The virus sent droves to a small US town. Suddenly, it's not so small

Winhall, Vermont

FROM his post at the town dump, Scott Bushee spent the summer observing his new neighbours, transplants who pulled into his compound with heads full of rustic fantasy and licence plates from New York and New Jersey.

Mr Bushee is one of the half-dozen or so people who run the town of Winhall, Vermont, with a year-round population, before Covid-19, of 769.

He is a cranky dude. That is his brand. At the entrance to his compound, above the sign that warns his fellow residents that they cannot enter after 3:50 NO EXCEPTION, he has affixed a demented-looking baby doll, blank-eyed and with one hand replaced by a plastic fork.

Despite this clear warning, this summer's population explosion has tried his last nerve, as he explained to one flatlander after another how things are done in Vermont.

Yes, the dump attendant, a heavily bearded man named Jody, carries a firearm. And no, you cannot mix your magazines with your cans and bottles. "Now you've got to deal with Vermonters," he said. "They will tell you straight-up. I try to do it as politely as I can, but if you push the envelope, things are going to go sideways. I'm sure that they're looking at Jody and I and saying: 'Oh, my God, I've landed in Russia.'"

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It has been this way since spring, when Vermont began to emerge as a model of virus control. As city dwellers scrambled to settle their families far away from hot spots, the state's regular summer influx swelled by approximately 10,000, estimated Jeffrey Carr, an economist who advises Governor Phil Scott.

State planners are crossing their fingers that many of them, now free to work remotely, will put down roots. The last time that happened in a big way was during the back-to-the-land movement in the 1960s and 1970s, when the state's population grew by 35,000, among them such icons as Bernie Sanders and Ben and Jerry's.

For years, Vermont's population has been stuck around 620,000, a plateau so threatening to the labour force and tax base that in 2018 the state began offering a cash incentive of up to US$10,000 for remote workers who moved to Vermont.

In towns like Winhall, that is really not the problem anymore. Instead, officials are hard-pressed to keep up with the burst of growth. Elizabeth Grant, the town clerk, reckons that over the summer the town's population topped 10,000.

When school reopened this month, the number of enrolled students had increased by 54, a jump of more than 25 per cent, so the costs to taxpayers will exceed projections by US$500,000.

The post office ran out of available PO boxes in mid-June. Electricians and plumbers are booked until Christmas. Complaints about bears have quadrupled. And as far as the dump is concerned, as Mr Bushee put it, "the closest word I can tell you is sheer pandemonium".

"It's hard to know who is living in what house," said Ms Grant, 50, who is also Winhall's treasurer, registrar of deeds, tax collector and presiding officer of elections.

Everyone knows one another in Winhall. When taxes are due, Ms Grant personally calls everyone who has not paid, just in case they forgot. These days, though, she looks around the dump or the post office and finds herself utterly bewildered.

"There's people I've never seen in my whole life," she said. "I ask them, 'Where do you live?' And they look at me and tell me what house. I'm like: 'Oh, God, you really do!'"

Realtors in town knew something was up in late April, when Mr Scott began cautiously reopening businesses. Since then, the number of available single-family homes in Winhall and Stratton, the adjacent ski resort, has dropped to 29 from 129, its lowest level since 2003, according to Tim Apps, a Realtor with the Vermont Sales Group.

Anna White, 36, began looking for places in July when it became clear that schools in Bethesda, Maryland, where she now lives, would not reopen for in-person learning. The market she encountered was "a gold rush". "We would make an appointment to look at 10 houses on a Saturday, and they would be gone by 9am," said Ms White, who grew up in Vermont and left the state to go to college.

The pickings were so thin that at one point, to her husband's dismay, she put in an offer on a battered-looking house whose older occupant was hoping to remain there. "I was like: 'We can make it work. We can move into an apartment in the back,'" White said. "My husband - it was like a cartoon - he was shaking me."

Now that the family is settled in another home, she is glad she made the effort. At the Mountain School, the private school where her children started this month, there are 39 new students in a student body of 83, nearly all from what Colleen Palmer, the head of school, calls "Covid families". They have brought with them, she said, "a real influx of terrific energy, enthusiasm, vitality, diversity".

The Stratton Mountain School, a nearby prep school specialising in snow sports, began the year with 57 new students. Carson Thurber, the head of school, was equally effusive. "As a lifelong Vermonter, it's one of the most amazing silver linings I can imagine," he said. "Now it's our responsibility, and the state's responsibility, and all those individuals who have influence, to keep them here."

For the newcomers - and for the state - the question is whether they will stay, since many companies only allowed remote working on a temporary basis. State officials will have a better sense of how many people have moved into the state in a few weeks, after gathering figures on school enrollment, which has been steadily declining in Vermont for a decade. They expect an increase of 2 per cent to 5 per cent statewide and as much as 15 per cent in some towns, said Michael Pieciak, commissioner at the state Department of Financial Regulation.

As temperatures dropped last week, Ms White was awaiting the delivery of a Peloton bike and watching with amusement as her husband, who is from Maryland, began to wear flannel. "It's like a social experiment," she said. "We moved to Vermont at the best time of year. The bugs have frozen. The leaves are changing. But are we going to feel this way in March?"

That same question interests the long-time residents of Winhall. NYTIMES