Moore & Johnson: Housing needs require decisive action – Step up or step away

October 31, 2025  |  By Julie Moore and Kerrick Johnson

Vermont faces a housing crisis that threatens our economic future and the ability of working families to remain in our state. 

The cost of housing has skyrocketed with median home prices in Vermont more than doubling in the last 10 years, putting both homeownership and rentals out of reach for many. Vermont needs 30,000 new homes by 2030, requiring 8,000 units per year for the next four years. At current rates, we’ll struggle to hit even 25% of that goal.

In response, Gov. Phil Scott recently issued a Housing Executive Order that directs a set of measured yet impactful steps to accelerate housing development timelines and reduce costs. The governor’s order doesn't eliminate regulatory review or ignore legitimate concerns. It balances the need for affordability with environmental objectives for housing projects in areas identified for development. These are modest, commonsense reforms designed to provide regulatory certainty, moving projects more quickly from planning to construction while maintaining needed protections.

Sadly, if not predictably, a number of environmental interest groups have responded with reflexive opposition. In voicing their opposition to the executive order, environmental advocacy groups have offered no actionable alternatives. They haven't proposed how to accelerate permitting while maintaining protections. They haven't suggested which regulations could be modernized or consolidated. They haven't identified specific areas where housing could be fast-tracked. Instead, they've defaulted to criticism without contribution – the easiest position to maintain and the least helpful for Vermonters struggling to find housing.

This matters because housing isn't an abstract policy debate. These are real problems affecting our neighborhoods, communities, businesses and schools. It's about whether a teacher can afford to live in the community where they work. It's about whether a young couple can start a family here instead of moving to New Hampshire or North Carolina. It's about whether businesses -- from the smallest engineering firm to the general store to our beloved universities -- are able to thrive right here in Vermont. Without housing, we cannot recruit and retain staff for our nursing homes, clinics, and hospitals, as there simply aren’t places for them to live.

Yet in the face of the governor’s modest but concrete measures that should reduce the cost and speed the timeline for constructing homes, these interest groups retreat to familiar talking points and procedural objections. Their response reveals an uncomfortable truth: their real interests lie in preserving the existing regulatory barriers rather than meaningful problem-solving.

This dynamic exemplifies what Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson explore in their recent book, “Abundance”: our regulatory systems have become so byzantine, so weighted toward one-off objections and appeals rather than progress, that we actively obstruct the very things we claim to want most.

We say we need affordable housing, then create endless opportunities for delay. We claim we want walkable downtowns and community schools filled with children and then make land-use policies that limit density and put homeownership out of reach for young families. We declare climate emergencies, then enact policies without regard for the cost of implementation. We bemoan economic stagnation, then strangle development with process.

Within the broader environmental community, there is clear expertise and legitimate perspectives. But expertise wielded not to provide constructive input and alternatives, but to instead assert picayune process objections is mere obstruction.

Vermont needs an abundance agenda – one that recognizes we can protect our environment while building the housing our communities desperately need. We can say yes to appropriate development while conserving what makes Vermont special. But this requires solving problems rather than simply scoring political points.

To the environmental groups criticizing this executive order: please show us your plan. Tell us how you would accelerate housing production. Identify specific regulatory reforms you support. If you cannot or will not, then most Vermonters will understand your opposition for what it really is – political theater performed at the expense of working families searching for places to live and businesses struggling to bring new hires to the state.

Gov. Scott has taken action. We stand ready to implement solutions. The question now is whether environmental interest groups that claim to care about Vermont's future will contribute to solving this crisis or perpetuate the status quo.

Julie Moore is the secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. Kerrick Johnson is commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service.