Remember what I’ve written about the cost of ending the motel voucher program being higher than the cost of keeping it going? And i mean the purely financial cost, leaving aside the moral dimension of unhousing 80% of Vermont’s homeless.
Well, here’s a nice real-life example. The city of Barre has offered the use of its B.O.R. Arena as a shelter space for the next three months.
For a price.
Specifically $29,025 a day.
That’s what the state of Vermont would have to pay the city to use the Arena as a shelter, according to City Manager Nick Storellicastro.
At that rate, a fully-occupied Arena shelter would cost about $125 per household — which is a bit lower than what the state is paying right now per motel room, but quite a bit higher than the figure offered by former gubernatorial candidate Brenda Siegel, who says motel operators are willing to accept $100 per day.
And that $125 does not include the cost of 24/7 staffing, which Storellicastro is not offering to provide.
This ought to make everyone think twice about the sheer financial wisdom of ending the voucher program. It puts the state and municipalities in a sheer scramble to accommodate people, and that usually results in wasted time, energy, and money.
Problem is, you can’t just throw open the doors, toss around a few cots, and call it good. Barre’s offer includes such necessities as lost revenue from event rentals, utilities and supplies, security, additional insurance expenses and legal fees, not to mention the cost of portable toilets, shower facilities, and icemakers to provide shelter residents a way to store medicines that require refrigeration.
And that’s all for accommodation that’s clearly a step down in quality from even a very basic motel room.
Is the offering price a bit excessive? Perhaps. But Storellicastro has to guard the city against all kinds of fiscal consequences, and this urgent situation creates a lot of unknowns. “We are taking on some risk here,” he told The Times Argus. Still, he told City Council this week that there was room for negotiation.
But not that much room.
This is just one example of what happens when you start weighing the real-world costs of this unneccessary and inhumane situation. Kind of a shock, no? Makes the months of inaction by our political leaders that caused this crisis look even more tragic than we already knew it was.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
I want to thank City Councilor Teddy Waszazak for calling “bullshit” on some of the statements from our City Manager, not even going to try to type that name.
“Are there no prisons? …. Are there no workhouses?”
“If they would rather die, they had better do it and reduce the surplus population. ”
Alternatively, Vermont can simply resort to its own past state laws and practices and eugenicaly sterilize them all.
In the short term, simply cart the homeless children off to some of Vermont’s finer public and private institutions, like the Burlington Diocese St. Joseph’s Orphanage, Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation, or Kurn Hattin Homes for Children in Westminster.