The most important piece among all the missing pieces in press coverage of Gov. Phil Scott’s “manufactured crisis” of mass unhousing is the experience of those displaced people. VTDigger’s preview piece about “Just Getting By,” a new documentary about Vermonters living on the edge, gives these people far more of a voice than all the press coverage of the unhousing combined. And that’s a fucking disgrace on the part of Vermont’s media outlets.
Another missing presence: the on-the-ground service providers who were already up to their necks in helping the unhoused. The governor’s deliberate policy choices effectively rip at the fabric of the social safety net, and he tacitly expects these providers to catch anyone who falls through the holes.
So I paid a visit this morning to a place I’ve driven by about 8,000 times without ever noticing it. Not surprising, since it’s in a nondescript house tucked into a driveway off Barre Street in Montpelier. Another Way describes itself as “a sanctuary for those with psychiatric disabilities.” As you might expect, many of its clients are or have been homeless.
Some of those present had been kicked out of their state-paid motel rooms last Friday, including one couple who actually qualified for an extended motel stay but weren’t approved in time to avoid eviction. They plan to join Vermont Legal Aid’s lawsuit against the Scott administration.
You probably have expectations for what you’d experience if you walked into a house full of “those with psychiatric disabilities.” Well, go ahead and dump all those images out your earhole.
I walked into a place fairly humming with energy. Much of it was aimed at helping people. Some was just simple human activity: People hanging out, chatting, doing chores. Clients don’t merely use Another Way as a haven; they actively participate in the daily activity required to keep the place going. Shortly after I arrived, some people dropped off donated food and sleeping bags — the latter to be provided to recently unhoused folk.
The ones sleeping outside. Because of a decision by the governor he didn’t have to make.
“It seems like they thought, well, we’ll open up the dam and people are going to be absorbed somehow and it’s not our problem anymore,” said Ken Russell, Another Way’s Executive Director.
The walls of Another Way are decorated with client-made art. The most affecting piece isn’t art, exactly; it’s two big sheets of butcher paper full of names and messages, pictured above.
“We’d been discussing dsome way of memorializing people we’ve lost in the community,” Russell explained. “Finally, we put up some pieces of butcher paper. Next thing you know, all sorts of people wrote all sorts of names on here. It’s often quite an emotional scene. I recognize a lot of names.”
It reminded me of “Touch a Name on the Wall,” a song by Michigan musician Joel Mabus. (Give it a listen; it’s more than worth your time. Have some tissues handy.) It’s a deeply affecting song about visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but the resonance is the same. Respecting those we lost, and working to make sure their sacrifice is not forgotten.
They’ll probably need more paper pretty soon. I asked Russell about all the people who didn’t show up at the shelters. Nearly 400 people were kicked out of motels last Friday, and only a handful slept in the Scott administration’s four slapped-together shelters. “They go off into the woods,” Russell said. “We try to find places for them to camp, but it’s getting harder and harder in Montpelier.”
Similar answer from Rick DeAngelis of Good Samaritan Haven, which operates shelters in central Vermont — shelters that are always at or near capacity. “Good question,” he said. “I can’t even answer that in our county.” Good Sam’s staff had all they could handle meeting the needs of those who approached them, let alone tracking down those who simply walked away from a motel, destination unknown.
Most will probably survive. People get awfully skilled at staying alive when they’ve been living on the edge. But some will not. Many of them would have qualified for continued motel stays due to disability, age, or medical condition, if only the Scott administration had allowed time for them to apply and gain approval. Their chances are not good, when temperatures are forecast to fall into the low- to mid-teens later this week.
Touch a name on the wall…
“The whole thing showed a complete lack of understanding and sensitivity,” DeAngelis said of the way the state handled the unhousing. “I’m appalled at what they’re expecting us to do. It’s not a system that’s set up to succeed.”
Or, in the words of Sue Minter, Executive Director of Capstone Community Action, “It’s a system that isn’t a system.” She added that the problem goes well beyond the emergency housing or lack thereof. “We’ve had a 200% increase in visits to our food pantry this quarter compared to two years ago,” she said. “There were child tax credits and extra SNAP benefits during the pandemic that have now expired. It’s not just the unhoused; it’s those who can’t afford food, rent and heat.” She could have added federal rent support payments that expired last summer and almost certainly resulted in a wave of evictions this fall and winter.
Tell you what. Let’s not look away. That’s the easy thing to do. But these people are more than statistics. They are not some subhuman species doomed to dismal lives and early deaths. Stick around Another Way for more than a few minutes, you’ll be struck by the energy, the resourcefulness, the inner force of people who’ve taken the worst our society can dish out and lived to tell the tale. These are people worth helping. They can not only survive, they can thrive, if only given the chance. That process begins with not throwing any more of them out of shelter for no good reason.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
“And that’s a fucking disgrace on the part of Vermont’s media outlets.”
The cruelty of this is absolutely breathtaking and I have studied the holocaust, met survivors of it, and been through reconstructed gas chambers, scratch marks still on the wall from the victims. It is surreal. It should be covered in depth. If I were not in public housing, I would be one of those kicked out of the hotels. This is the real America.
walter, I would say this is Republican America. The war on the homeless got started with Ronald Reagan and accelerated with George W Bush. If people don’t acknowledge trump and his enablers would be in favor of rounding up “undesirables” for interment camps they deluding themselves. Camps have been proposed by numerous GOP politicians, they just not implemented for American citizens yet. They did so with border crossing families. There have been numerous instances of one way bus tickets offered to the homeless, usually from republican communities to Democratic communities.
