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VHFA addresses new housing
by Dan MacLean
Free Press Staff Writer

The perception that more housing automatically leads to greater student populations — increasing demands on local schools — is misplaced, according to a study released Monday.

It is "highly unlikely" that new housing will trigger a jump in enrollment in a community's public school system, the Vermont Housing Authority (sic) determined in a report titled, "Housing and Vermont's School Enrollment."

"There has been, for a long time, a piece of conventional wisdom that says, 'When you build more housing, it means more kids — and that's going to put a burden on the schools and your taxes are going up,'" said John Fairbanks, the group's public affairs manager. "And a lot of people believed that."

"We crunched some numbers and found out that's not the case at all," he said.

The school-age population of a community is more accurately determined by the current demographics of households living in the community now, the study found.

Building homes increases the number of students, the study found, but at a lower rate than the number of homes that are built.

Between 1995 and 2000, the most recent data available, the rate of homes built exceeded the increased number of students in the schools, the report found.

In South Burlington and Essex, for example, housing stock increased 12 to 14 percent over the multi-year period, but enrollment in kindergarten through eighth grade increased 2 to 4 percent, the report stated.

The largest increase was in Williston, where housing stock increased by 25 percent and school enrollment increased by about 15 percent -- the only town with significant increase in enrollment. Most of the homes built in Williston during this time span were three- and four-bedroom, single-family homes.

"Housing does not, in and of itself, cause school enrollment to grow," Fairbanks said. "Just because you build a certain type of housing doesn't mean you're going to bring children into the school."

Contact Dan McLean at (802) 651-4877 or dmclean@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

On the Web: www.vhfa.org/documents/housing_education.pdf