Authored by: cgrotke on Saturday, May 02 2009 @ 09:27 AM GMT+4

I think you'd have to be specific about which "liberal policies" you mean
before we can say whether they caused the cost of living to go up. It
could just be that things are expensive for other reasons.

Authored by: SpudHill on Saturday, May 02 2009 @ 09:40 AM GMT+4

"Even the businesses in downtown are feeling it."

While some of the cost of living may be due to a willingness to provide more services I suggest it would be a small percentage of the cost. The bigger impact right now is due to the Bush administration depression/recession starting to impact the area especially in regards to local small business which probably operate on a very tight profit margin even in the best of times. I'm with Chris on this, you can't just make a blanket it's those blankety blank darn liberals again.

Authored by: pjmelton on Saturday, May 02 2009 @ 10:35 AM GMT+4

It's easy to jump to conclusions without any data. Why not go ahead and blame the good ol' free market for high housing prices?

Windham County is a very attractive place to live, in close proximity to major cities (Burlington isn't one, BTW), rural beauty, ski areas, a national forest and water water water. Perhaps it's expensive here because there is high demand for the housing. Seems if you apply Occam's Razor, that would be the simplest explanation, and we don't need to leap to conclusions about these vague "liberal policies."

However, I would like to hear more about them, including data on who is buying and selling houses here compared with the other counties in Vermont. Without that data and a very clear analysis, there's no way to know the reasons behind it, so it's kind of silly to go blaming whatever boogie man you happen to dislike.

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"Economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." -- FDR

Authored by: Maus Anon E on Saturday, May 02 2009 @ 12:28 PM GMT+4

Liberal policies? Really? Maybe I agree.

But I think it's more a case of high demand for high end housing - since so many people who seem to have a lot of out-of-state money like to relocate here - combined with a plentiful supply of educated labor, so there's no wage competition. Our liberal policies attract a lot of people to this area.

There's plenty of grand, expensive new homes built for the fabulously wealthy in Windham County. Not too many people building housing for the people who work here.



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We Rock!

Authored by: annikee on Saturday, May 02 2009 @ 01:22 PM GMT+4

Of course it's the LIBERALS! What else could it possibly be? Overspending on salaries? Wasteful misspending of the past that we're making up now? A blind eye for years to things that should've been done but now cost a hundred times more to fix? No! It's LIBERALS!

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Down with Goldstein!

Authored by: tiny on Saturday, May 02 2009 @ 02:16 PM GMT+4

Would one issue be gentrification? Remember when Tomkins Park was,
well, interesting, before the Gap moved in?

Authored by: annikee on Sunday, May 03 2009 @ 03:19 AM GMT+4

Good point. Hell's Kitchen is also unaffordable since Disney took over. Alphabet City is unrecognizable.

We have some absentee investor landlords who charge what they think the town folk ought to be paying, not what is realistically affordable in a town of 12,000, too.

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Down with Goldstein!

Authored by: Rolf on Sunday, May 03 2009 @ 06:14 AM GMT+4

My wife and I became landlords.

We cleaned up a house on South Main Street that needed a lot of cleaning and various repairs. (We lived in the house and were happy with it. We moved out so that I could take a job.)

We are a mere data point, not much of a data set.

But in our case, we based the rent on two things.

First we needed to pay the bills that we had incurred fixing up the place. We had used credit cards for some of the repairs, (initially on zero percent, so we thought we were being clever). We calculated how much money we would need to receive in a month in order to not be going deeper and deeper into debt, and maybe even make about a 5% profit, if all the plumbing, electrical and heating systems did not need any work in the next 12 month period (which turned out not to be true. Bottom line, we got to declare a loss this year of about $7400 this year on the house.)

What the rent would need to be, if we wanted to achieve our goal of not going deeper in debt and MAYBE make a small profit, well that came out to (as best we could figure it) $750 a month for a one bedroom, including heat, water electric, property taxes for a commercial property, everything.

Our second consideration in setting the rent was what the market indicated we might be able to charge. We based this on listings that we saw in the paper.

As it is, in retrospect, the "market" could not even afford what we needed to charge. If we lived closer to downtown, or on a "tree name" street, maybe.

Long term we will make money. Maybe even in the short term. Right now, we are loosing money on the property each month.

The taxes were only about 2 grand for our property. We no longer get the homestead rebate, because we do not live in the house currently, so we pay the tax and get zero rebate.

Anyway, take 2000 divide it in two, (as there are two apartments). 1000 tax burden for each apartment.

Divide each 1000 by twelve,

(to determine the amount of rent from each apartment each month that is dedicated to property taxes)

and you get a whopping $83.33 a month.

To determine the % of the rent each month that is directly related to the cost of rental housing we divide
83.33 by the total of the rent.

83.33 divided by 750 = .1111 or about 11 %.

So, in our case, it does not look like the property taxes are a large portion of the rental bill.

It is the cost of all the repairs, the new heating system we put in, the flooring, the cost of hiring plumbers and electricians, , the new roof on the sunporch, the eaves on the main roof, all of that made us need to set the rent at a rate that only some people can afford.

