A not-so-fond farewell to Winters Hall, a.k.a. Governor Phil Scott’s crappy shelter down an industrial side road near Montpelier, pictured above. The Scott administration announced this morning — well, they slipped it out in a routine statistical report, if that counts as an “announcement” — that the governor’s four temporary shelters, including this lovely little number, were closing down as of today.
Every morning, since the shelters opened, the state has reported the nightly census at each location. Today’s count was topped by the following sentence, and I quote: “All shelter are now closed.” Did anybody proofread this thing before it went out?
The closures come despite Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s call for the state to keep open the Queen City shelter, which has seen by far the most use. But he’s a Democrat, so screw him, right?
More good news: Vermont Legal Aid lost its attempt to get a court order forcing the administration to reopen the wintertime Adverse Weather Conditions program, so we get no relief there. Written statement from VLA attorney Maryellen Griffin:
This is terrible news for the hundreds of people experiencing homelessness in Vermont including people with disabilities, families with children, people who are elderly, and people who are low-income and unable to find housing. It is unconscionable that they will be facing unsheltered homelessness. It is particularly concerning now when it is still very much winter in Vermont. Housing is a human right and no one should ever be forced to live outside.
Oh, did I mention that we’re facing a truly fearsome weather forecast for this weekend?
The National Weather Service in Burlington has issued a Winter Storm Warning from 8:00 p.m. tonight until Sunday afternoon at 2:00 for all of Vermont. The outlook in my parts is for 8-18 inches of snow, which could make travel “very difficult to impossible.” There may be heavy snows, an inch or more an hour, on Saturday afternoon. The warning for central Vermont calls for 10-16 inches including some mixed precipitation. In southern Vermont, the outlook is for 6-12 inches of “heavy mixed precipitation,” including possible ice accumulations.
Yep, this is the perfect time to shut down the governor’s awful shelters. Not that they were anything to write home about, but closing them on the eve of a winter storm seems like a bit of a communications own goal even if you’re not worried about the moral dimension of it all. You know, potentially leaving a lot of vulnerable Vermonters without shelter in a severe winter storm.
The “good” news, and that’s a relative term, is that the weather is bad enough to trigger the still-active part of the adverse weather program. From mid-March to mid-April, motel vouchers can be issued when it gets too cold. And this weekend’s weather definitely qualifies.
Still, this is the latest twist in the ongoing clusterfuck of Scott administration shelter policy. How are they communicating about the shelter closures with homeless folks, including the hundreds who left motels to unknown destinations? How are they letting people know that vouchers are available?
Correction: some vouchers are available, and not nearly enough for expected demand. According to a state memo, there are no rooms at all in two of the Department of Children and Families’ 12 regions in Vermont: Middlebury and Springfield/northern Windham County. Space is “extremely limited,” meaning five or fewer rooms, in four regions: Burlington/Chittenden County, Hartford/White River Junction, Newport, and St. Albans.
There is “limited” availability — 10 or fewer rooms — in four more regions: Brattleboro/southern Windham County, Morrisville, Rutland, and St. Johnsbury. The last two regions, Barre/Montpelier and Bennington County, are listed as having more than 10 rooms available. Might be 11, might be a hundred, who knows.
That’s a pitiful supply for the weather we’re going to face. A lot of people are going to be left with no shelter tonight.
At his Wednesday presser the governor gave us the working title of his eventual memoir: “We didn’t have to do anything.” I gave him all the grief he deserved for it. Maybe this is his idea of payback: You didn’t like what we did, so let’s see how you like nothing.
One has to wonder if last week’s precipitate decision to end voucher eligibility for nearly 500 Vermonters with only two days’ notice didn’t lead some motel operators to drop out of the program entirely. I wouldn’t blame them if they felt like they were being jerked around by the administration, which seems to be doing its level best to sabotage the voucher program.
I have no idea if some operators have dropped out, but something has significantly diminished our voucher capacity in only a week’s time. I can’t think of any other reason.