Governor Nice Guy is just a little more polished, little less blatant in his hostility. No mistaking it though Governor Scott is hostile to the homeless and lower working class, he just hiding it better. If Phil Scott wasn’t governor, I wouldn’t care as much his words and actions. But, being governor, like being president, means responsibility towards all the citizens, not just the moneyed few.
I don’t love the Democratic party and Progressives sometimes hurt my sanity, but they are trying to maintain the ideals this country was founded on. The ideals of Town Meeting Day.
Three inches wet snow overnight here. Predicted mid teens Thursday night. Adverse weather still a reality.
If it wasn’t for family I probably homeless or out of Vermont for good. And I from here with training and skills but the resources hoarded by those that already have enough are making this state unlivable.
I spent nearly twenty years of my life being housed on and off by the Vermont department of corrections, more time in than out, doing life on the installment plan, for petty, non-violent, drug related crimes starting as a 19 year old troubled but determined young woman before addiction was considered a disease. One of the things I think about frequently about all of the injustices of my life was how they were spending ALL that tax payer money to house me, for things like being late for group, or having an unauthorized visitor, lack of residence (because they put me in jail again) for all those years. Only went to rehab 2 times on my own.
There were about 120 other women just like me. No violence. Only hurting ourselves. Most are gone now (RIP, friends) because they truly couldnt handle the cycle. Everytime we go in ripped off of our mental health meds… I was thr⁶own in the hole for 6 months by myself off my mental health meds. I dont know how I survived, but I did. I been trying to get ib front of the legislature, in the papers that tore me down for so long, nobody wants to hear a success story. I got 8 years sober on the 18th, I purchased my own 350k home, professional coach, I have a personal development/addiction recovery blog trying to help others. I cant bare the thought of other young women getting forced into that cucle in the Vermont Injustice System. The stories I can tell. I asked my local Bennington Banner to feature my story to give people hope and that after tearing me to shreds for all those years it was the least they could do. Nothing. I have not gotten even a little traction and I am getting so tired. I been trying so hard for so long and the fact is, gentleman, is that Vermont is worse than any criminal I have ever known. A lowly junkbag like me wouldnt know the first thing about how to fix the issues but my first bet would be to release some of those non-violent, petty drug related crimes offenders and use that money for the people that need it and deserve it instead of stealing 20 years of a womans life just because she had issues and you could. I allowed how they felt about me (despite never hearing me murmur more than the words not guilty your honor’) determine how I felt about myself and that was a big mistake. That was the one thing I could fix and look at the difference. So glad people are seeing through the BS. Take care.
Instead of blathering on from your tiny soapbox about your little liberal morality play, why don’t you attack the social class responsible for this mess – oh right liberals (as in neoliberals) are social class in this state who are responsible for keeping Vermont safe for wealthy white people who want nothing but scenographic postcard landscapes for themselves, making sure no one but wealthy white people can afford to live here, and those stuck here have to suffer the social violence by the likes of Seven Days, VTDigger, the state, the PMC who pretty control everything and who busy themselves gaslighting and blowing smoke up our asses about the nature and origins of our problems. In this state its always about giving the rich more money to ‘solve’ problems like $750 sqft to build a shitty shack by the starchitects of Vermont.
You never rant about our rich white ruling class who are the sociopath’s and whose values can be found on the dead bodies in gaza, the killings field of the don bass, the endless mountains of dead who are the sacrificial victims to pathological violence of those nice white rich folks in Vergennes or Middlebury or Charlotte or Stowe tooling around in the Teslas. Can’t besmirch the pure of heart, smart little cracker classholes who have all the money and conspire overtime to make sure they keep getting more at everyone’s expense. Getting to build monstrous second and third homes, expand existing ones way beyond need and then believe by sprinkling crumbs on the workers your doing good….how feudal of you.
Billionaire wealth up 88% in the last four year https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/ and their criminal, but ‘credentialed’ accomplices who are the little affluent PMC who run the state for the benefit of white wealth – skimming handsome fees for stifling the economy, looting the state and its people.
What a fucking a joke this state is.
Why the world cannot afford the rich
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00723-3?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
‘As environmental, social and humanitarian crises escalate, the world can no longer afford two things: first, the costs of economic inequality; and second, the rich. Between 2020 and 2022, the world’s most affluent 1% of people captured nearly twice as much of the new global wealth created as did the other 99% of individuals put together1, and in 2019 they emitted as much carbon dioxide as the poorest two-thirds of humanity2. In the decade to 2022, the world’s billionaires more than doubled their wealth, to almost US$12 trillion.’
Let me know if you see this in any headline in any Vermont newspaper. Let me know when it headlines your blog and you take on all the rich assholes in this state who thinks it all belongs to them. Let me know when you hear any elected (or wannabe elected) official lead the charge on this issue.
The RakeVT is only one with the balls to print this basic fact. The other important fact is that 82% of the 1% are crackers. So not only are the all the social ills due to the 1%, its a very racist 1% who are wrecking the planet and ruining people lives all over the world so they can what – drive a tesla, have three houses, jet set all over world saving pandas. Its why Musk is the great white hope of the affluent white middle class.