Housing Needs Assessment and Action Plan for Brattleboro, VT

The Challenge

Brattleboro, VT, serves as a regional center and has the largest concentration of commercial and industrial development in the county. However, it has not sustained an active residential subdivision or condominium development market since the early 1990s.

The town’s older housing stock often fails to meet contemporary market demand, which is being driven by long-term demographic changes. The town is also facing an increasing affordability crisis with nearly half of its households burdened by housing costs.

The Solution

Camoin Associates worked with the Town of Brattleboro to produce a comprehensive Housing Needs Assessment and Action Plan. The plan identified a need for 229 additional rental units and 289 additional owner-occupied units at key affordability levels to address the town’s housing gap.

Camoin Associates produced a strategy designed to address the town’s housing issues and needs, including identifying housing development sites, recruiting a senior housing developer, creating new funding sources and strategies to close the gap for housing projects, creating a short-term rental registration program, and more.

The Impact

The Town has already seen implementation successes during the first year after the plan was completed. It issued an RFP for a senior housing development on an underutilized town property and received three bids for the project.

Another housing project has also proposed for a former school site that would create up to 500 new housing units.

Read the housing needs assessment and action plan (PDF)

Services Provided by Camoin Associates

• Existing conditions analysis
• Housing development constraints analysis
• Community engagement
  • • Community workshop
    • Survey
  • Stakeholder interviews
• Housing needs analysis
• Strategic recommendations

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