Developers tell House General and Housing Committee Vermont rules, fees and infrastructure costs are blocking new homes

Two private housing developers testified to the House General and Housing Committee on Feb. 12 that state and local permitting, fees and the cost of infrastructure are key barriers to building new homes in Vermont.

Zeke Davison, chief operating officer of Summit Properties, and Evan Langfelt, president and CEO of O'Brien Brothers, described projects in Middlebury and South Burlington and urged clearer, faster processes and targeted infrastructure investment to reduce costs and unlock more housing.

Why it matters: Vermont faces a shortage of homes, witnesses said, while per-unit construction costs have risen so high that many markets cannot support new development without subsidies. Committee members asked for specific legislative fixes and for the developers to submit a short bulleted list of recommended changes.

Davison summarized the scale and constraints from Summit Properties’ recent work: "We currently have under management about 1,400 units, about a thousand of those have some affordability component" and said the firm has a master-plan approval for 254 units in Middlebury, has broken ground on 80 of them and is building 45 for-sale homes in the first phase. He said the project is subsidized: "We started construction on the first 80 ... we've received in a $50,000,000 project over $30,000,000 worth of subsidy to do that." He added the first phase was still more than $2 million short until Middlebury College…