Private Conservation and Rural Gentrification: Exploring Vermont's Affordability Crisis

For Vermont, forging effective strategies to reduce poverty stands as a policy priority. For the past two decades, state legislators have worked to create an array of extensive social programs, designed to address the effects... [ view full abstract ]

For Vermont, forging effective strategies to reduce poverty stands as a policy priority. For the past two decades, state legislators have worked to create an array of extensive social programs, designed to address the effects of the worsening heroin, foster care, and homelessness crises. Simultaneously, as the cost of living has risen considerably, affordability has emerged as a central political issue. These parallel developments have posed Vermont state government with a unique challenge: how to continue commitment to welfare expansion while striving to make the state more affordable. To this day, little has been done to investigate the pressures that restrictive land practices may exert on the vulnerability of the rural poor. This paucity of scholarship is striking, considering both the unique nature of Vermont's conservation regime and the well-documented role land politics play in issues of affordability. Since the mid 20th century, private land trusts have played an increasingly central role in land protection.  While this has been encouraged by the state through the passage of a variety of tax incentives for landholders, theory suggests that private land conservation often reflects the interests of the elite governing at the expense of poor communities living near protected land. This study utilizes a GIS-based, empirical approach to measure the effect of such private conservation on land values as a means to explore the effects of conservation on the vulnerability of the rural poor; if conservation drives increased land values, such practices may contribute to a wider phenomenon of rural gentrification.