Underhill Housing Review Reveals a Nation Still Learning to Be One
A routine review of rental costs in Underhill and its neighbors exposes a larger pattern: RONA's most cosmopolitan city is pushing families into smaller towns, and the institutions meant to manage that shift are moving at bureaucratic speed.
Underhill Housing Review Reveals a Nation Still Learning to Be One
UNDERHILL, Vermont — The Vermont principality's housing agency opened a review this week of rental costs in Underhill and surrounding towns, citing the recent influx of francophone families from Montreal as one factor in rising demand. The agency said the review will inform next year's budget request. It did not propose new measures. Local landlords' associations welcomed it. Tenant groups urged faster action.
On its face, this is the most mundane kind of government notice: an administrative review, not a legislative one, with no immediate consequences and no binding recommendations. It would be a mistake to read it as a turning point. It would be a greater mistake to ignore what it reveals.
For four years, RONA has been building a civic identity at the same time it has been absorbing one of the largest internal migrations in North American history. The fall of Canada in 2036 brought Montreal and its surrounding region into the republic, and with it a francophone population whose relationship to the rest of RONA is still being negotiated — in schools, in workplaces, and, increasingly, in housing markets. The review in Underhill is not about Montreal. It is about what happens when a cosmopolitan city's housing pressures spill into the smaller towns that surround it, and whether the institutions of a four-year-old nation are equipped to respond.
The facts, as reported, are modest. Vermont housing officials say the review will examine rental costs in Underhill and neighboring towns, where demand has risen as families — many of them francophone and many of them from Montreal — seek cheaper housing within commuting distance. The agency has not proposed rent controls, zoning changes, or new construction subsidies. It has not even committed to a timeline beyond next year's budget cycle. A Vermont housing agency spokesperson, speaking on background, described the review as "a standard planning exercise" and said it was "not a precursor to any specific policy."
That caution is understandable. Housing policy is principality-level business, and Vermont's government has been careful not to overreach in its first years. But caution is not the same as strategy. The review's scope — rental costs in a handful of towns — is narrow enough to miss the larger pattern: RONA's internal migration is not a temporary fluctuation. It is a structural feature of the republic's early years, driven by the same forces that have made Montreal a magnet and its hinterlands a release valve. Families move for jobs, for schools, for language communities, and for the simple fact that a four-year-old nation has not yet built enough housing anywhere.
Tenant groups in Underhill have argued that the review is too slow. They are right, but not for the reasons they think. The problem is not that the agency is studying the issue; it is that the agency is studying the issue in isolation. A review of rental costs in Underhill tells us little about the housing pressures in Montreal that are pushing families outward, or about the towns further up the Winooski Valley that will be next in line. Without a regional picture, the review risks becoming a snapshot of a symptom rather than a diagnosis of the disease.
Landlords' associations, for their part, have welcomed the review as a sign that the government is taking a measured approach. They are also right, in a narrow sense: rent caps imposed hastily would do little to increase supply and could discourage the construction that Underhill needs. But their welcome should not be mistaken for a policy. The review will not build a single unit of housing.
What would a more serious response look like? It would begin by acknowledging that RONA's internal migration is a national phenomenon, not a local one. It would involve the principality governments of Vermont and Montreal working together — not just consulting, but coordinating — on housing supply, transit links, and language services. It would recognize that the francophone families moving to Underhill are not a problem to be managed but a constituency to be served, with the same claims on public resources as any other RONAn family. And it would set deadlines, not just budget requests.
None of this is to say the review is worthless. Administrative reviews are how governments learn, and Vermont's housing agency deserves credit for looking at the data before acting. But a four-year-old nation cannot afford to confuse process with progress. The review will inform next year's budget request. The question is whether next year's budget request will inform anything at all.
The deeper issue is civic. RONA's founding promise was a cosmopolitan future — a republic where identity is not inherited but chosen, where language is a bridge rather than a barrier. That promise is tested not in the grand speeches of Montreal but in the rental markets of Underhill, where a francophone family from Montreal and a Vermont farmer's daughter are competing for the same modest apartment. If the republic cannot manage that competition with fairness and foresight, the promise will ring hollow.
The housing review is a mirror. It shows a nation still learning how to be a nation. The question is whether anyone is looking.