Sumitted for your approval, three news stories on a common theme: What happens when government isn’t up to the task?

Two are about Covid-19 and nursing homes, which I will address in my next post. Under consideration here, courtesy of VTDigger’s Anne Wallace Allen, is a look at Vermont’s wretched rental housing stock. The headline, “About 7,000 Vermont households lack things like kitchens, bathrooms, or heat,” is a bit exaggerated. But the reality isn’t much better.

Nobody knows exactly how many Vermonters are living in substandard housing.

That 7,000 figure is an upper estimate, so the actual number of households without crucial features may be smaller. But the story’s gut-punch is that oversight of rental housing in Vermont is spotty at best, nonexistent at worst.

The state has a rental housing code but no enforcement mechanism. Several of our larger cities have code-enforcement systems. Elsewhere, it’s entirely up to town health officers. They’re usually untrained volunteers with few resources to conduct their business. James Arisman, who formerly served as Marshfield’s health officer, told VTDigger, “Essentially there is no protection for renters in the state of Vermont by an inspection system that is robust and carrying out routine inspections.”

Yeah, that seems a little problematic.

There are plenty of appalling details, but let’s leave it here: How did we get to the year 2020 with such an archaic “system”? It’s yet another example of the Grandfather’s Lightbulb phenomenon. To wit:

Q: How many Vermonters does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Change it? That was my grandfather’s lightbulb!

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