Like many people in Shelburne, Susan Jacobs sees the irony in opposing a large housing development that’s planned for hayfields near her home. She knows the region’s housing crisis is causing pain. Her 43-year-old son and his wife are stuck in a one-bedroom apartment in Burlington because they can’t afford a larger place.
Nevertheless, Jacobs said, the proposed 375-unit project is wrong for Shelburne because of the noise, the traffic and other ways an estimated 1,000 new arrivals would change the community.
“It has to be very frustrating to try to find a place to live,” Jacobs said in an interview at the hilltop home where she’s lived since 1986. “Yet here we are saying, ‘Not in my backyard.'”
That’s a stance that many of her fellow residents in the upscale Chittenden County town have taken: Yes, Vermont desperately needs more housing — but not this particular development in my community.
Vermont lawmakers set out to short-circuit local resistance to denser, multifamily development when they passed the HOME Act in 2023. Crafted in response to Vermont’s housing shortage — by one estimate Vermont needs 30,000 more units by 2030 — the law, also known as Act 47, overrides local zoning ordinances. It identifies areas with municipal water and sewer infrastructure as places where smaller lot sizes and multifamily housing must be allowed.
But, as the debate in Shelburne makes clear, the housing crisis and the mandate from Montpelier don’t always make the prospect of dense residential development more palatable to neighbors.
Shelburne’s municipal water and sewer pipes — though not the town’s designated sewer service area — just reach a nearly 200-acre parcel owned by the South Burlington construction company O’Brien Brothers. The passage of Act 47 prompted O’Brien to take a fresh look at its fields, wetlands and forest about a mile and a half from Shelburne village.
Without Act 47, the town’s zoning would require O’Brien to subdivide the property into lots of five acres or more — a pattern that runs counter to Shelburne’s town plan, which calls for compact, walkable development in growth areas such as the sewer service area.
Act 47’s density allowances mean that if the town agrees to add the land to its designated sewer service area, O’Brien could build as many as 500 homes.
The Shelburne Selectboard has worked with the family-owned firm to create a predevelopment agreement that would limit the project to 375 housing units. In exchange, the town would expand Shelburne’s sewer service area — a critical designation to make the development possible. Under the plan, the town wouldn’t be extending any sewer lines, only the designation.
“It’s a collaborative process as opposed to an adversarial process,” O’Brien Brothers CEO Evan Langfeldt said of his company’s negotiations with the town. The five-person selectboard is scheduled to vote on the predevelopment agreement at its meeting on January 28. Four of the members have said they support the project; one, Luce Hillman, did not return messages left by Nest.
Selectboard member Andrew Everett said in an interview that he has reservations about the traffic impact, but he supports the project because O’Brien Brothers has shown with its Hillside at O’Brien Farm housing development in South Burlington that it’s willing to build sustainably, with solar panels and a net-zero neighborhood. He added that he thinks Shelburne has a responsibility to help alleviate the local housing crisis.
“We wouldn’t have brought it forward if we didn’t think it was a good thing for the town,” Everett said.
The O’Brien proposal includes single-family homes, multifamily homes such as duplexes and apartment buildings no taller than three stories. The development would also include public walking paths, bike paths and playgrounds, and about 90 acres set aside for conservation.
When it’s fully built — which could take a decade — the housing development would be the town’s largest ever. The project would also need approval from Shelburne’s Design Review Board and would undergo state Act 250 environmental review.
O’Brien has pledged to create a carbon-free community similar to the one at its large South Burlington project, currently under construction, which has some all-electric homes, backup batteries and solar power, and no fossil fuel infrastructure on-site.
Nevertheless, when the company proposed the Shelburne project last spring, a wave of opposition rose. More than 600 people signed a change.org petition titled “Don’t Accept the O’Brien Brothers Petition & Pre-Development Agreement.” Dozens have complained in Front Porch Forum, in the weekly Shelburne News and in testimony to the selectboard, which held two public hearings on the predevelopment agreement.
Two couples with property abutting the O’Brien land hired Bristol lawyer James Dumont. In August he wrote to the selectboard that executing the predevelopment agreement would violate Vermont law “and is likely to involve the Town in protracted litigation that the Town would likely lose.”
The Shelburne Selectboard asked two law firms to review the predevelopment agreement; both said the town has the authority to enter into the agreement and expand the sewer service area.
“The way to build affordable housing is to build housing.” Matt Wormser
The O’Brien plans do have supporters in Shelburne. They include several selectboard members, including Chunka Mui, a Chicago native who moved to Shelburne seeking serenity. Since 2013, Mui has raised his kids — and tended to chickens, goats, pigs and a beehive — on five acres near the village.
But Mui, an author and business consultant, also sees change as inevitable. He’d like to have a say in how that happens.
