The White River Valley Consortium

When a region’s housing is affordable for people starting careers or businesses, the whole community thrives.

Vital Communities is a member of the White River Valley Consortium, a loosely affiliated network of organizations and residents working to support fourteen towns in the White River Valley in increasing the availability of housing that is affordable for early-career young adults and beginning entrepreneurs. The White River Consortium was initially formed and funded as part of the Vermont Working Communities Challenge.

One of our main projects is the White River Valley ADU program. Applications are currently open for technical assistance and financial support for eligible homeowners for creation of an Accessory Dwelling Unit!

How We Got Here

2019-2020: The White River Valley Consortium was awarded a “planning” grant through the Working Communities Challenge. The partners conducted broad community engagement to identify the most pressing economic challenges for our region, and selected housing as our first initiative.

Fall 2021: The White River Valley Consortium was awarded a three-year “implementation” grant through WCC, which is being managed on behalf of the Consortium by Vital Communities.

2022: The Consortium explored root causes of our housing shortfall, researched potential solutions, and collected community input to identify the most promising solutions for our region. “read the year one report” button can go in here

2023: The Consortium designed and began implementing projects to advance these promising solutions.

Consortium Projects

Creating ADUs

The creation of “ADUs” or “Accessory Dwelling Units” (often called “in-law apartments”) is a great way to build rental housing in smaller communities. The additional income from rent can also be important in helping homeowners afford to stay in their own home. However, building an ADU can be challenging and expensive. The WRVC is designing and piloting a program that will help low- and moderate-income homeowners create ADUs to increase their own economic stability while also helping house their community.

Intergenerational Conversations

What is your own personal story of making a home for yourself in the community where you live? In what ways might that affect your perspective on how we should work on housing issues? We’ll be better equipped to address housing together – or any other challenge – once we can understand each other’s differing experiences. The WRVC is hosting community conversations to build empathy and relationships across generations and we’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in helping to host one.

Other Services

Supporting Local Housing Committees

Local housing organizers play an extremely important role in this work, and some towns within the White River Valley have unique needs and solutions they can implement on their own. The WRVC is currently supporting the work of the Rochester Area Housing Committee, and is available to support other housing groups within the WRV as well.

Coming Together as a Region

The WRV is in many ways a single community, and the Working Communities Challenge is a great opportunity to build stronger relationships and develop systems for working together across municipal lines. The WRVC is working on identifying and articulating the shared qualities of the White River Valley communities and designing tools to uplift our common identity and facilitate collaboration within the region.

Learning Opportunities

The WRV Consortium periodically hosts learning opportunities for the general public around housing challenges or solutions. We also help to promote events organized by partners (email sdanly@vitalcommunities.org), and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston frequently offers workshops on systems change and collective impact to members of the WCC teams.

Who and How

The Core Team: The “Core Team” is essentially a Steering Committee for the project. It meets at least once and sometimes twice a month to check in on progress, and represents the WRV at events that the Working Communities Challenge hosts for all the community teams to come together. Many of the Core Team organizations are also taking on substantial commitments to advance specific project work. This group is open to new members; please contact sdanly@vitalcommunities.org if this role is something you might be interested in.
Additional Partners: Being on the Core Team is not the only way to be involved in the WRV Consortium. We are also excited to work with local housing organizers and with municipal government representatives, and individuals helping with specific projects are not all expected to be on the Core Team. If you are leading or involved in a housing project in the White River Valley, we would love to learn about it and discuss whether the WRVC can be of help. You can email Sarah Danly at sdanly@vitalcommunities.org
Volunteer compensation: The WRVC is committed to supporting the participation of anyone who is not otherwise being paid for their time (e.g. volunteer community members, representatives of extremely small organizations.) Stipends are usually made available for individual meetings, and individuals who take on a specific task within the Consortium receive an honorarium for that work.
Backbone Organization: The White River Valley Consortium is coordinated by a staff person housed at Vital Communities, which holds and administers the grant from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The Working Communities Challenge is based on the Collective Impact model and you can learn more about the role of a “backbone organization” here.

Receive WRVC Email Updates

Current Core Team

Linda Anderson, Capstone Community Action
Julie Iffland, Randolph Area Community Development Corporation
Lori Belding, Bar Harbor Bank & Trust
Erika Hoffman-Kiess, Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation
David Barker, Royalton Resident
Mark Rosalbo, Town of Randolph
Sarah Jackson, Vital Communities
Sarah Wraight, Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission

Any Questions?

