VERMONT

Vermont has long been a destination for eccentrics, back to the landers, pot heads and ski bums, folks eager to escape the grind of metropolitan areas such as New York City and Boston, as well as their sprawling suburbs, and all that comes with them.

people came for nature— fishing, skiing, hiking, farming, for quiet and for the peace of mind that come with being in community with likeminded, progressive folks committed to wholesome values, often with an anti-capitalist bent.

this is no longer the majority culture here. in 2017, Vail Resorts acquired Stowe Mountain Resort, putting it on the Epic Pass, drawing innumerable visitors to the area— mobs of people on the mountain and the road to the mountain, without developing infrastructure to support this increased population, or putting stops on this exponential growth, to maintain the Vermont sensibility that has attracted escapist hippies for decades.

on top of this, Covid created a new class of remote workers, particularly from the Boston and NYC areas, who arrived en masse with their own existing communities, starting preschools and driving prices on real estate and everything else skyward, making life fully unaffordable to those who have lived there for years. The Mad River Valley and Stowe are simply resort towns, with workers forced to relocate and commute from places like Rochester now, where regular life is still accessible for those who are not permentantly on semi-vacation, with other homes elsewhere.

what can we do to “keep Vermont weird” and keep it accessible and inclusive to existing Vermonters?