Carly Berlin covers housing and infrastructure for Vermont Public, in partnership with VTDigger.
The federal government has approved money to buy and tear down at least 90 Vermont homes and businesses at risk of flooding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has greenlit $33.2 million for flood buyouts, according to a Monday announcement from Vermont’s congressional delegation. It’s the final large tranche of funding state officials have been waiting on since the devastating floods of 2023 and 2024 to help compensate Vermonters for properties they’d likely struggle to sell.
“To say that these buyouts are long-overdue is a massive understatement,” said Sen. Peter Welch in a statement. “We have Vermonters whose lives and livelihoods were in limbo for over three years as they waited for FEMA to act.”
When a property has flooded — or is at risk of damage from flooding or a landslide in the future — it can qualify for a buyout. Once the government buys out a property, the building must be torn down and the land turned into green space. The owner is paid the pre-disaster value of the property.
FEMA’s buyout process is notoriously slow and arduous, but changes to FEMA under the Trump administration added hurdles.
“There were new barriers put into place in early 2025 that certainly made this take longer,” said Vermont Emergency Management Deputy Director Stephanie Smith. Those included a rule change that prompted Smith’s team to rework all the buyout applications they were getting ready to send to FEMA last year.
The latest tranche of money means the vast majority of the 243 buyout properties across the state have been awarded federal funding, according to Smith. FEMA covers three-quarters of each buyout payment, and the state pays the difference.
The largest portion of the latest funding round will go to Plainfield, covering 18 buyouts, according to Smith. Other municipalities getting the recent approvals include Starksboro, Huntington, Richmond, St. Johnsbury and Groton, Smith said.
Starksboro Town Administrator Amanda Vincent said the funding announcement has been a long time coming for flood-impacted homeowners in the Addison County town of just under 2,000 people. But the removal of 14 properties will mean a hit to Starksboro’s tax rolls.
“It’s certainly a double-edged sword,” Vincent said. “The rest of the property owners are going to foot the bill or carry the tax burden for these properties.”
Additional FEMA funding has continued to trickle into Vermont to patch up roads and other infrastructure damaged by the floods. On Tuesday, over $12 million in recovery funding was announced for efforts to repair the Green Mountain Railroad and fix town-owned bridges and culverts.
The newly approved buyout funding doesn’t mean property owners will have money in their pockets tomorrow. Properties need to get appraised and real estate transactions need to wrap up before property owners get compensated and buildings get demolished.
For some buyout recipients, the end of the line is bittersweet.
The home where Rachael Moragues lived with her two sons in Peacham flooded in 2024. The family bunked up with friends while continuing to pay the mortgage on a home they knew they would never live in again. Moragues finally got her FEMA buyout payment in February and her Peacham home was bulldozed this summer, to her relief, she said.
Moragues recently purchased a new home in a neighboring town. Even with the buyout payment, she’s struggling financially. Home prices and mortgage rates have escalated so much since she bought the Peacham house in 2020 that she’s seen a more than 300% increase in her monthly mortgage payment, she said.
“People getting buyouts is not a happy ending,” she said.