Like many people in Shelburne, Susan Jacobs sees the irony in opposing a large housing development that's planned for hayfields near her home. She knows the region's housing crisis is causing pain. Her 43-year-old son and his wife are stuck in a one-bedroom apartment in Burlington because they can't afford a larger place. Nevertheless, Jacobs said, the proposed 375-unit project is wrong for Shelburne because of the noise, the traffic and other ways an estimated 1,000 new arrivals would change the community. "It has to be very frustrating to try to find a place to live," Jacobs said in an interview at the hilltop home where she's lived since 1986. "Yet here we are saying, 'Not in my backyard.'" That's a stance that many of her fellow residents in the upscale Chittenden County town have taken: Yes, Vermont desperately needs more housing — but not this particular development in my community. Vermont lawmakers set out to short-circuit local resistance to denser, multifamily development when they passed the HOME Act in 2023. Crafted in response to Vermont's housing shortage — by one estimate Vermont needs 30,000 more units by 2030 — the law, also known as Act 47, overrides local zoning ordinances. It identifies areas with municipal water and sewer infrastructure as places where smaller lot sizes and multifamily housing must be allowed. But, as the debate in Shelburne makes clear, the housing crisis and the mandate from Montpelier don't always make the prospect of dense residential development more palatable to neighbors. Shelburne's municipal water and sewer pipes — though not the town's designated sewer service area — just reach a nearly 200-acre parcel owned by the South Burlington construction company O'Brien Brothers. The passage of Act 47 prompted O'Brien to take a fresh look at its fields, wetlands and forest about a mile and a half from Shelburne village. Without Act 47, the town's zoning would require O'Brien to subdivide the property into lots of five acres or more — a pattern that runs counter to Shelburne's town plan, which calls for compact, walkable development in growth areas such as the sewer service area. Act 47's density allowances mean that if the town agrees to add the land to its designated sewer service area, O'Brien could build as many as 500 homes. The Shelburne Selectboard has worked with the family-owned firm to create a predevelopment agreement that would…