been telling to our young talent in the state is you need to leave to find opportunity, right? And we've been perpetuating this scarcity mindset. I see Andrew nodding. So this is the story that we're telling, and then we see that missing middle in our age demographic distribution, and we can see the power of the stories we tell and the long-term impacts on the data. So Vermont needs a new narrative. So I'll end with this framework. Again, Vermont's future depends on people and places. Vermont needs more people. More people need Vermont. And if housing is a human right, then it should be right to build housing. And now I'll open it up to discussion. As I mentioned, this is part of an effort to develop an economic action plan. I'm doing a statewide tour. I was in the Northeast Kingdom this morning, and part of this effort is to listen and learn and hear ideas. So I wanna know at the local level, state level, what are some ideas or recommendations for actions we can take to move the needle? Or if you think there's a different approach that doesn't include population and housing growth, I'd love to hear those ideas too. I just wanted to comment about the, when you said that people are unsure, those people I have enormous respect for because they see both sides. They're seeing the no and the yes, and they're saying, well, it depends on how you do yes. I'm not in all the way until you show me something more specific. We diminish those people that are in that category, but they're really the smartest ones. I'm unsure most days of my life. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great thing. Does this question, 61% of young people from my perspective who said no, were they distributed around the state or were they focused in shipping? How many do you have any idea? I haven't dug into the data by region yet. That's another phase of research when I get back to the data, but that is a good question. I'm curious who's more... Once I do that regional analysis, I'll publish something to share that information. Yeah. I just went to the Champagne has interest luncheon today, and it sounds like there are a lot of projects that are building housing all over the place. And I wonder if you're collaborating with them to try to be more strategic about where and how and when and with what money and such things. Yeah. I'm collaborating with a lot of the folks that are working in the housing space. The Champlain Housing Trust, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, they have a fantastic data dashboard, housingdata.org. If you haven't been on that website, it's one of my favorites, but I'm a data nerd. And we're trying to find creative partnerships and solutions and try to understand what do we have control over when it comes to this challenge of housing. Some of the challenges are outside of the control of Vermont, things like material costs, interest rates set by the Fed, but we can also take a look at what do we have control over in terms of the policy and regulatory environment that might be adding costs or time to bring new units online. How are we repopulating the talent pipeline in terms of the trades? So those are some fruitful conversations that are emerging. In the graph that you had a few slides back, you talked about decisions that had led to the housing crisis that happened earlier. What were some of those decisions? The big one that gets talked about quite often is Act 250 that was in response to a large wave of immigration and development that threatened the landscape of Vermont in a way that many folks didn't like and it was effective at suppressing development. It was also created at a time when the national conditions and awareness of environmental challenges was very different. Clean Water Act wasn't passed until 1972. So I think personally, I think it's time to revisit the language in Act 250 and ask, does it still accomplish what we wanted it to? Is it appropriate in a modern context or if it's not creating the outcomes that we'd like to see as a state, maybe there's room to update it. And when was that Act 250? 1970. So one of the reasons that I moved here and wanted to make the light here was the natural characteristics of Vermont, the access to open spaces. And then being into the county, there's the pressure of if you're not, if you don't sort of loosen some of the restrictions and let new development go up, it's gonna go out. And that's what threatens the moral aesthetic or the characteristics that a lot of Vermonters talk about. So I don't know if there's a way to combine. So if you are gonna keep people into some of the already developed cores and try and revitalize some of those small town centers, can we loosen some of the historic preservation rules, make it easier to build on those previously built spots, right size it to the amount of square foot that like the modern, that people really need. Not what we want, what we really need to live happily and sustainably and then connect those cores with better public transportation and not have all of that development also go hand in hand with more parking spaces. Because we just don't have the room, I think, to do all of it. But I think letting people build up, especially in Chittenden County, but then also taking away some of the historic preservation restrictions would maybe help bring some of that development back to small town centers. Yeah, I'm really glad you brought up all those points because I'm hearing similar things around the state too. I think there's an awareness of how density and height can alleviate some of the pressure of sprawl because then we can fit more units on the same parcel of land, but many municipal zoning regulations have height restrictions. So communities are having those identity discussions. How do we want our community to look and feel moving forward? Does it meet the needs of the current residents? And I'm hearing a lot of appetite for this downtown revitalization effort on both at the local level and also at the state level to create incentive programs to support that type of development too. Question, I do love the open space, the beauty of Vermont. I was born and raised in New Jersey until I came to go to UVM. So I'd stick around. I'm curious if there are any data or studies that look at what percentage land-wise of the state is developed between roads, housing, parking lots, how that's changed. Yeah, I attended the designation 2050 summit. So there's a designation program to incentivize downtown development to revitalize village centers. And they shared some of those statistics. 