I’m anticipating that at his next press conference, the governor will explain how this was all a big success, just like his lousy shelters.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
If anyone homeless sleeping outside this weekend dies of exposure, blame is directly on Phil Scott and his chosen minions. Anyone dies of exposure and Hell too good a place for this administration
I do not believe for one second the political class gives a sh*t about the homeless. Sure they may mouth the obligatory platitude or faux outrage, but they do not give a political sh*t unless they can line up a pile of loot for one of their constituencies operating a np or some other scam that channels mountains of cash into the pockets of professionals, consultants and business owners. I’ve wasted hours reading legislators websites filled with dreary empty bullshit about how good and moral and how much they ‘care’ about Vermont while always making sure that it stays safe for white wealth.
ZERO of them every talk about the roots of any problem and instead parrot the one party dictum of capitalist democracy – ‘all power to capitalist’. Our rulers, of course, are the source of all good and human suffering, poverty, mental illness is merely the case of personal failure and not taking ‘responsibility’. The poor’s greatest crime in the eyes of fellow Americans is not being born white and rich, their second greatness crime is not wanting to lick the dingleberries off the assh*les of the rich – which higher education teaches us is the gateway to heaven btw. Want to get anywhere in Vermont you quickly learn licking assh*les is the only way you get access to the crumbs – the economy of Vermont is designed this way – that all the wealth flows into a tiny set of grubby paws and all its resources and regulatory mechanisms are designed to make sure that does not change. But then again – this is the United States – one of the most unequal, corrupt, unfree and social violent societies there is.
It may be that an infinitesimal segment of the population gives two sh*ts about the homeless but we are a violent nation and Vermont is an incredibly violent place – society no longer recognizes or understands the nature of the violence as the ‘neoliberal’ ideology of the state (as the OS of the system) promulgates the Reagan/Thatcherite rubbish that there is only the ‘individual’ and society does not exist (unless of course the rich need to get bailed out or they need to invade and destroy country for its natural resources, or tap public wealth for some money-grubbing scam). The brutality of the social reality – exemplified by the centering of the Potemkin Village of white affluence – which is the insane asylum – as the destination of every human being – is that everyone who doesn’t conform or accept it is silently disappeared, left to internalize a horrific degradation of their humanity, their denial of human rights, their utter non-existence which all comes back as mental illness, despair, addiction, ipv, hopelessness, crime, etc but, hopefully, also revolution once the bottom 90% fully realize that the top 10% conspire constantly to stack the deck, rob them blind and, like the sadists they are, leave them with the bill.
Unfortunately most everyone has internalized the belief that the homeless are responsible for their plight, its their fault for not being rich, white, educated and middleclass. Sure people feign empathy and donate a few cans of food or a hundred bucks to the food bank but that is to assuage their guilt and complicit participation, not change the system or alleviate suffering. All these people, who as a matter of daily routine, are trained to perpetuate the evil and violence though their social practices, think that their high incomes, their nice big houses and their new teslas are proof that they are the Deserving and God’s gift to Universe.
‘Inhumanity is a function of social distance.’ Zygmunt Bauman
In addition, your efforts to pin the crisis on Scott belies the fact that Vermont’s liberals own the housing problem through and through. The difference is that Liberals have not limited themselves to only metropolitan areas in the state, they see the whole state belonging them as a play ground for wealth and and so have enacted rules to make sure this ‘neighborhood’ is under their control and thus, fundamentally, denying average Vermonters the right to housing by making it a game of big money:
Liberals and Housing: A Study in Ambivalence
https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Liberals-and-Housing.pdf
“This article examines those contours, with a particular focus on how political liberals view zoning and development. I emphasize liberals because America’s crisis of housing affordability is concentrated in metropolitan areas with liberal governments and electorates. Cities in these areas often take strongly progressive positions on issues like gun control, labor, immigration, and the environment (Barber, 2013), but also tend to stringently regulate their land (Kahn, 2011).2
Observers have tied these strict land-use regulations to the high housing prices, but efforts to change the regulations and allow more housing have created heated disagreement among liberals themselves. Although some liberals see zoning changes as essential to a progressive city, others see them as antithetical.”
For a rural state with very low population, its land use regulations are oppressive, racists and classist. The banner Liberals use to keep people from accessing land and resource affordably, like in most other rural landscapes, such as ‘concern environment’ is largely bullshit. While my experience in rural places governed largely by traditional rural ethos, access to resource to live are much cheaper and easier to had.