The only way to make money

(and we do intend on eventually making money in return for all the money and effort we spend on being landlords !)

with "non opulent" real estate is to know how to control the costs. If we can figure that out, we will benefit, and anyone who is renting from us will benefit.

PS

The property taxes seem like a bargain from our perspective. We get police and fire department workers on our street, we get roads and lighting for the roads, ie we get everything that is needed to help make civilization and prevent anarchy in all of its myriad nightmarish forms. Without those things, it would be pretty hard to rent to anyone.

Rolf



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Dreams Trump Video

Authored by: vtstream on Sunday, May 03 2009 @ 03:13 PM GMT+4

The affordability index is based not just on the price of a dwelling or the monthly rent but is a ratio that includes household income relative to housing costs. One could say that the relative low wage of people in the region, compared to say, Boston, is the real contributor to the unaffordability of housing.

Why do jobs in the Brattleboro area pay so dismally? Why is the pay scale throughout Vermont in general so low? The problem has gotten worse in recent decades.

It used to be that every town in Vermont had a whole variety of small enterprises that were locally owned. General stores, hardware stores, clothing stores, tailors, bakers, farmers, metal workers, carpenters, entertainers, artists and doctors and lawyers too.

For the most part the retail sector has been obliterated by multi national competition that has priced the mom and pops out of business. And yes, Vermont's tax system puts Vermont retailers at an unfair disadvantage. Manufacturing is almost non existent. The professional services like healthcare are bleeding everyone dry. (pardon the pun)

We've got to start making things again, things people want. But we can't do it when large multinational corporations are able to use unfair labor practices to manufacture goods overseas. That's an unfair advantage.

We've got to start growing things again. We can't do it when our federal government pumps billions into Ag subsidies that make a few corporate "farmers" rich.

Big business gets tons of free money. Direct a portion of that to the local small scale business sector.

Any redistribution of wealth should occur not as outright assistance in social services, as has been the approach in the past in this state, but rather as outright grants for small and micro scale business start-up subsidies that would require people to work for their money. More importantly, such money would offer the possibility of success and financial independence.

Unfortunately such a direction would go against the grain of many conservatives because the current system maintains a level of desperation and servitude in the population without which those in power would not be able to have their toilets cleaned for minimum wage, or less.

Housing unaffordability in any region is not simply a result of "liberal" policies. It's a complex and complicated interaction of forces that are mostly manipulated by those in power and sometimes mismanaged, because of greed, to the point that everyone is harmed.

Authored by: HowardP on Sunday, May 03 2009 @ 04:10 PM GMT+4

Local employers pay the wages they pay,because they can get away
with it. Some places pay more,if they value there employies and
understand you get what you pay for. We pay at least 12.50 an hour,
and some make more. Thats not bad for farm labor. We even reward
our year round staff with a nice bonus every year. Last year,it was
over $500.00 ea at Xmas time. I mention all this because we value
our staff and also because in this economy we understand we compete
against other farms that pay quite a bit less,and some pay none at
all! We pay all the FICA taxes and everything associated with running
a small business,insurance,yada yada and so forth. Put on your
thinking cap next time you purchase plants and produce in the
area,support those local people that pay a living wage and in turn help
support you!

Authored by: pjmelton on Monday, May 04 2009 @ 09:15 AM GMT+4

Thank you for treating your workers well. We try to purchase goods and services from businesses that do. It's more expensive, which means we can afford less at a time. But we don't need more.

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"Economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." -- FDR

Authored by: Wantastiquet on Monday, May 04 2009 @ 10:20 AM GMT+4

Because there is an absence of large taxpaying businesses in Windham County real estate/property owners pay a larger percentage of the total tax. Other areas that have more businesses and industry have a lower property tax. Windham County has a very high number of non-profit organizations which pay a very low percentage of tax. To keep education standards at the level that the public wants a large amount of the collected tax is directed to education. That's why taxes are high.

Authored by: SpudHill on Monday, May 04 2009 @ 02:27 PM GMT+4

Do you mind if I rephrase one of your statements taken from a paragraph that was so well put?
"To keep education standards at the level that the public wants a large amount of the collected tax is directed to education. "

I would offer that this should read
"To keep educational spending at the level that the schoolboard wants a large amount of the collected tax is directed to education."

First, there is no evidence to show a correlation between educational spending at the level that we do it (6th highest tax rate per capita I believe) and keeping student ranking.

Certainly starving the schools would affect student progress but I would offer that the point at which we are spending doesn't necessarily improve our schools. In fact, compared to the per capita amount taxed for our schools we should probably be showing a much higher ranking on standards if that were true.

Secondly, there is no accurate way to know how the public feels about our very high school taxes and never will be until the vote for the school budget is done by a private paper ballot. Way too much pressure in such a small community to assure the public is voting their real wants as long as the vote is a public show of hands. Hence ridiculously low turn out for the school board vote and therefore not at all accurate about what the public really wants.