6% of Vermont's, or 6.5% of Vermont's land is categorized as developed. 12.5% is in use for agriculture. And the other 80% is barren. So the forest, wetlands hasn't been touched by development or agriculture. So that's the distribution of the land use. And then I know in my travels I've also encountered a lot of Vermonters that like to poke fun at New Jersey. I'm sure some of you have probably encountered that as well. I've seen lawn signs. I've seen bumper stickers. There's a Facebook page that says don't Jersey, Vermont. So I wanted to take a look at the data. New Jersey's population density is 1,200 people per square mile. Vermont is at about 70. And if we grow the population to 802,000, we'd be about 80 people per square mile. To reach New Jersey level population density, we'd have to grow to 11.5 million. Yes, I did the math. So that 802,000 goal is really thinking about how do we help take care of the people who are already here? With an aging population, we can anticipate not only the retirements and effects on the labor force, but as populations age, healthcare needs often go up too. And again, we are already struggling with the workforce shortages. So that goal wasn't calculated to just maximize economic output. It wasn't thinking from a single lens. It was, how do we balance the needs of Vermonters who are already here with what we want to be moving into the future as well? Do you have any, sorry. Go ahead, yeah. Do you have any information regarding the delineation of those expected jobs in the future? I wonder how many of them are paid at what kind of rate and maybe that might be affecting the level at which they're able to hire for those jobs because I know a lot of people in the state are like, one can't really make a living in the state. So I have to move to Boston or New York to make salaries that I can provide myself. I do know working for now and my partner, my opinion, more manually for jobs and stuff like that. Just how difficult it can be to find a job that pays enough just to live. Even not counting not expensive housing and things like that. There's inflation in those systems. There's something that I think really needs to be done. Are these jobs, these open areas and will that be expected to come in and jobs that people can really live off of or are they like, they don't have that kind of. Yep, the Vermont Department of Labor has all the data that you're looking for there. They released a report called Long Term Occupational Projections where they take a look out to about 2030 to project. It's not a prediction, it's a projection to project which occupations will grow, which ones will shrink, what the median wages are for those occupations, what the qualifications are by educational level. And that data set is where I got the 14,800 number in terms of exits that's part of their projection. They also hand that data off to the McClure Foundation who put out a report called High Pay High Demand Jobs, which is distributed to high schools all around the state and folks that are working in the workforce development space to highlight opportunities that are expected to grow and pay above median wage. So that data is available. It's kind of a segue to the interest and the point that you have about domestic immigration. By the way, I'm an Addison County farm boy and I'm also a data nerd. So I was actually on looking at some of these similar numbers today. We're friends. Yeah. Where I'm going is I'm on the board of the Vermont Youth Conservation Corp and my specific challenge is to help us recruit members to the board that have different perspectives. One is the two Vermont's, Chittenden County and the rest of Vermont's birth. And also age, but more particularly diversity EDI because we, and this is part of the question, we attract people to our program as their first job or as crew leaders from out of state, a high percentage. And of course, housing is an issue, which is why we're spending a lot of money on our big barns to convert some of those to housing. But what we want to do is to not attract the current population of Vermont, but what the rest of the US is to make it more forgiving. Maya Angelou says to see it to be it in terms of looking at crew leaders that look more like people we're trying to attract. As I was looking at the numbers, and this is the number about it, I believe Vermont has two superlatives, which is we have the highest percentage of high school graduates to matriculate outside of the Vermont in the highest percentage of a state university who has students coming from outside of the state into Vermont. So part of the, what are the percentage of not just colleges here, but large employers who can attract and keep people here? Some of them may be higher income. I mean, we get a lot of people in the past from IBM, a lot of medical professionals, there may be engineers or beta and others, but for less in our state, the price point is much, much less. So is it true that that's where Vermont is in terms of those superlatives? And the real question is how can we attract and do things to attract more people that don't look like a typical Vermont or like me? Yeah, our higher eds are actually doing a pretty good job attracting young talent from all over the country. And the student body at UVM, for example, is very different in terms of racial and ethnic