“We can’t hold it back; it’s like a wave,” he said. “Long-range planning is important in shaping the kind of future we want to have.”
Like many Vermont communities, Shelburne needs workers. It also needs more places for workers to live, more kids in its schools and more property tax revenue, Mui said.
“We have a huge property tax bill here, which would be helped by more houses,” he said.
Supporters say the area needs housing of many different types and price ranges. Most of Vermont does.
“What a lot of housing advocates have come to realize is that the way to build affordable housing is to build housing,” said Matt Wormser, vice chair of the selectboard. “This is going to help us ease the crisis and the pricing pressures.”
If the O’Brien homes were built, lawyer Peter Erly and his wife would be able to see them from their home, and the two would live with a backdrop of construction noise for years. But he supports the project, he said, because the community needs more housing. Erly, 71, moved to Vermont in 1987.
“I like Vermont for the way it is, but thoughtful change is not necessarily bad,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of ‘pull up the gangplank’ people who move here and don’t want anybody else to move here after them, but from an economic standpoint, we need slow but controlled growth.”
Critics often say they want to see more housing, just not in former hayfields.
“It’s too much,” said Sandy Jacobs, Susan’s husband.
The couple chose their homesite in the 1980s for its rural setting and easy access to work in Burlington and South Burlington. They cut walking trails through their woods and invited neighbors to use them.
“We have a huge property tax bill here, which would be helped by more houses.” Chunka Mui
Like much of Chittenden County, the area has been transformed over recent decades. Spear Street Extension, as it was previously known, was paved in 1986. A nearby field where Sandy used to mow walking trails became a subdivision around 2000.
Susan said the pair joined SAFE, or Shelburne Alliance for the Environment, which has published a statement calling for the selectboard to reduce the number of housing units to 160.
“It’ll affect the police department, the fire department, the way we live in this rural town, or at least the way we see it as a rural town,” Susan, a retired elementary school teacher, said.
Sandy said he’s driven through the O’Brien housing development in South Burlington, where 900 units are planned. The company has already built more than 100 closely packed homes and apartment buildings there, with land set aside for paths and parks. To him, it’s too much.
“I can’t say how I feel about it without using a four-letter word,” Sandy said. “Everything is just kind of jammed together to get as much as they can for every square inch of land that they’re developing. It just doesn’t feel very livable.”
As part of the Shelburne predevelopment agreement, O’Brien Brothers has agreed that 12 percent of the units, or about 45 homes, will be affordable to people making 80 percent of the area’s median income. Rosemary Sadler, an active project opponent and SAFE member, scoffed at that.
“That still means 334 homes for wealthy people would be on that piece of land,” she said. That’s an argument offered by many opponents of the development.
They also argue that worker homes should be located on Route 7, where Champlain Housing Trust is already at work on a 94-unit affordable housing complex. Such housing should go on land that’s already developed, Sadler added.
“We have defunct buildings. We have a Red Apple Motel on Route 7 that is falling down, which would make wonderful housing project, and it’s close to a grocery store,” she suggested.
While Route 7 is increasingly populated by commercial and residential structures, Shelburne zoning has kept development largely in check outside of that busy corridor.
The predevelopment agreement outlines some rules for the project, but it doesn’t address widespread concerns about the traffic impact on Irish Hill Road and the village, where Route 7 is already congested. That’s Sandy Jacobs’ primary concern. Otherwise, he said, he accepts that the housing is needed.
Many residents oppose the development altogether. Artist Jari Chevalier said she moved to Shelburne from New York City in 2020 to escape crowds and dreads the construction-related havoc a housing development would bring.
“The slowdowns, orange cones, and people with orange and yellow vests on, and noise, and backup beeps: All of that is going to have a huge impact on my life and my routes and my travel,” Chevalier said. “I love the low population density of Vermont; that was a big draw to the state.”
Taking charge
In 2022 and 2023, lawmakers looking for ways to ease Vermont’s housing crisis passed new laws that override local zoning regs. Act 47, Vermont’s 2023 “HOME” law, opened up new areas to dense development, and Act 181, a year later, refined that law.
Together, the new regulations call for many changes, including:
- In areas with sewer and water, requiring municipalities to allow up to four units of housing on lots where single-family homes are now allowed
- Requiring municipalities to allow five units of housing per acre in areas served by sewer and water lines
- Reducing the parking requirements for housing developments
- Increasing the number of residents’ signatures required before an appeal can be filed
- Making it easier for property owners to build accessory dwelling units, or ADUs
- Setting regional targets for new housing
- Replacing the volunteer Vermont Natural Resources Board, which administers the Act 250 land-use program, with a new entity called the Land Use Review Board, which has five paid staff members
Learn more at obrienbrothersvt.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined “HOME Stretch | A new state law spurs a development push, and resistance, in Shelburne”
This article appears in Nest — Winter 2025.
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