Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question. Today, this question from Chris Robbins in Middlebury:
“What's going on with all these storage units that keep popping up everywhere? Who uses them and why?”
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript below. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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‘Too much stuff’
Burgess Brown: From Vermont Public and the NPR network, this is Brave Little State. I’m Burgess Brown.
Mikaela Lefrak: And I’m Mikaela Lefrak. And actually Burgess, this is Storage Wars.
(Storage Wars music plays)
Burgess Brown: Uh, Mikaela, what is happening?
Mikaela Lefrak: Sorry. But this episode is going to be all about the self storage industry. And so I’m kind of trying to, like, hook people by being like, “Oh, we’re on Storage Wars.”
Burgess Brown: You’re talking about the reality TV show where people, like, bid on abandoned storage units?
Mikaela Lefrak: Yeah, exactly.
Storage Wars is filmed in California. But self storage is a massive industry everywhere. One in three Americans rents a storage unit, Burgess.
Burgess Brown: OK, Mikaela. I trust you that somehow this relates back to Brave Little State.
Mikaela Lefrak: Yes. We got a question from a listener named Chris Robbins in Middlebury. Here you go.
Chris Robbins: What's going on with all these storage units that keep popping up everywhere? Who uses them and why?
Mikaela Lefrak: Chris says she sees these self-storage buildings all over Addison County, where she lives.
Chris Robbins: There are three in Middlebury. I live in Middlebury. Two in New Haven. One is huge. It even has waiting lists for their mini-storage, their commercial and their vehicle storage.
Mikaela Lefrak: She’s also noticed two in Bristol, three in Vergennes, and two in Brandon.
Chris Robbins: One of the ones in Brandon is called “Too Much Stuff.”
Burgess Brown: “Too Much Stuff.” And waiting lists. Wow. OK. So that does sound like a lot. Does she have any theories?
Mikaela Lefrak: Yeah, she does. So, she has actually used storage units herself a couple of times. She and her husband, they moved here from Minnesota. And they were living in an apartment right when they first moved here, and they rented a storage unit when they were looking for a house. And she also rented one after her mother died.
Chris Robbins: She had antique furniture and things like that. We had to wait until we decided what to do with all the stuff.
Mikaela Lefrak: Chris is curious about why the self-storage industry keeps expanding, here and across the country. She also wonders about the stories that each of these units might hold. We both want to know, what is behind those locks?
Burgess Brown: OK, I can kind of sense where this might be going. And no, we are not going to give you money to bid on a storage unit.
Mikaela Lefrak: Yes, you are.
Burgess Brown: No. (Laughter) Truly we are not going to give you — there is no budget. We do not have a Storage Wars budget.
Mikaela Lefrak: I think there’s a budget.
Well, I’m just gonna give you guys a little bit of time to marinate on it, discuss the budget, and then I’m going to go full Storage Wars on this thing.
Burgess Brown: No you’re not.
Mikaela Lefrak: Yes, I am. (Laughter)
Burgess Brown: We’ll be right back.
Steady business and a higher calling
Mikaela Lefrak: Welcome back to Brave Little State. While I wait for my Storage Wars budget approval, let’s tackle the first part of Chris’s question — the business of self-storage. Where’d all these storage facilities come from, and why do more keep opening?
Nationwide, there are more than 50,000 self-storage facilities. That’s more than all Dollar Generals, Subways and CVS outlets combined.
Here’s Amy Spear, the president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce.
Amy Spear: Self storage has become — in a very quiet way, which is another reason why I thought the listener question was so interesting — it's been one of the fastest growing real-estate sectors in the country. And the United States has roughly 2.1 billion square feet of storage space.
Mikaela Lefrak: Amy says, people use self-storage during times of transition. And there’s a lot of transition happening in Vermont right now. We have a rapidly aging population, which means people are downsizing. We also have one of the tightest housing markets in the country, so people might be moving into smaller homes than they’d like because they can’t afford or find a bigger place. So, they get a storage unit for the rest of their stuff.
Amy Spear: I guess in a nutshell, in many ways, the growth of storage units can tell us a lot about housing and demographics.