composition than the Vermont average. But we do a poor job retaining those students. Actually, Vermont is dead last. We retain about 43% of our college grads. We also see in the data where they go, they go to places like Boston, New York City, DC, Denver. So I think opportunity creation has to be part of the discussion, business growth to create opportunities that align with the skills and qualifications of those students that are coming here for an education but leaving. The Vermont labor market, about 70% of the jobs don't require a four-year degree. Compare that to the Boston metropolitan area, 41% of jobs in Boston require a four-year degree or more. So with the amount of money families and students that are investing in education, I understand why on an individual level they may leave to seek an opportunity elsewhere that helps them see a return on that investment. Vermont has a lot of small businesses. 90% of the businesses are under 20 employees. We have some medium businesses. We don't really have the larger employers that might have that poll that would help with recruitment and retention. So I think helping some of the smaller businesses to scale up to that medium size to create some of those entry-level positions that may match the qualifications of the young talent that is coming here but leaving can be part of the strategy. A colleague of mine who works in the states like Tourism Board, I don't remember her specific department, but she said her budget for campaigns to promote Vermont is so disproportionately lower than New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, that's a whole other ballgame, right? But compared to New Hampshire and Maine to be so far behind, do you have a pitch to try and invest money into promoting Vermont? And if you do, what's your elevator pitch for getting people here? What's the special sauce that you want to share with people? How do you package that message? Yeah. So right here, more people need Vermont. Again, we can think about it from an environmental lens. We can think about it from a social lens. One of the things I really love about Vermont is town meeting and the fact that like, I can disagree with someone sit across the table from them and have an informed discussion and still shake their hand at the end of it and walk away as a friend. I think that when the pandemic hit, it was the societal moment of reflection and people that had the means and the privilege to be mobile at that time got to think about their values and where they wanted to live out those values. And in that moment, a lot of people chose Vermont. And the demand for that is still there. We see that reflected in the housing prices. So we can capitalize on some of that latent demand. If we really like the sustainable solutions that we're creating here, the civic discourse that still happens in our state, we should try to scale that up so that Vermont has a larger impact on the world around us and starts to help the world shift in a way that scales up Vermont values. That's a lot of whys to the more people in the Vermont, but what's the quick sound bite version of all of that? Like, you know, more people in the Vermont. Why? Yeah, do you want to help me develop that? I don't really have a marketing budget. Yeah. It's not cute, right? Like, you mentioned that people who will need this are influenced with the issue. And the reason I moved here, I can say, you know, just about a year and a half ago, as you can imagine, not a great future protection for someone who doesn't already have papers there. So I elected to invest in someone that I think will persist in the environmentally viable moving forward. So sort of the opportunity for the opposite of that, elsewhere, is why people do Vermont. Yeah. And there's probably some sort of targeted campaign based on the audience. Like, if I put out a marketing campaign to the American Southwest, it would be, we have water. If it were to, yeah. So we have more jobs and job seekers. There are some parts of the country where that's the opposite there. More people looking for jobs available. So the pitch there is a very different one. I think your friend, I would like to see them get more support to do that type of creative marketing to tell Vermont's story. Because if we don't tell our own story, other people will tell it for us. Saturday Night Live has done a few segments on Vermont. And that's what the rest of the country sees. So I think there's an opportunity to say, let's control our own narrative. I've lived here for nine years now. And I do agree that there's this basically given that our population is changing to bring people in. But I really do think the root of the problem is like what we have with housing. I mean, in my own experience, I moved into an apartment for $1,100 in one bedroom in 2019. And I had to move out of town this year because my rent was raised to $1,600. I moved into an apartment in Virginia. The only apartment friend in Madison County at the time. The only apartment. I mean, thank God I got it. It was the only apartment I could find. I got a job. I left town because I couldn't afford to be anymore. I got a job in the sawmill. 