You don’t need to know the details of what’s going on in the House and Senate to realize how different the two chambers are when it comes to providing for the homeless and creating a better social safety net. All you have to know is that last week, when the House was addressing how to fix the system, they called on expert advocates Anne Sosin (seen above) and Brenda Siegel. And when the Senate Appropriations Committee was trying to fine-tune the current program, it called on two Scott administration officials directly involved in the policy failures of the last several years.

Siegel had submitted written testimony (downloadable here) to Senate Appropriations and was present in person at the Friday hearing, and yet the committee didn’t invite her to speak. They depended instead on the architects of doom: Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department of Children and Families’ Economic Services Division, and Shayla Livingston, policy director for the Agency of Human Services.

Appropriations wrapped up its disgraceful week with a brief hearing on Friday morning, in which it quickly finalized the details of a half-assed emergency housing plan and sent it on to the full Senate, which rubber-stamped it within a half hour.

The short version of the House/Senate divide: The House is trying to build a robust bridge to a comprehensive system to help the unhoused. The Senate is patching and filling the current system with an eye more on the bottom line than the human need.

The Senate passed its version of an emergency housing extension as part of H.839, the Budget Adjustment Act for the current fiscal year. The House version would have allowed those housed under the adverse weather program to continue in their placements through the end of June, and would also have extended the GA housing program through June.

Senate Appropriations went along with the latter but balked at the former because, according to committee chair Jane Kitchel, expanding the adverse weather program would have constituted a change in policy which ought to be done through the normal budgeting process, not in a budget adjustment.

Of course, later in the week she proposed her own policy change without batting an eye. Hers would have allowed those in the adverse weather program who are classified as vulnerable — including families with children, the elderly, people with disabilities, those fleeing domestic abuse or natural disasters — to continue in housing through June.

Approps also inserted language directing the administration to move people away from motels and into other kinds of shelter whenever possible, which might save a little short-term money but will in essence treat the unhoused like pawns to be moved around the state whenever convenient. (Convenient for the administration, not for them.) It introduces the kind of moral hazard so beloved of fiscal conservatives: Help only those who can prove they deserve it, make ’em jump through hoops and maybe even grovel a bit, and treat them like pieces of furniture.

The Senate plan is not only going to result in significant unhousing, it’s also an administrative nightmare. Adverse weather clients will have to prove, within the next month-plus, that they qualify as vulnerable. The overburdened staff at Human Services will have to process and adjudicate all those cases. (In her testimony to the House Human Services Committee on February 2 (downloadable here), Siegel refers to “the 500 pages of rules and interpretations of those rules, as well as any emergency rules or changes as they come up.” Kafka would be proud.)

VTDigger reported on the 25-3 Senate vote on H.839 but didn’t bother to note the names of the dissenters. Three relatively progressive junior senators voted “No”: Martine Gulick, Nader Hashim, and Tanya Vyhovsky. (Gives me a little hope for the future of the upper chamber.) The House and Senate will now convene a committee of conference to work out the differences between their respective versions of the bill.

Two House committees, meanwhile, spent the week working on legislation related to homelessness. House General & Housing is considering H.132, the Homeless Bill of Rights. House Human Services is trying to craft an improved emergency housing program for Fiscal Year 2025, which begins on July 1. (This ought to be the responsibility of the Scott administration, but it continues its failed approach of apparently just hoping the problem goes away.) The committee’s intent is to begin by identifying the need, exploring evidence-based programs proven to drastically reduce homelessness, and building a program to resolve the crisis that has made Vermont the second-worst state in the nation for homelessness.

Siegel and Sosin’s submissions (Sosin’s written testimony and slideshow downloadable here) are recommended reading. They provide a clear guide to the principles of a program that will (a) treat clients with humanity and respect, (b) actually help to solve the problem instead of exacerbating it, and (c) is likely to save money compared to the costs of rampant homelessness.

Even if you don’t include the, you know, compassion for the vulnerable part.

The bottom line: Homelessness is not inevitable. There are proven, practical solutions. They don’t involve huge, unsustainable expenditures. We can get from here to there, save a whole lot of people from terrible fates, and improve our society in the process. If, you know, you care about that sort of thing.