Mikaela Lefrak: I don’t have to explain to anyone here about Vermont’s housing shortage. Suffice it to say, it’s become increasingly difficult to afford a house with a spare room or a garage or a basement to store things. Oftentimes the more affordable option is to get a storage unit. They rent for an average of $119 a month. And there are a lot of places that want to rent you one.
Mikaela Lefrak: I am in the car driving to— oh my gosh, I almost missed my turn. I am driving to a self-storage unit in Shelburne to see what goes on here.
Here we are. We are pulling into Route Seven Climate Storage.
Lisa Allard: Hi there.
Mikaela Lefrak: Hi, how are you.
Lisa Allard: Come on in.
Dave Anger: Hi, I’m Dave.
Mikaela Lefrak: Mikaela.
Dave Anger: Very nice to meet you. This is Lisa.
Lisa Allard: I’m Lisa. Nice to meet you.
Mikaela Lefrak: Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for having me.
Dave Anger: So, we’re a team. We both run this facility together.
Mikaela Lefrak: Route 7 Climate Storage is a 363-unit facility run by Dave Anger and Lisa Allard. They went into business together about a decade ago. They also run another facility over in Colchester. That one has 660 units. Both locations are doing quite well.
Lisa Allard: We pretty much usually stay full.
Mikaela Lefrak: OK.
Lisa Allard: Yeah. A lot of the older folks are discovering that smaller living is just as good as them big-old farmhouses we grew up in, you know? Saves on heat, saves on bills.
Mikaela Lefrak: Is that the kind of house that you grew up in?
Lisa Allard: Yes, a big old farmhouse. (Laughter) And I live tiny now. I'm actually a minimalist.
Mikaela Lefrak: Lisa and Dave’s client list isn’t just made up of older people who are downsizing. There are growing families whose homes have no extra storage space. Outdoorsy folks who store their ski stuff in the summer and grills and kayaks in the winter. Contractors with building materials. Doctors offices with patient records. College students with beanbag chairs and bongs and whatever college students own these days.
Lisa Allard: We got a lot of car enthusiasts in this state. We store the cars. We've had everything from Model-A Fords with the rumble seats right up to the brand new stuff.
Dave Anger: I had a Mustang that I always kept in the storage units in the winter, and then took it, brought it home in the summer.
Mikaela Lefrak: But most people I talk to while I’m reporting this story give me the same, simple reason for why they spend upwards of a hundred bucks a month on a storage unit: They have too much stuff.
John Raphael: I have, like, restaurant stuff here, because I did a renovation during COVID. So I have all my old tables and chairs here that I got to figure out what to do with.
Debbie Fleming: My son's girlfriend, she rented one. There wasn't enough room for all her stuff and his. (Laughter)
Jerry Tabor: My sister does, yeah, she's overflowing. She’s got too much stuff, so she's got a storage locker to store her stuff, so.
John Raphael: My son has a unit here, so.
Mikaela Lefrak: What's your son keeping in there?
John Raphael: Just, stuff. (Laughter) Stuff! You know?
Mikaela Lefrak: Too much stuff means good business for self-storage operators, like Dave and Lisa. Dave’s part-time, but he’s the boss, Lisa says, and she manages the day-to-day. She kind of plays the role of house mother or RA, especially for the UVM students who rent from her.
Lisa Allard: So I always tell the parents that if your child stays here for the summertime, if they want to come here — because we are 24/7 — at night or on the weekends, and they're not comfortable coming alone, you call me. I'll show up. I don't hover. And it makes it nice for the kids, they feel safer that way.
Dave Anger: As you can tell, Lisa has a great personality for this line of work.
Lisa Allard: I want to take care of people, but at the same time, if you act up with me, you ain't gonna, you won't be here.
Mikaela Lefrak: Are you a grandma?
Lisa Allard: Yes, I am. Yes I am. (Laughter) I will hug you, but I will spank your butt at the same time.
Mikaela Lefrak: Lisa talks about her clients almost like extended family, no matter what type of transition they’re going through. And an increasing number of Vermonters are dealing with a particular type of transition: the loss of housing.
Lisa Allard: Homelessness in Vermont has increased over the past decade or so. I mean, I don't remember this as a child being like this.