40-hour weeks, 10-hour days, $18 an hour. These are the things that we're supposed to bring people into town for, work for $18 an hour, and pay $1,200 for one bedroom in a 2,500-person apartment. Like, it's crazy. That is such a disconnect to me. And when I see all this development that we have going on now, it's up on Spear Street. It's like these McMansion-looking things. That's not what people are moving into. I hear this talk about these $2,200 studios in the nest on Bank Street are going to get these rich people out of these apartments in the North end. Like, it doesn't seem to be exactly me. And when I see these people who want to come here, I think it's like me. I came from Atlanta, big city, tons of sprawl. I grew up in the suburbs. And what I wanted was that vision of these sort of small businesses in these places, these compact villages with the mountains just outside. And there is jobs to do, and they're fun. Before I worked in Sawmill, I worked for an auction house. I was a beekeeper. These are great, rich, remote, cultural jobs. But when you can't afford to live there, that's where the group issues. And you see it. I like Burlington because they've done away with it. I think Burlington's the only town in the state that's done away with minimum parking apartments for businesses. You simply cannot build within the villages that make the state look so good under the current system of how we do it. And I think it would be lovely to bring these people in to do so, because we do need these jobs. But when you're trying to convince people to come here to work for under $20 an hour and have to get two roommates on Craigslist just to be able to live here at all in the one or two apartments that are available. Like that's, I think, the real story. We can make these great ads for what this place wants to be and try and look sexy to people who don't want them to come. But all we're gonna get is people from New York who can afford to live in spare expensive apartments. I mean, my parents are one of them. My mother got to work from home during the pandemic. She's still working downtown Atlanta. It's the same salary. And what did they get here? They live in two bedroom by the YMCA. Like we have people making, you know, like 50 year olds, career money, living in two bedrooms in Maryland. Like it's, that to me is the biggest issue we have here that things aren't being built where people want them. What's being built is these big mansions for people who really aren't us. And we're not seeing that building in town. I don't think it's about the historic aspect of it. I think it's that we have these rules against building in the airings. So I mean, we have these jobs, but no one's gonna come do an under $20 an hour job if they can't, you know. Can I take you on tour with me? Well, I wanted to piggyback on what you said. I came from Arkansas about a year and a half probably here at my boys. But, you know, there's like a disconnect there because like, particularly in Burlington, you know, and I realized we needed a new high school, but like they increase property taxes in almost in the same breath when they talk about not being able to afford housing for people that are renting. And that seems like there seems to be a lot of working across purposes there. And that really concerns me a lot. But, and my other question is, do you have any numbers on what the infrastructure level would be like to increase just in Chittenden County up to I forget what your number was, $300,000? I don't have that data, but I'm working closely with colleagues in the RPC Regional Planning Commission community. There are groups in every region of the state that are looking at land use maps, understanding where infrastructure exists, where new infrastructure might be needed for further growth. So I defer to the experts because I'm not an expert in that space, but the RPC community would be the best resource to try to answer that. That is a challenge I'm hearing in some rural parts of the state that see these numbers say, yes, we would benefit from 100 more residents in our town, but we don't have municipal water and sewer to build the units that we would want in a dense way to make that happen. And in some of those cases, that's where municipalities are trying to seek state level support to be a catalyst for those projects. And I think there is also an opportunity, it doesn't happen often enough for municipalities within a region to collaborate and pool together resources, a human capacity to sometimes say here, small towns say, well, there are grants available, but we don't have the capacity to go after the grant. And that to me seems like a terrible waste. There's money out there, but we can't go after it because we don't have the expertise or the time to go after it. Well, perhaps there's a collaborative approach to address that on a regional scale. What do you chart with all the projected numbers on it? We have a system in place now where people have to come and developers come and ask permission to build its expensive process. They are often rejected through the development review boards. We had a problem with housing after World War II and one way we resolved that was requiring trailer parks. So what if we gave those numbers to those planning commissions and say, you have to pre-approve housing in these locations in your city that meets these goals and then developers could come in and choose to build those properties or not. Yeah, that's part of the effort to develop an economic action plan is because we've seen the effectiveness in those other state plans of creating statewide goals. And then that helps to shape the policy and regulatory environment. But like I said, there's no statewide plan right now. So when I started this initiative about a year ago, I'd travel around the state and I'd hear, we need more housing. And then I'd turn around and ask, how many? And no one had an answer, which is why I say this is by no means prescriptive. That's a starting point, but we want to put some numbers on paper informed by data to get the consensus. And then perhaps we can get that into a bill or maybe that's a goal that a municipality will adopt. And then they can start to figure out, okay, how many new units and where, but without having that number, it's a really hard conversation to move forward. I mentioned earlier that I do a bit of coaching, track and field. And I've had runners come up to me and say, coach, I want to get faster and say, okay, let's set a goal and make sure it's realistic and then put together a training plan for how you get there. So I apply a similar approach or thinking to this work as well is I heard we need more housing and I said, okay, how many? A question about the 