My Story

My name is Lou or Lulu (Sarah Louise White). I grew up on a pig and PYO farm in rural England. While I’m not a native Vermonter, I deeply share in the concerns of those who are.

I moved to Hartland in 2007 with my partner and a vision of building a simple, grounded life, starting a small business, raising animals, and living as much as possible off the land. We purchased 19 acres with a modest ranch home, a small cottage apartment, and a horse barn. Not long after, we split up, and I’ve been financially struggling ever since, having to buy him out. I cashed out what remained of my 401k and hired the lowest bidder I could find on Craigslist (disastrous story unto itself!) to convert the hayloft of the barn into a place I could live so I could rent out the house.

The plan was simple: live as cheaply as possible, rent out the house and cottage, grow my own food, and build a small business. In 2013, I started Lulu Web Design, which did fairly well for a time, until Covid disrupted everything.

Over the years, I’ve had some wonderful tenants, but it only takes a few bad ones to undo everything. I experienced firsthand how little protection landlords have in Vermont. When tenants stop paying rent or damage your property, there is often little to no recourse, leaving small-time landlords financially devastated. At one point, after six months of unpaid rent and ongoing damage, my lawyer advised me to offer “cash for keys” just to get a tenant, who was 6 months behind on rent and damaging my home, out. That was the turning point. I know many small landlords in the same position. The reality is that local property owners carry far more risk than large, well-funded developers who can absorb losses, but Vermont's laws do not take that into account.

That experience is what pushed me to convert my rentals into short-term rentals and, for the first time in years, I felt a sense of stability. But now, with new layers of regulation on the horizon, even that feels uncertain again.

It’s the same pattern we’re now seeing with Act 181. Layer more regulation and uncertainty onto people like us, and you don’t create more housing or stronger communities. You push out the very people providing it.

There is another piece to this that is deeply personal.

A close friend of mine, Don, is a small residential builder who rents a home in Windsor. Over the years, he has helped me countless times, fixing things I could not afford to fix, asking for nothing in return. Without his help, I genuinely don’t know if I would have been able to stay here.

My hope has been to give him a small piece of land on my property so he can build a modest home of his own when he retires in a few years. A simple, meaningful way to give back, and to help someone who has helped me survive.

But that would require a driveway longer than 800 feet.

Under Act 181’s road rule, that simple act of giving back may no longer be possible.

This is what these policies miss. They are not just lines on a map or abstract regulations. They reach into real lives, real relationships, and real plans for the future.

Everything I’ve built here has come from my own hard work. No family money, no trust fund, no inheritance. I came to the U.S. in 1994 with nothing, and this property is the result of decades of long hours in the corporate world, then building my own business in Vermont, and figuring things out as I went.

This isn’t just land to me. It’s my home, my livelihood, and my only investment. It’s everything I’ve worked for. I don’t have a financial cushion. I don’t have backup options. Every new tax, every new regulation puts that at risk. I know of several folks who have left Vermont for this very reason. More will follow if Vermont doesn't stop taxing and regulating us into a move we don't want to make.

Policies like Act 181 don’t just affect land use on paper, they affect whether people like me can continue to live and work on the land at all.