Mikaela Lefrak: Lisa and Dave have seen people who can’t afford permanent shelter rent storage units and then try to live in them. Doing that is unsafe, and it’s illegal. But if you can’t manage rent, and your other option is sleeping outside? I can understand the decision.
Over in Burlington, the city itself actually rents a storage unit for items found in homeless encampments, when city employees clear them out. Burlington’s parks and rec department declined my request to see this unit. But they say it has tents, sleeping bags and other personal items in it. If someone wants to retrieve their belongings, they need to contact the police to coordinate. They have 30 days after an encampment is cleared to get their stuff.
The storage units around our state contain multitudes — trash and treasure. For Dave, managing them is a perfect gig for his semi-retirement. For Lisa, it’s more than that.
Lisa Allard: I had a different career before this. This turned out to be my calling, was doing this. I like building ’em. I like running ’em. I like everything about them. Maybe not when they leave me messes or give attitude, but, you know, you got to take the good with the bad. But we get way more good than we get bad with storage. We really do.
Mikaela Lefrak: She gestures to one area of the property, behind a row of units.
Lisa Allard: This is, like, one of the most peaceful places to be. We sit off the main road, so if I go ahead and I go out and sit in the grass, to me, that's my, like, little zen.
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Storage haven
Mikaela Lefrak: So, there probably aren’t a lot of folks like Lisa who find their zen at a self-storage unit. But her and Dave’s successful businesses show that there’s a growing local market for self storage.
But aside from that tight housing market and Vermont’s aging population, there is another reason for this growth: COVID. In 2020, we suddenly had all this time to clean out our basements. A lot of us up and moved, too. And many people bought new stuff during COVID to pass the time.
Jessie Gilton: RVs, boats, toys, autos, all that. And that has actually increased the demand for storage.
Mikaela Lefrak: This is Jessie Gilton. She’s a New England real estate agent who specializes in self-storage.
She’s fielding a lot of calls these days about Vermont self-storage opportunities.
Jessie Gilton: There is a lot of interest from outside buyers in Vermont, because typically it has been a mom-and-pop driven real estate asset, but there's a lot more institutional buyers that are interested in Vermont.
Mikaela Lefrak: By “institutional buyers,” she means big name companies you might recognize, like CubeSmart. Nationally, about 37% of self-storage space is controlled by five companies – Public Storage, Extra Space, CubeSmart, National Storage Affiliates and U-Haul.
A number of cities have voted to restrict the growth of self-storage, including New York, San Francisco and Miami.
Steve Dupoise: They actually put a moratorium on self-storage units and on car washes, there’s so many of them down here.
Mikaela Lefrak: This is Steve Dupoise, who owns Ethan Allen Highway Storage in New Haven, Vermont with his wife, Marcia. We talk on the phone because he’s down in Florida, where he and Marcia winter. The self-storage boom hit parts of Florida hard, and now there’s an oversupply.
Gulf Coast News Newscaster: The city of Cape Coral is talking about extending the moratorium on new car washes and storage units. Many families who live in nearby neighborhoods argue these businesses ruin property values.
Cape Coral resident Erin Lester says:
Erin Lester: It’s like embarrassing, like I think it’s embarrassing for our infrastructure. Cause there’s so many better things we could be using this space for.
Mikaela Lefrak: There’s also not a ton of regulation around this fast-growing industry. Some of the “big five” companies driving this boom have been the subject of consumer protection lawsuits. Earlier this year, New York City sued Extra Space for hiking its prices and essentially swindling customers.
Things don’t seem quite that dire around here — at least not yet. More than 95% of storage operators here in Vermont are still based locally or in nearby states, according to data from 2020. Though, you know, some of them might spend half the year in Florida.
And speaking of snowbirds, Steve caught on to the self-storage trend relatively early. His entry into the storage business was in the early 2000s. It was caused, just like Jessie said, by an RV.
Steve Dupoise: Well we bought a camper. I didn’t want to store it in my yard, I didn’t want to put a blue tarp over it. And then as I kind of thought about things, it's like — am I the only person who doesn't want to store their camper in their yard, you know?
For the next few years, almost in a row, we were putting up buildings, and filling them, putting up buildings and filling them. I mean, I have 13 buildings with 432 doors. I'm 100% full with a wait list trying to get in.