802 number. And if I understood correctly, that's sort of the number you think the state needs to get to from where we're at now rather than 650, 660, but does the group beget additional growth? Will there be a conversation in 2035 saying we need to be at 1.1 or? It's a really good question. So I think of it through the lens of how do we sort of stabilize this population pyramid? There's good research to understand in terms of age distribution and population pyramid shape, what the economic impacts are on a region. There's really good international data on this. If we want to look at an example of like a location that is farther along in terms of an aging demographic and how it's shaped the place, Japan. Japan's a really good example. So the goal isn't to grow this infinitely and come back in 10 years and say, well, now we need 1 million, now we need 2 million. It's how do we sort of stabilize this so then we can think about at some point maybe becoming self-sustaining. But with the distribution the way it is, we can't get there from here without a significant workforce challenge over the next 10 to 15 years. And then also, how do we take care of the people who are already here as a age? Does that answer your question? Yeah. So, I hope they understand what's the goal of your organization. So I appreciate the 802,000 and the 350, but I think the discussion today has said that, great, we can't just build housing because we don't have the people to build the houses. We gotta get the people and we don't have the regulatory in place to encourage the building housing. And our contractors can make more money making big mansions and they can. It's a complicated problem. So, what is it that your proposing group can present to the legislature? Is it a comprehensive CEDS for the four states? It's to get goals on paper. So CEDS, Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy is a very specific format of document that is often in pursuit of federal funding. It's sent to the EDA and it's sort of this checklist which is why it ends up being a huge document. What we're trying to create is more of a visionary document that can then inform better policy creation or shape decisions even on a local level to get buy in towards a collective vision. And you asked about what are we trying to accomplish with it and for me it's this last line here, opportunity for all. Do we feel like the folks that are making $18 an hour right now, do they have a pathway to build wealth and thrive in Vermont or are they stuck? Because if they're stuck then we need to help figure out a way to get things unstuck. Opportunity for all. The reason why that matters to me personally, this is stepping away from the data. I'm the son of immigrant parents. My parents came to Vermont of all places back in 1986. They came here with one social connection. I have an aunt who married an American and they happen to have a home in Shelburne. Neither of my parents spoke English, neither of them had a college degree but they still found opportunity. They found a way to make it work. They found a pathway. And my mom worked as a janitor. It wasn't a high wage job but at the time that earned enough for her to help raise a family, put three boys through college. How do we make sure that the opportunity for all remains part of the Vermont story into the future? And given the conditions they are now, I'm not sure if what my mom was able to accomplish would be as easily achievable. To the point about incentives for developers, for housing, because that's just the problem. We're just one problem. Act 250 you touched on. It seemed to me that that's the way forward is a comprehensive reform of Act 250 which was designed to keep a world character with a limited number of housing on broad acreage and also limit the number of businesses in your home. But it seems to me, and you may know this, you may correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe another superlative about Vermont is we have the, we are the most rural of states to find its percentage of the population not living in a city or town. And I believe people will move here back to people who need Vermont who wanna live in rural areas and work there and live there. This comes back to rural broadband and working out of your home. But if we could revise Act 250 to allow more higher density rural housing in areas that are acceptable, I believe that's the best way forward. Yeah, and I would encourage you all to get involved and speak with your representatives, your senators to have those conversations. I think it'll be a big part of the upcoming legislative session. I do wanna clarify though, the Futures Project is a nonpartisan organization. So I share this information with legislators, but I'm not a lobbyist. So I am of the mindset that if people have better information, better decision-making will occur out of it. But I can't go to the state house and take a particular position, which is why I encourage you all to do it. This is a quick question to follow up, but I still kinda wanna know what's the deliverable from this? Like, so if it's not a says, if it's not a, and I really do wanna know because I'm really like, I like the way you talk to people, like, I would listen to you. Oh, thank you. No, but we have, no, but I mean, I came in here very skeptical, and there's a lot of these things going on all the position on top, it's just a lot of yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And I really, so I, and I know maybe, you don't know what that is yet, right? But is it educational? Is it legislative? Is it, so I'm thinking- Yeah, so I think I misunderstood the question before. Yes, we are going to launch an economic development plan or an economic action plan. The data in this is central to the themes that'll be in that plan, and part of what I'm doing a listening tour and going around the state and collecting ideas is those will be packaged into recommendations, which will