This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
In the aftermath of three consecutive summers of damaging floods, state officials have awarded nearly $50 million in federal flood recovery grants. The lion’s share of the funding is going toward housing construction on higher ground.
“The majority of these funds are focused on housing projects that will create new units which are out of harm’s way for future storms and help replace units we’ve lost in recent years due to the severe weather events we’ve faced,” said Nate Formalarie, deputy commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development, at a Wednesday press conference.
Vermont has in recent years lost hundreds of homes to flood damage and subsequent property buyouts, in which the government pays owners of properties for their homes and turns lots into greenspace. Flood recovery grants are a form of long-term disaster aid that is appropriated by Congress. For communities around the country, these funds are a rare opportunity to use federal disaster recovery money to construct new homes where they didn’t exist before.
In Vermont, these funds, which are Community Development Block Grants for disaster recovery, are tied specifically to the July 2023 floods. The funding has been awarded to 25 projects concentrated primarily in Washington and Lamoille counties, two of the hardest hit areas in the state that year.
The housing projects include the construction of a 31-unit apartment building in downtown Barre, the renovation of a vacant Vermont State University building in Johnson into housing and the conversion of an underutilized office building into apartments in Montpelier.
“These efforts represent recovery and stability,” said Angie Harbin, director of Downstreet Housing and Community Development, the primary affordable housing nonprofit in central Vermont, at the press conference. Her community development organization received $14.5 million of the federal grant funding.
State officials received over $120 million in applications for the funds from municipalities, developers and planning commissions, which was nearly twice the amount of money available.
One project left out of the mix was the high-profile redevelopment of Barre’s North End neighborhood, first pitched by Gov. Phil Scott, a native of Barre, soon after floodwaters devastated the area over two years ago.
Without these federal funds, the original vision for Barre’s North End is now on “life support,” said Barre City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro. City officials denied Federal Emergency Management Agency buyouts to many homeowners there because approving them would stipulate that nothing could be built on those lots in the future. Such a scenario would deplete the city’s housing stock and property tax rolls. Storellicastro had hoped these more flexible federal funds would be the key to fixing up the neighborhood.
“That one… you know, tugs at the heartstrings, because there’s people still living in that neighborhood who want a way out,” Storellicastro said. Barre City did receive funding to acquire land and build out infrastructure for a separate housing development as well as grants for widening a floodplain and planning future stormwater upgrades.
Formalarie said state officials prioritized projects that had other funding already lined up and were close to “shovel ready,” among other factors.
Other awards went to relocating a homeless shelter in Barre out of the flood zone, restoring a floodplain in Hardwick and replacing a bridge in Cabot to better accommodate rising waters.
State officials are accepting applications for another $14.4 million in federal recovery funding specifically for housing projects that needed a little more time to finalize their proposals, Formalerie said. Pre-applications are due by Jan. 12.