What is the White River Valley Consortium? Why these fourteen towns?

The White River Valley Consortium is a relatively new collaboration between fourteen towns in the White River Valley: Braintree, Bethel, Brookfield, Chelsea, Granville, Hancock, Pittsfield, Randolph, Royalton, Rochester, Sharon, Strafford, Stockbridge, and Tunbridge. This is a grassroots collaboration driven by engaged residents and local organizations from these 14 towns who have chosen to work together. These neighboring communities not only face many of the same challenges, but also share many of the same assets: transportation corridors, major employers, school districts and other educational institutions, social services organizations, grassroots community groups, and of course the namesake White River watershed. Many residents live in one of these towns and work in another, and access services and social amenities throughout the region.

What is the Working Communities Challenge and what does it have to do with the White River Valley Consortium?

Courtesy of Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

The Working Communities Challenge is a partnership between Vermont, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, private sector, philanthropy, and communities. The Challenge is a funding competition coordinated by the FRBB that supports collective efforts in Vermont’s rural towns, regions, and small cities to build strong economies and healthy communities.

The WCC program served as the initial catalyst for the WRVC to come together as a united community in 2019. Now, the WCC is supporting a three-year project for the WRVC to work on increasing affordable housing for entry-level workforce and beginning entrepreneurs.

Why is the WRVC working on housing?

There are many social justice challenges and economic barriers faced by the White River Valley community, and all are extremely important to address. From 2019-2021, the WRVC collected input and discussed many of these challenges. Ultimately, the WRVC cannot work on all these issues simultaneously – especially as a grassroots group that includes volunteer members – and the three-year WCC grant provided an opportunity to get started on one of them. Affordable housing surfaced as one of the issues that is most urgent. A shortage of quality, affordable, safe and energy efficient housing affects both business viability, in all sectors, and the quality of life for our residents. The groundwork is in place for real action that could benefit from collaboration at this geographic scale and from the technical assistance provided through the WCC program.

Why is the focus on entry-level workers and beginning entrepreneurs?

We know there are many kinds of housing needed in our region, including for those currently unhoused, for young families, and for senior citizens. There are also many wonderful support organizations and other initiatives already underway. The WRVC saw a need for additional capacity to work on affordable housing for entry-level workforce and beginning entrepreneurs, which is essential for keeping our young people in our communities, encouraging innovation in our economies, providing a good quality of life, and attracting new residents. These many forms of housing are complementary, and our work to increase this one type will improve housing for all residents of our area.

What kind of housing are you encouraging?

The WRVC will be supporting our communities in creating whatever kind of housing is right for them, which may be different from town to town. In general, though, we are looking at more disseminated solutions, rather than a few centralized developments with large numbers of units. That means things like accessory dwelling units (“in-law apartments”), subdividing existing buildings where appropriate, rehabilitating or winterizing older housing, etc. We will also be looking at other support services to make accessing housing more possible, such as financial literacy programming or community loan programs, and at other community development issues that are essential for the physical housing to be an appealing home, such as community social spaces or availability of transportation. Ultimately, we are taking a systems approach to this issue: our program aims not to just create new units, but to address the underlying systems that are causing the shortage in the first place. This means we’ll also be looking at things like land use regulation, tax policy, shortages in the construction industry, broader socio-economic issues, and even cultural factors.

What does the WRVC expect to achieve over the next few years? What comes after that?

Part of the conversations with each of the fourteen towns over the coming months will be developing goals that represent significant progress, but are scale-appropriate and achievable. We will ultimately identify quantitative targets such as the number of organizations participating in this work, the number of housing units, or percent of young workers and entrepreneurs who are cost-burdened by their housing. Just as importantly, however, we will be building relationships and developing a collaborative process for working together in the future, whether we continue the work on housing or switch our focus to new issues at the end of this first three-year program.

Won't this work be really challenging?

Absolutely! Housing by itself is a complex challenge, and it’s only one of many that we need to address in order to ensure that all those who live in the White River Valley are able to “live their best lives.” We don’t expect this work to be easy, and we don’t expect to solve our housing crisis within three years. But any progress we can make is important, and we believe it will be much more effective to work together than for each of our towns to attempt to go it alone. And right now, we have the support of the WCC program; a group of committed organizations and experts ready to help our community; and the support of many generous, creative, and passionate community members.