then be handed off to legislators. It'll be launched in late spring, early summer of 2024, ahead of the gubernatorial election cycle so that we can give a copy to each potential candidate and say, you don't have to write your own plan. We've already done the work for you. Here are recommendations curated from around the state that Vermontres have helped to develop, and you can take credit for the work that comes after it. We don't care. We just wanna see these things get done. You will take this data and retrieve recommendations. Yes, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, sorry. I think I misunderstood earlier. For second homes or seasonal homes, I know our short-term rentals are really astronomical in comparison to two extra primary homes here, and I wonder if you have any data supporting like if we have more locations surrounding some of those short-term rentals or anything like that. If not, get us a little bit closer to kind of reaching our housing goal. I'll point you to another website. I know I did this earlier to hear your question about the labor statistics. Check out housingdata.org. It will show you the exact breakdown of units by type, so single-family, multi-family. It'll show you owner-occupied, rental-occupied seasonal homes so you can get a feel for sort of the breakdown of those different housing types. Across the state, you can filter by region. You can filter down to the municipal level in many cases. And again, I feel like the data on that website should be referenced by every legislate later when they're making decisions on housing because we have the data. In listening to your presentation, it seems like a lot of what you're telling us tonight is explaining the problem and the necessity for people, but going around and hearing from groups like this, what are some of the theories you've heard that you might be compiling for showing websites? What are some of the recommendations that are emerging? Act 250 has come up in many conversations, reforms to that and local zoning as ways to make it a little bit easier to get development projects started. Sometimes, I heard from a developer this morning that worked on an apartment complex revitalization of a historic building in downtown Brattleboro, and he said that they had to spend a million dollars to just get to a point where they would receive a yes or no determination. That's an insane amount of money to wait for someone to say yes or no. So that's been part of the conversation. Another big thing that's come up is how do we unpack what it means to be a Vermonter? How do we become more welcoming as a community? There's some very exclusive definitions of what it means to be a Vermonter that get perpetuated, like if your family has to have been here, X number of generations. To me, a Vermonter is anyone who wants to be here and participate meaningfully in our communities. You should be able to call yourself a Vermonter from day one, even if you've come from New Jersey. All right, Doug? And that feeling of exclusion, feeling like an outsider, right? The term flatlander, is anyone here familiar with it? Yeah, everyone is. That to me is an economic development barrier. But we can't legislate our way out of that one. So it's up to us to change that narrative. And I have a few more slides that actually I'll share. When we launched these goals, I knew this would happen. There was pushback and a few op-eds were published. So this one here essentially said, okay, I'm all right with some population growth. If it's folks coming here to work in our businesses or start new ones, but I don't want unskilled immigrants. Again, my parents came here as unskilled immigrants, but they wanted to work, they wanted to learn, and they found ways to contribute to the community because we have to let go of this idea of permanent. Someone who shows up that may be deemed unskilled on day one. Well, they can learn and they can grow. You know who else in our state is unskilled from an economic perspective? All of our elementary school kids. But we have hopes and dreams for them, and they'll learn and grow and become productive citizens. And again, looking at the statistics in terms of BIPOC labor force participation rates, those people want to work. Here's another op-ed in opposition to the Futures Project, talked about the carefully curated culture that's unique to Vermont and said that more people would overwhelm those traditions and cultures. Yeah, if we look at the State of Vermont Human Rights Commission, their definition of housing discrimination says it can cover discriminatory decisions made by your local government in how they decide where to build and what services are available. So that's language directly from the state website. And then there was some pushback from an environmental perspective that said, we're already beyond a sustainable level in Vermont. We should be trying to decrease the population by 150,000. Fun fact, Vermont is less sustainable than New Jersey. So this is from the Energy Action Network Report looking at per capita greenhouse gas emissions and the change from 2005 to 2019. Vermont is over there, New Jersey is here. So New Jersey's made more progress in reducing per capita greenhouse gas emissions and all the other sort of northeastern states that have grown in population are also more sustainable. So if the goal is to reduce the population, I'm not sure that would actually help us in terms of a per capita measurement. Yeah. What do you mean by that? Is it like, do you vote for you or you don't? There are a lot of definitions. I don't know about me or there's a lot of things that ain't happening to like those. But what does it mean for me? Well, I guess it would be kind of, you know, you don't know about that. Yeah, actually, I'm not sure if it's included here. Part of his op-ed did say, well, let's use the United Nations definition of sustainable, of being able to like meet our needs