The House Human Services Committee did it again Friday. They went and injected the experiences of homeless Vermonters into the normally dispassionate exercise of lawmaking. The results were, as usual, breathtaking, heartbreaking, and disruptive.

Which begs the question, why is this such an unusual event in the halls of government? Why do we rarely hear from those directly impacted by policy decisions made on high? Modest Proposal: Require every policy committee to hear “lived experience” testimony, especially those that deal with our tattered, inadequate, often cruel, social safety net. (Credit to End Homelessness Now, which has helped these folks remain housed and enabled their testimony in the Statehouse.)

Hey, maybe even we could establish “lived experience” advisory committees for the Agency of Human Services (including the Department of Corrections, you betcha). Not now, of course; it’ll have to wait until sometime after Phil Scott’s disembodied head in a jar loses its bid for a twenty-seventh term in office.

Those pesky “lived experiences” do inject a sometimes brutal dose of reality into the proceedings, making it more difficult to justify byzantine social service policies that are seemingly designed to punish participants and limit demand more than to actually address a real, tangible need.

Then again, they also display the indomitability of the human spirit, the intelligence and resourcefulness of those who live their lives on the edge. Giving them a seat at the table wouldn’t be an act of pity; it would be taking advantage of an underutilized resource.

Below are selected passages from these witnesses’ stories. I encourage you to access their full written testimony through the committee’s website or, better yet, experience their stories via YouTube. Fair warning: on many an occasion, the tissue boxes were passed around the table quite freely. So a few excerpts, just to give you a sense of what our safety net hath wrought. Corwin Chase (pictured above):

Nobody communicates with us about what is happening. Many of us have experienced lots of trauma and we are expected to roll with whatever next happens. It would help if there was a requirement, at least for the state to give us notice about what is happening next, in a timely manner. …If there was an easily readable guide of the program so that we understood rules, verifications needed and our rights.

Katherine Frazine:

Hotel owners and managers can make up anything and we have no choice and no voice when they do. All that the rule says is that we [can be] exited “for not following the rules”. That allows Hotel Owners to make up anything. Our families, our children and our lives can be put at risk. People with resources, wealth and power, are given a voice that we are not.

Shelby Lebarron, who gave birth to a premature baby while fighting to stay in the motel program:

When you are in the hotels, you have the constant stress of will I have a voucher, won’t I have a voucher. Is my family going to end up outside? What if I can’t get ahold of economic services and then we have to fight to have the benefits that the rules say we qualify for. It is too much and it shouldn’t be like this.

Finally, Tamara Hodge:

I have been in recovery for almost 4 years, and it is incredibly important to me that I stay in recovery. But, these rules make it very hard for anyone to continue to have hope and connection. It is hard to see a way out of homelessness, even now.

… I am staring at [the scheduled end of the adverse weather program on] March 15th, unsure what is going to happen. I have been assured that we will probably be able to stay until June 30th, but, until we know for sure, that panic is there. And what do we do after June 30th if we still have no way out.

Rep. Theresa Wood, chair of House Human Services, will take the memory of these stories with her into the House-Senate conference committee that will decide whether Hodge will have a roof over her head after March 15. Wood will be negotiating with three senators who previously decided that she should not. It’s too bad those senators weren’t in the room for Hodge’s testimony. It’s too bad they don’t have to explain directly to these four individuals why they should be tossed out on the street. It’s too bad they don’t have to address Tamara Hodge’s closing comment:

Please keep us safe. Please keep us sheltered. Everyone deserves to be inside. We are human beings and sometimes it feels like we are treated like animals. We need support, not rules. We need dignity, not shame.