Mikaela Lefrak: For decades Steve ran a tire shop in Middlebury. Now he’s semi-retired, like Dave from the Shelburne facility. He doesn’t have any employees, basically just keeps the lawn mowed, the snow plowed and meets clients occasionally. His kids or grandkids help out when he’s down south.
Mikaela Lefrak: I mean, you have kids and grandkids, so you interact with lots of different generations. Do you think people just buy more stuff now?
Steve Dupoise: Um, I'm actually thinking of my grandchildren — who range from 15 to 31 — that they're not interested in the same stuff, okay, that our generation— even my kids are not interested in the same stuff.
Mikaela Lefrak: To him, it’s not that one generation has more of a stuff problem than another. It’s that every generation wants different things than the one that came before them.
Steve Dupoise: So, I cleaned out my dad's house, uh, roughly five years ago this month. My dad passed away, my mom passed away the year before. And it's like there's stuff that we took out of the basement of that house that I remember being there when I was five years old, and nobody wanted it. No, there wasn't any value to it. But they hung onto it for not wanting to throw it away. And that's what happens with some of this stuff, you know? Something to think about, I guess.
Mikeala Lefrak: I thought about it. And then I thought some more. And I realized: No matter what this nice man tells me about the risks of accumulation, I still really, really want to bid on a storage unit. That’s coming up.
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Jericho Storage Wars
Mikaela Lefrak: Welcome back to Brave Little State. I have Burgess Brown here with me. Hey Burgess.
Burgess Brown: Hi Mikaela. Um, I'm here with an announcement.
Mikaela Lefrak: What is it?
Burgess Brown: I've run your request up the chain of command …
Mikaela Lefrak: OK, to the big boss.
Burgess Brown: To the big boss. All the way to the top. And news has just been brought back down to me that your request has been accepted.
Mikaela Lefrak: Wow.
Burgess Brown: There is a budget, after all. And I'm pleased to share with you that you get 100 big ones to bid on a storage unit.
Mikaela Lefrak: Really? OK, I could do something with 100 bucks.
Burgess Brown: Probably not, but you can try.
Mikaela Lefrak: (Laughter) So my first plan actually was to bid on one online. There are a bunch of websites where you can do this, with names like “StorageTreasures” and “LockerFox.” But they have all these hidden deposits and fees, and I quickly outdid my $100 budget.
Flipping through a copy of Seven Days, though, I find a notice for an in-person auction at a place called Jericho Mini Storage. The owner, David Raphael, is auctioning off three of his 265 units.
David Raphael: So at this point, nobody has paid off. So, I had told the guy with the two units, literally you have until Sunday to get it, and he— I just don’t think he can do it.
Mikaela Lefrak: National data from the Self Storage Association indicates that storage operators sell off the contents of about 1-3% of their leased units every year.
Per Vermont state law, before they can set up an auction, operators have to send multiple notices to the client and advertise the auction two weeks in a row in a newspaper.
David Raphael: I'm never going to be made whole on these. I'm, like, between the three units, it's almost $3000 and back payments for six months. So I'm never going to get that. So, all I want is my unit back so I can re-rent it.
Mikaela Lefrak: On this day, two of the units being auctioned off were being rented to a guy in Swanton who’s ghosted David. The woman who rented the third passed away. Her daughter in Jericho knows the auction is happening, but opted not to pay the rent or come see the unit.
So, David cuts the locks.
David Raphael: Alright, here we go.
(Cuts lock and opens door)
Mikaela Lefrak: It’s filled to the brim with cardboard boxes, but you can’t tell what’s in them. One of the others has a bunch of baby supplies in it — a crib, a swing.
(More door opening sounds)
David Raphael: So, I could tell this guy hasn't used this unit in a while. This door needs to be repaired.
Mikaela Lefrak: The third is also pretty packed.
(Lock and door sounds)
David Raphael: This one’s pretty full, too.
Mikaela Lefrak: I spot a grandfather clock, but it doesn’t look very nice. And there’s also a musty, ripped recliner.