without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. I'm sorry, does the community that's mind-blowing because I came here because of all these local farms and like all the, everywhere I go, it's like from Diggersmore to thousands of stone and just like everything around here and like I just haven't ever had to experience anywhere else. It was surprising to hear that Vermont wasn't able to meet its own needs like as much as New Jersey, where I'm also from. Yeah. Because you've been going around the state. When I moved here, I saw that Vermont, kind of what you were saying that Vermont has like 20% of our housing locked up in second homes. And I was wondering if you had heard any talk or interest in like modifying our tax structure to, you know, reflect that. People are talking about that for sure. Yeah. There's also some nuance within who those second home owners are. Some of them may be folks who have strong ties to Vermont. Their families have been here for a while, perhaps they're in retirement. They spend some time in Florida. They want to maintain a residence here in Vermont as well. I think sometimes the conversation around second home owners, we think of it as sort of this singular group. But there are tax, sorry, I'm blanking on the word. It's the homestead tax system that tries to make it so that people who are living here are paying less than the people who may have second homes. There is interest. I'm hearing around the state to revisit exactly how those thresholds or parameters are put in place to incentivize actually being here for a more later. The homestead tax exemption. Yes, that's the right, yeah. There's no birds and birds with both of them. First up, I'll just qualify this by saying that my perspective is from someone who's lived here, lived in Vermont full time since the late 80s and have seen a very flat population over that time period. And it's also informed as a business owner who's been trying to recruit people here from out of state with not a lot of success. I think I really, the folks who were pointing out the huge disparity and disconnect between incomes and costs of living here are right on the money. That is the crux of the problem. So taking all that together, I like your 802,000 number. I think it would be great to get there, but given that my personal experience, I see that as a not a very realistic number. And if anything, I would perhaps encourage you to think about a more realistic number closer to 750. I'd be thrilled if we got to 750. 802, I realize the marketing catch of it, but my gut tells me from experience that particularly given the disparities in income and costs of living here, it just strikes me. That's one of the reasons why I came today, is I saw this 802,000 number and said, wow, that is hugely ambitious and I want to hear what this guy's gonna say, but I hope we're gonna get there. So that's my takeaway for- Yeah, I appreciate that input. I'm curious if you think it's too high of a number by 2035, like with the same number by 2040, do you feel okay or do you think that number itself needs to come down? I think if you're gonna stick with the current time period that you're talking about, it's too high if you were to expand, given the depths of the problems and the market dysfunctions that are going on here, I don't think that can be surmounted in a 10 to 12 year period of time, perhaps extending the time period out and too big a 802 would make more sense to me. Okay, if I'm hearing you correctly though, there's agreement that growing that number would be helpful for the month. Oh, I think it's a necessity to get there, but I'm just trying to put it more based on my own experience, a realistic assessment of what means possible. I appreciate that, yeah. This is just really quick, these are just ideas because I think about this a lot, which is that I'm a princess on very well and have also worked on a historic building with God and just incentivize, the word incentivize has to be, everything here is penalized or punished, so incentivize, I don't know how, and then, but I think that language, and then with just, so what's the incentive for people to come here, right? And so for the two groups, I'm thinking tax breaks, I'm thinking the remote worker, all these things, and then for the other group, which I was a part of for a really long time, just maybe housing, of course housing, but maybe something Vermont State College is, like come here, become an electrician. It pays well, we need them desperately. It's like, come here, we'll pay for your education if you stay, and we'll get you a house, that's harder, I don't know how, but something incentivizing, you know? And we have that thing that, I heard from my friends in Texas over, Vermont giving you $10,000 to move here, and then I'm like, oh, it's interesting to me, I didn't hear about that. Did that do anything? Did that create any people who actually have stayed here? Yeah, I think the state put out a report to try to quantify the economic impact of that. My read on it was that it was effective at first because it was so unique, like no other place was paying a relocation incentive, but now other states and their, or select municipalities around the country that are running similar programs, so actually Vermont actually discontinued funding for that relocation incentive recently, because now it's just one of many options that people have. There is a new incentive for college graduates to stay and work and live in Vermont for two years after graduation. I think it's $5,000 to help with loan repayment, so that is an idea being explored. And I do really appreciate your comment about thinking through an incentive lens, because there's only one economic growth incentive in the state, it's called the DEGI, the Vermont Employee Growth Incentive, and that's been under threat. So, if we have only one and it goes away, then all we're left with are sticks rather than carrots. And legislatures weren't going