I’ve been thinking about the need for a plausible, recognizable Democrat to step forward as a candidate for governor with a campaign focused on a big policy idea. This is because so many Dems seem to be playing into Gov. Phil Scott’s hands instead of carving out a recognizable alternative, and because the Vermont Democratic Party has been weakened for years by the lack of a strong, unifying voice at the top of the ticket.

Also because the only Democrat to actually win the governorship in the last quarter-century was Peter Shumlin, who staked his fortunes on single-payer health care and won a hard-fought 2010 primary and three straight statewide elections. He’s the only Democrat to be elected governor since Howard Dean in the year 2000. Some of you weren’t even born then.

So I was casting around for a big policy proposal that could turbocharge a gubernatorial campaign, and I remembered a post of mine from February 2024 which floated the idea of a $250 million housing bond. That’s right, take our solid bond rating and gamble it on the sensible proposition that building more housing would pay off in economic growth and higher tax revenues. You know, like a TIF writ large. It’d be an idea tailor-made for Treasurer Mike Pieciak, who has the expertise to craft such a plan while preventing the wise heads at S&P from catching a bad case of the fantods. And who needs to give voters a reason other than “Everybody likes Mike” to vote for him.

But now, in light of two recent news stories, I worry that a massive housing bond would amount to nothing more than pissing into the wind, that there simply may not be a way out of our housing crisis. At least not without structural economic changes on a scale much larger than our B.L.S.

First, a rare example of deep-dive reporting in our age of diminished journalistic resources: Last week, VTDigger/Vermont Public shared reporter Carly Berlin and Digger’s data reporter Erin Petenko collaborated on a thorough, insightful examination of Vermont’s massive pandemic-era investment in housing.

You remember? That massive investment that was supposed to end our housing crisis?

Yeah, well.

Berlin and Petenko crunched the numbers, which sounds like a daunting task, and came up with a total number for Vermont’s housing investments between 2020 and 2024.

The number? $789 million.

Seven hundred eighty-nine million dollars.

And we still have a housing crisis.

So much for my “massive” $250 million idea.

In Berlin and Petenko’s telling, the lack of impact wasn’t a case of waste, malfeasance, or corruption. It was, rather, “…the skyrocketing cost of building during this timeframe meant Vermont got far less bang for its buck than it would have in a pre-pandemic economy.”

So that huge investment, fueled in large part by federal Covid relief funds that aren’t going to recur, failed to make a real dent in our housing shortage.

There’s much more in the report, which you should go and read if you haven’t already. I sure as hell hope our policymakers paid attention.

Speaking of “the skyrocketing cost of building,” we take you now to Shelburne, where a nice new housing development will bring “nearly 100” (actually 94) new units of affordable housing to the thoroughly unaffordable Burlington area. Carly Berlin tells the story of this significant success. It’s a rare good-news story on housing, except for one detail.

The price tag.

These 94 units cost a total of “about $55 million,” including a healthy dose of those federal Covid relief funds.

That amounts to “about $584,000” per unit. Not for stand-alone houses, mind you, but for converted motel rooms, apartments, and 26 condo units.

Well, kick me right in the goolies, why don’t you?

These humble abodes wouldn’t be at all affordable if not for those federal funds. Hell, they wouldn’t even have been built.

Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale, who had only a short drive from her Shelburne home to the grand opening, said “We want to make more dollars available so that this kind of project can be replicated across the state.”

More dollars from where exactly?

The Scott administration asserts, per VTDigger, that we need to build “at least 40,000 new homes by 2030 to meet future demand.”

Okay, now let’s multiply 40,000 by, just for shits and giggles, $600,000, roughly the figure needed in Shelburne to build fairly modest housing. The cost across a broad range of housing types would certainly be much higher.

But the lowball total is enough to drain the color from your cheeks.

$24,000,000,000.

Twenty-four billion dollars.

Maybe Gov. Phil “Build More Housing” Scott or Sen. Ram Hinsdale have an idea where we could lay our hands on $24 billion in the next five years. If so, I’d love to hear it.

Need I mention that all of this makes Scott’s high-profile executive order on housing, which I didn’t think much of at the time, look even more feckless?

And I haven’t even gotten to the plague of NIMBYism that would descend upon our verdant landscape if we launched anything like the buildout required to create 40,000 new housing units in five short years. Poke around our local news outlets and you’ll find a cornucopia of stories about local opposition to new housing, whether minimal or expansive.

For instance, local residents trying to block a 32-unit development just off Dorset Street in South Burlington, one of the least natural stretches of Vermont landscape. Or the overwhelming “No” vote on a plan to convert the underused Greensboro Town Hall into “16 to 20 apartments.” If Gov. Scott has his way and barriers to housing are substantially lowered — and if that leads to a real takeoff in new construction, which is far from a sure thing — you ain’t seen nothin’ yet in terms of local outrage.

Put all these things together, and you understand why I find myself wondering if we will ever find a way out of Vermont’s housing crisis.

You know what we need? A gubernatorial candidate, and hopefully a governor, who’s smarter and bolder than I, who can come up with a housing plan that will make a measurable difference. Because we’ve already tried spending $789 million on housing in less than five years, and the crisis didn’t get better in any discernible way.