David Raphael: Sometimes I open up stuff and I'm like, why are people paying to, like, store, you know, moldy furniture? And it's like, you just feel horrible, just if they don't have the money, just … yeah. You wish they would just make a different decision.
Mikaela Lefrak: About a dozen people show up for the auction — pretty good for a snowy April Monday at lunchtime. David’s brother, John Raphael, is a regular.
John Raphael: It runs in the blood, I guess.
Mikaela Lefrak: There’s also Jon Tabor, a truck driver whose hobby is reselling antiques and tools on eBay and Etsy.
Jon Tabor: I'd probably buy one out of 1,000 units that I look at, so.
Mikaela Lefrak: John’s nephew shows up too, and brings his son.
Jerry Tabor: He's getting into it. So trying to get him coaxed into it.
Mikaela Lefrak: Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of fun, see what’s in there.
Jerry Tabor: It is, yeah. You never know.
Mikaela Lefrak: There’s a stay-at-home dad with his baby, just looking for something to do.
Justin Brunelle: It’s a little thing to do on the side that’s kind of fun.
Mikaela Lefrak: Then there’s Kevin, who buys and sells coins.
David Raphael: He got a bunch of gold on the last one..
Mikaela Lefrak: And there’s Debbie Fleming, who got hooked on this scene by watching Storage Wars. She loves the hunt.
Debbie Fleming: Now is this a sealed bid or a live auction?
David Raphael: Oh, I don’t do the live ones. I only do sealed.
Debbie Fleming: Oh, Darnit!
David Raphael: That live stuff’s fake.
Debbie Fleming: That’s fun!
David Raphael: They’re all staged.
Debbie Fleming: No they’re not! (Laughter)
Mikaela Lefrak: David opens the lockers.
(Door opens)
Mikaela Lefrak: Everybody peers in, but they can’t go inside.
Debbie Fleming: There’s a refrigerator, and there’s a mattress
Mikaela Lefrak: They write down their bids on a piece of paper. After they go to all three units, David collects the papers.
The stay-at-home dad wins one of the units — he pays $210 for it. Debbie wins the other two. She’s kind of shocked.
Debbie Fleming: I bid low.
David Raphael: Yeah, you threw out the “I don’t want it” bid. (Laughter) You got stuck with it anyway.
Mikaela Lefrak: She goes to tell her husband, who’s waiting in their truck, thinking they were about to leave. He sighs and slowly gets out to go pay David and get the instructions.
David Raphael: So it’ll be $275 total and those are the keys to your two units.
Debbie’s husband: I didn't expect to get both of them. (Laughter)
Mikaela Lefrak: The stay-at-home dad drives off — he’s coming back later, sans baby, to look through his unit. Debbie and her husband pull their truck around to their first unit. It’s packed so high with boxes that it’s going to take them hours to go through it.
It’s not until everyone drives off and I see David counting the cash that I remember: I have 100 hard-won dollars that I could’ve used to bid myself. But when the doors rolled up on that first unit, I gotta say, my visions of Storage Wars treasure hunting evaporated. Instead, I just found myself staring at that upside-down crib and the damp mattress and the box of size-one diapers. The anticipation of the auction was exciting. But when it actually happened — I don’t know. I got sad.
One of the guys I’m with, Jon Tabor, says it gets to him too sometimes.
Jon Tabor: I mean, that's the sad part of it. You got to go through the personal paperwork, the photos. There's usually a sad story.
Mikaela Lefrak: It made me start thinking about my own basement, which I’m lucky enough to have. I have my own boxes of baby stuff down there. My daughter’s five. We haven’t touched those boxes in years.
There’s a complicated and personal answer to why I haven’t gotten rid of them. The person who owns — or, owned — all this baby stuff in Jericho — they must have had their reasons, too.
So, here we are, human beings lugging objects around like magpies and woodrats. In Vermont, we have more than 160 self-storage facilities already. More are undoubtedly coming our way.
We’re still a long way from Florida, with its glut of self-storage facilities. But in another 10 years? I’d bet $100 it’s going to look a lot different.
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Credits
Thanks to Chris Robbins of Middlebury for the great question.
This episode was reported by Mikaela Lefrak. Editing and production from Sabine Poux, Josh Crane and Burgess Brown. Our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Carly Berlin.
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