about all of that in that program, but desperately, we put as much as we can, but then we can't have people get here and be stuck in this, right? You know, stuff would like, yeah. No, I wish I had something more, but I... Yeah. Apart from the tangible ideas about housing and incentives and so forth, an idea might be to build on our state motto and also the fact that we were a republic longer than Texas, like I noticed McLeary's deal about the second republic, which was a bunch of history there. But the freedom and unity, favorite quote in the state house, I think can set up this debate that you're fostering, which is actually in your mission question. And it's Dorothy Canfield Fisher who is infamous for other things. But this I think is powerful to help frame the debate about what we need to do and the word is energetically. The Vermont tradition grapples energetically with the basic problem of human conduct. How to reconcile the needs of the group of which every man or woman is a member with the craving for individual freedom to be what he really is. So that juxtaposition of freedom and unity and how we wrestle with that energetically, I think could help spin up the debate about what we need to be in the future. Really appreciate that, hadn't heard that quote before. Doug, mindful of time here, how long do we have? Let's see, day 15 now, maybe it still seems like an interesting group, maybe in the 15 minutes. Yeah, thank you. Take a few more, I'll just be totally transparent, I've had a really long day. I was in the Northeast Kingdom. I was in the Northeast Kingdom giving a keynote address this morning and I haven't had dinner yet. So let's do like two more questions. I'm starting to lose steam. Yeah, Andrew. I don't have a question so much as a statement. I am a professional recruiter and I actually taken a job locally about three months ago. So I'm recruiting for local Vermont companies and there's huge demand to come here by far the biggest issue is housing though. Not only is it really expensive, the inventory is so low. So even if someone, they can get really great offers here, like it's somewhat more competitive in terms of compensation, but the practical realities of like accepting a job offer and then figuring out how to move to Vermont, find your temporary housing, so you move yourself and your family stays in another state and moves later or something like that. It's so difficult, a lot of people are super turned off and they say it's just, I didn't realize it was so expensive, I'd love to move to Vermont, I didn't realize it's so bad here. That's by far the biggest issue, I think, with getting people to move here. It's just, it's housing and the inventory. Any thoughts on how we might go about solving some of these problems of incentivizing or getting more housing built that doesn't directly impact people who live here, work here, own homes here, like that are already passed fairly high for the state that we're in and the population that we have here and kind of how we figure out a way to maybe not put more pressure on people who are already kind of feeling their tight economy that we're in right now, while still being able to kind of offer these incentives to get more people to move here or to have more housing built, you know, funded by the state without raising those taxes on people who are already having a hard time here. I know we've sort of just been talking about housing generally for most of the conversation, but I think there's an opportunity to think in a more nuanced ways, nuanced ways within the housing market, housing types and anticipating needs. So one of the questions I get asked sometimes is, well, if population hasn't changed much and the housing stock hasn't changed much, then why are we in the housing shortage? And part of that is because of our aging demographic, median household size has gone down over time, which means for the same population level, the housing need has actually gone up. So you have a family of four, like two adults, two kids that bought a four bedroom home 20 years ago, and now the kids have grown up and they want to stay in the community and they want to rent an apartment or think about buying a home. That means there's new demand, even though it's still the same for people. So that's that play. It also means with the median household size going down that there are older Vermonters who are occupying homes that may be larger than their current needs. And things are stuck because there's just no housing stocks or anywhere along the spectrum. And some of those older Vermonters may actually want to downsize, but they have nothing to move into. And if they did, then it would open up housing stock that might be a better fit for a young growing family. So we're not efficiently and effectively using the stock that we already have. And we can think about where in these sort of demographic transitional moments can we anticipate need to unlock stock that could be better deployed. And I feel like there isn't enough housing stock to meet the needs of older Vermonters as we see this transition coming in the data. There's two questions. We're going to have some dinner. Kevin, thank you very much. I think I've already had some questions. Thank you. Thank you. A couple of asks here. I'm sure you've probably already read the bullet points, but the big one is have data informed discussions with your family, your friends, coworkers, neighbors, customers, elected officials. This is a really, really good Thanksgiving topic. And I'll just end by saying I approached the work by thinking of people as an asset and not a burden. I feel like people add to the capacity of communities and contribute to the culture as well. So I've just taken an attempt at looking at the data to try to create an estimate of how many people we need and how many houses to let's try to agree on a collective goal as a state and then start to get to work. Thank you. You're here. Yeah.