By Dave Fidlin | The Center Square

After a weeks-long series of reviews, a Vermont legislative panel on Monday voted for a bill to expand housing opportunities within a state that has identified a severe shortage for low- and moderate-income people.

The House Committee on Environment and Energy held three separate sessions Monday, conferring with legal counsel, before voting unanimously in favor of a marked-up version of Senate Bill 100.

The most up-to-date version, Draft No. 6.1, will go before the full House of Representatives for a floor vote and be referred back to the Senate.

In this legislative session, both chambers of the Vermont General Assembly have been wrangling over language and provisions as officials look at increasing the supply of affordable single-family and multi-dwelling housing stock across the state through incentives.

Vermont Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover

After Monday’s review, as a final vote was taken, Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-West Dover, said she viewed the committee’s work as an exhaustive but important process.

“I acknowledge this is a big bill,” said Sibilia, vice chair of the committee. “It’s in a compressed time frame, and there’s been a tremendous amount of work.”

As the committee hashed over its final sets of proposed amendments to the bill, following several rounds of testimony in recent weeks, panelists continued to delve into some of the bill’s granular details in legislation intended to apply across Vermont’s disparate landscape of dense and rural communities.

At Monday’s meeting, language was incorporated to address any existing community-based bylaws, noting they “shall designate appropriate districts and reasonable regulations for multiunit or multifamily dwellings.”

The added language further states, “No bylaw shall have the effect of excluding these multiunit or multifamily dwellings from the municipality.”

A portion of Monday’s deliberations also focused explicitly on communities that offer municipal sewer and water infrastructure that can more readily accommodate denser housing developments.

The new language states, “Bylaws shall establish lot and building dimensional standards that allow five or more dwelling units per acre for each allowed residential use, and density standards for multiunit dwellings shall not be more restrictive than those required for single-family dwellings.”

Rep. Larry Satcowitz, D-Montpelier, said the committee’s work had been intended to balance community smart growth plans with zoning that accommodates housing to Vermont residents who need it most.

“We should be trying pretty hard — and I think we have been — to avoid unintended consequences,” Satcowitz said. “I think this is a pretty modest restriction on what the housing bill is trying to do.”

Rep. Gabrielle Stebbins, D-Montpelier, assessed the committee’s recommended changes similarly.

“Part of what we’ve been trying do with this bill is make it so that it is possible so that folks who may not be able to afford a single-family home anywhere they want … to have more opportunities where we already have development and water and sewer,” Stebbins said.

The bill also touches on other technical details, including parking requirements for multifamily residential unit developments.

Municipalities cannot ban multifamily dwellings within their incorporated boundaries under the proposal.