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By Lauren Dorsey
This story is Part 2 in The Bridge’s year-long series about housing.
Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity is expanding. In 2020, the organization built, on average, one unit every other year and had a single half-time staff member. Today, it builds two units a year and has seven full-time employees.
“We’ve grown substantially,” said Executive Director Zachariah Watson.
Watson credits this growth to strategic planning by the board in response to the region’s worsening housing crisis. However, board president Edward McDonough and longtime volunteer Glen Seifert point to Watson.
“Zach has done so much for our organization,” said Seifert. “He is a fabulous leader and has done a super job pushing us forward.”
Habitat is an affordable housing nonprofit and one of six Vermont affiliates of Habitat for Humanity International. It covers Orange and Washington counties and the towns of Greensboro, Glover, Craftsbury, and Hardwick.
The organization’s focus is on its affordable homeownership program, although it also does home repairs and disaster relief, such as constructing ramps or doing post-flood carpentry.
Sweat Equity
To be eligible for its affordable homeownership program, applicants must earn 30% to 80% of the area’s median income, work within Habitant’s coverage area, and demonstrate a need for “better shelter” — such as living in unsafe, temporary, or overcrowded housing. Once selected, homeowners need to complete at least 250 hours of “sweat equity” by volunteering to help build the home.
“A lot of the homeowners have probably never picked up a hammer or a screwdriver, so it’s a great opportunity for them to come and learn,” Seifert said. “After a while, they really tend to take ownership over the project.”
After the unit is completed, homes remain affordable in perpetuity, according to Watson. The nonprofit designs custom mortgages that are less than 30% of the selected homeowner’s income, and if the homeowner eventually chooses to sell, the buyer must also be eligible for an affordable mortgage.
A New Direction
In 2020, after two terms in the Vermont House of Representatives, Watson wanted to start working on the ground to fix the problems he saw. “Serving on the Commerce and Economic Development Committee … it became apparent that every woe we had in the state could be resolved by adding more housing,” he said.
Initially hired as Habitat’s only part-time employee, Watson worked with the board to dramatically increase the nonprofit’s capacity, chiefly via partnerships with other area organizations.
Together, they sped up Habitat’s homeowner selection by working with Barre nonprofit Downstreet Housing and Community Development. Habitat also partnered with Benson Wood, an advanced manufacturing facility in New Hampshire, which now constructs and raises the shells of Habitat’s homes. Watson says the arrangement saves about six months on each project.
They also began building duplexes, which reduced per-unit construction costs. Recently, Habitat has been exploring multi-unit housing. In October 2023, the organization completed an engineering feasibility study on a 115 unit mixed-income housing development in Montpelier, for which it is still seeking a partner private developer.
“Maybe not surprisingly, there’s not a lot of construction contractors in central Vermont that have the bandwidth or the capacity to really take on a project of this size,” Watson said, “but we are hopeful we can find a partner to work with us.”
In addition to improving construction efficiency, Habitat has also begun to bolster its outreach efforts. This fall, it partnered with Vermont’s other Habitat International affiliates to host a wall-raising ceremony on the Statehouse lawn; volunteers, including state legislators, built wall sections that were then transported and used in a home build in Barre.
“We had people stopping by asking us questions, looking at literature, and getting interested in the organization,” McDonough said. “So on one hand it provided us an opportunity to do some of that critical [advocacy]. On the other hand, it actually resulted in building real walls that we are using in a home, which is amazing.”
Building Momentum
Habitat is currently building three units: a single-family home in Barre for a fourth-grade teacher and a duplex in Randolph for a family from Rwanda and a local woman with two adopted children. All the units are slated to be finished by mid-2026. The organization is also preparing to begin work on a duplex in Greensboro this spring.
Aside from home builds, in June, Habitat opened a ReStore in Waterbury, just nine months after the staff began planning it. “It was a remarkably fast process,” McDonough said.
ReStore collects donations of household goods and furniture, refurbishes them, and offers them for sale. The money goes towards building new homes.
“Prices for goods at the ReStore are very modest, so people who might not be able to afford something have an opportunity to get what they need,” McDonough said. “On top of all that, these ReStores also keep things out of the landfill, so it’s a win-win-win situation.”
Challenges Ahead
Despite its successes, Habitat faces obstacles. Construction costs continue to soar, making it difficult to maintain affordability in builds. Watson said he regularly looks for ways to reduce costs further. The nonprofit also needs more volunteers and homeowner applications.
For a typical home, Habitat often only receives two or three qualifying applications, which Watson said likely vastly underrepresents the number of people in the region who meet the requirements.
“We’ve discovered that a lot of people don’t think they qualify, even when they do,” he said. “There’s a lot of poverty in Vermont and what feels pretty normal is actually pretty low-income in a lot of areas.”
The Upshot
For all the work it does, Habitat builds only a fraction of the homes the region needs, Watson said. “We need more housing for rentals. We need executive housing. We need middle-income housing. We need affordable housing, and we need subsidized housing,” he said. “Basically, we need everything.”
He added, however, in the landscape of Vermont’s housing crisis, creating even a few affordable housing units can help loosen the market for everyone. “Our homes enable people to get out of subsidized rentals,” Watson said. “When those people leave, that opens up subsidized housing for folks that are currently homeless.”
At the same time, when Habitat homeowners are ready to sell their homes, the equity they receive is often enough to allow them to purchase a fair-market house.
“Our program can only address the housing crisis as much as we can build starter homes for low-income folks, but really, those homes can impact everything,” Watson said.
